Melt Banana

I have just been to see "Melt Banana" play at the Oran Mor, a venue a mere twenty minutes walk from where I live. Melt Banana are a famous Japanese hard core punk band. The lead singer is female. Among the many crimes against humanity that George Bush has committed, the trivialization of the the word awesome, may perhaps be the smallest one. Anyway melt Banana were totally awesome tonight. The lead singer had a huge amount of charisma. She wore a white sweatshirt and moved in a slow controlled way. The last tour of the band in the UK seemed to do 20 gigs in 21 days. Outside the Oran Mor I saw a small blue minivan, those guys are really hard core. I had been to see the band play before. John Peel used to champion them. He read out a pub they were meant to be playing at in Liverpool. I went there, but the gig had been moved to another pub. When I got to the new pub, the place was packed. At some stage the bar staff decided to not serve any more drinks. They would pull pints and then vanish. I think they had a secret stash of regular drinkers who had to be watered first. The pub was so full of people I could only see a little bit of black hair jumping up and down. All the people who used to go to punk shows seemed to be there.