EARLY EVENING LO FI HI JINX

GENETIX UK LIVE AT THE WELLINGTON

The date is 26th April 2015 and it's Goth Weekend. We watched the Goths play the Gazette this afternoon and they lost 4-0. It's a bit overcast, but the snooker's on and the town's full of black clad narcissists and ever so slightly pervy looking blokes with expensive cameras and anoraks. There's a gig at the Welly tonight featuring Genetix UK, a band I'm ashamed to say I've never seen live. I decide a steady stroll down to the pub at around 8pm on a Sunday evening, ready for a half past eight start as advertised, would be a grand way to finish off a weekend.

A video camera wedged on top of a speaker

 I think it was about Ronnie O'Sullivan 4 - Stuart Bingham 8 when a shock announcement arrived via the interweb. The goths had decided they wanted their special disco, which was due to occur after Genetix UK had finished their set, to start early, and now the band would have to go on at 6.30pm.

Keeley 

Schedules were reorganised and I had to set off with tea barely having had time to settle. Arriving at the pub the band were just setting up, and to be honest it felt like the middle of the afternoon. Drummer Steve wedged a video camera into a gap in one of the fixed speakers which point towards the dancefloor for audio-visual documentation of the performance.

Steve 

Genetix UK are a tight, compact unit and they played straight through from one end of the set to the other with barely a gap to catch breath. None of this ten minute wait between songs for the guitarist to tune up again or for the adjustment of settings on pedals. In fact I don't think they used any pedals at all. Momentum never sagged and there was no energy drop-out.

Emily

Two guitars and a bass and a drum kit, and everybody doing vocals in various combinations, I mean what more do you want? Hyped up dirty punk doo-wop harmonies injected into no nonsense, snappy songs about local people, places and events that fizz and then detonate. These firmly ground Genetix UK into the peculiar undercurrents of life in modern Whitby, as opposed to the mythical Victorian theme park construct that the goths deem to visit twice a year.

Rachael

Keeley, Steve, Emily and Rachael just bloody nailed it with a big black nail of bubblegum punk joy that irked some goths, so much so that one was actively discouraging people from coming in to see a band who was not one of theirs. To be fair though, some were drawn into the intense accuracy of it all. I was listening to Genetix UK do When You Go Down Town on Bob Fischer's excellent wireless show recently, which sounded fine, but not as good as the experience of having your ears cleansed in a pub with a vibrating bassline.

So we clapped, the band packed up and the goth disco started, with all the weirdness you might expect from a shadowy, death fixated sub-culture. It kicked off with Martha and the Muffins on Echo Beach and followed it with Kim Wilde's Kids in America. Radical.

By the way, Dave IS amazing.