27/7/2007 Loose Thread at Club Fabulous @ Leonards EC1

Subject	Loose Thread at Club Fabulous @ Leonards EC1
PostedDate	7/27/2007
	3 gigs in one night - well that was the plan anyway. I did actually manage to get to all three venues, but only got to see one of the bands I wanted to see - promoters switching stage times around again buggered everything up again!  First port of call was the Dublin Castle to see Mr Derry. I was expecting them to be on at around 8.30. I got to the venue at 8.15 and the first band hadn't even started.  I enquired what time Mr Derry would now be taking to the stage. I was told 9.15 - which was no good to me as Loose Thread were supposed to be on at 9.30 at Club Fabulous @ Leonards over in EC1. I had a quick pint and headed off... I'd never heard of the venue before and it was quite difficult to find - not a bad little place though - although somewhat 'intimate'. Well it would be intimate if it was full I guess. No brown beer on tap, which was a disappointment in what is essentially a pub venue in spite of it's 'club' name - although they did have bottles of Newcastle Brown so all was not lost.  I arrived in plenty of time - to find things were running late and the first of the three bands playing was still on... I missed most the set of first band of the supposed four band bill - one didn't turn up - about normal really.  The next band were Rat Pigeon (I think) and they weren't bad. It took me a couple of songs to start to warm to them, but they didn't have anything to really make them stand out. The frontman had a nice Telecaster bass though - you don't see them very often - or Dave Lee Roth 'Skyscraper' T-shirts! The lead guitarist looked too much like some kid practicing in his bedroom though, and only the bass player had any real stage presence. Loose Thread seemed to disappear off the radar a couple of years or so ago after a very promising start. The band seemed to go to ground in their native Luton and nothing was heard from them for a long time. Until now. They returned to London for a very low profile gig - so low profile in fact that they don't seem to have actually told anyone!  I'm glad to say that Loose Thread are still a really good band - plenty of stage presence and all excellent performers. They are one of those bands you can tell actually love being on stage performing!  Their half-hour set consisted almost entirely of new songs, but they still maintain the quality - a song called 'My Favourite Time' stood out as being a particularly good tune. I only noticed one song from their terrific split album (with Rat:Daddy) 'Dirty Stars' on the sadly now defunct Changes One label, but the band proved they can still come up with good new songs. Hopefully, this gig marks the start of their comeback to the London scene and they can start to build up the following they had before in the days of the old Five Miles High promoted gigs. They will have to make sure they actually tell people next time they play in London though - although they have their own MySpace they don't seem to have cottoned on yet that MySpace can actually be quite useful to promote themselves....  My carefully calculated plan involved rushing off to the 12 Bar Club after seeing Loose Thread to catch Love and a .45 and the brilliantly named Tits Of Death. Needless to say, things didn't go according to plan. Due to things running so late at the previous two gigs I'd been to, I arrived at the 12 Bar to find Love and a .45 in the street outside having finished their set. To make matters worse, Tits Of Death (who had been recommended to me) had cancelled at the last minute and weren't even playing - so that was another wasted journey! I decided to cut my losses and headed home - at least leaving early enough to avoid the chaos and delays that usually go along with the last tube.