by Vincent Abbate

It's billed as the world's largest music trade fair. What it resembles most is a three-ring circus.

"Over here on the right, ladies and gentlemen, we have the PopKomm music industry convention, where small, medium and big mofo-sized concerns decide what each and every one of you will be humming this time next year. In the giant center ring, see the thousands of malleable kids that are the big mofos' best friend jump through hoops at the aptly-named Ringfest: ten stages of pre-digested music in bite-sized, ten-minute performances. Finally, way over there near the peanut stand, you nostalgia buffs may watch in wonder as musicians unload vans and set up their very own equipment. Not a DJ or samba dancer in sight!"

Musik san frontieres wasn't invited to the PopKomm convention, held as it is each year in Cologne, Germany. (Maybe if we'd asked ...) A portion of the Ringfest was on TV; your humble servant rather enjoyed the Saturday night broadcast, less for the lip-synched performances of Black Legend and Band ohne Namen than for the pleasure of watching thirty thousand boy group fans get drenched in a downpour. Yet it was the third ring of the circus that proved most interesting, and if we're honest, decidedly un-circusy. The Thursday, Friday and Saturday night shows on MSF's concert itinerary are described below.



ABS, Thursday, August 18th

PopKomm officially began with your reporter throwing open the doors to his Ikea wardrobe and pulling out a square-cut, button-down shirt, black jeans, black and gray checkered socks and blue suede loafers. The shirt was the centerpiece: found in a thrift shop in Bangor, Maine, its short sleeves ideal for rolling to the middle of the biceps and staying put. Meanwhile, the cut of the loafers showed enough sock for me to feel sufficiently rude. Granted, it's been fifteen years since Madness were in the charts and the Toasters were New York competition, but I haven't completely forgotten ska etiquette.

As late as a quarter to nine, when a few similarly-attired gents idled beside me at the bar, I felt secure with my fashion decisions. But this Moon Ska Records showcase turned out to be something more for the baggy shorts crowd. Moon Ska specializes in ska-punk; this evening, the stress was clearly on the second syllable. "We're not punk-ska, we're not ska-punk. We're aggressive pop!" shouted Ex-Cathedra howler Andi to the few dozen fans standing in a broiling and airless cellar room. The five-piece from Glasgow thrashed its way through a series of two-minute explosions while a handful of diligent dancers played at mayhem in front of them. The dancers were members of Uncle Brian, who'd preceded Ex-Cathedra onstage with a similarly noisy set. I had a Beatles flashback during Uncle Brian, and please don't ask why. The Beatles may well have sounded in 1960s Hamburg like the Buzzcocks did in 1976 and the punky-thrashy-jerky Uncle Brian do today, given the average human's need for progressively more stimulation. (Although you never would have caught either band dead in Uncle Brian's shorts.)

Playing their first gig ever outside the U.K. were openers Lubby Nugget, for me the most potent drug of the evening. The thrill of free beer and cheap cigarettes (which apparently cost three times as much in England) translated into happy faces and infectious rhythms on the part of this septet. And here, the ska-punk label fit like a glove: trumpets and sax stood front and center, sandwiched into a punk played tight, fast and with imagination. Lubby Nugget also gets the prize for best song title with their anti-cover "Rambo #5".


Links:

Ex-Cathedra
www.ex-cathedra.co.uk

Uncle Brian
www.theunclebrian.co.uk

Lubby Nugget
www.lubbynugget.freeserve.co.uk



Down Town Club, August 19th

Good venue, bad business.

Alarmed at the light turnout for the first concert ever presented in this otherwise popular new disco (an acoustic evening at that), the club owners pushed back the first performance, originally scheduled for 8 p.m., to 10 p.m. Unforgivable at a showcase event like this one. Of the five people in the place at eight, one might well have been a big mofo with his hand on a checkbook.

Ange Boxall hit the stage after the long delay looking none the worse for wear. Nor did she seem all too torn up about the cancellation of her show at the Australian Pavilion at Expo 2000. "They're very disorganized," she said, with a jolly smile and a shrug. Haven't the Aussies ever heard of stress? Ange, a native Tasmanian, is the most wholesome 25-year-old woman you'd ever want to meet, a blonde-haired mermaid-cum-singer/songwriter. She sings hymns about her fears, her mother and gray Melbourne people who hate their jobs, all of it very clearly enunciated and politely strummed. Her voice is undeniably pretty. Put her in front of Ex-Cathedra's crowd with that voice, and lines like "I'm playing on the see-saw of my life", and you might just see a few bottles flying stageward. Washed up on the surf into a cozy little club, though, cradling her guitar, showing lots of tanned skin and sensitivity ... seeing Ange Boxall in such a setting, you may succumb to an urge to propose marriage on the spot.

An hour later, Michael de Jong took over. (I'll respectfully withhold comment on the performance in between.) The contrast could not have been greater. The gray-haired, craggy De Jong has been around the block in the mean part of town a hundred times. His voice is the residue of thousands of poisons and

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