11/8/2022 Dirty Strangers, Juvenile Wrecks & Electrics @ The Dublin Castle

I seem to be finding myself at the Dublin Castle quite a lot these days. Tonight I'm here mainly for one of the support bands, but before them are the somewhat mysterious West London based Electrics.

Their name rang a (very faint) bell, and one of my friends seemed to at least know about them. It turns out that although I have never seen them before our paths have crossed at various times and at least once I must have arrived at gigs just after they played early support slots.

For some reason I was expecting as sax/guitar duo rather than a full band, but I was pleasantly surprised. They play jagged dirty low-down rock 'n' roll - right up my street. The bass player has a really cool Kim Gordon vibe going on as well.

The Electrics brand of rock 'n' roll is raw and has an edge to it - definitely a band I will be looking out for in future...

And on the the band who are the main reason for me being in Camden tonight. From the USA - although their bass player went to the same school as me in North London.

Yes, one of these characters looks familiar. It's ex-Quireboys bassist Nigel Mogg - who I last saw onstage fronting his other new US based band The Brutalists at the Mau Mau Bar in 2018. That band were great and had a very strong Dr. Feelgood vibe. Nigel was fronting that band as a singer and doing a pretty good job of it, but now he has picked up his bass again and returned to sideman duties (sort of) with  Juvenile Wrecks.

Although this is a US based band this lot are much closer to Nigel's old band The Quireboys with a strong Stones/Faces influence - definitely more of a rock 'n' roll band than a R&B band like The Brutalists. There is definitely a bit of a New York Dolls vibe going on as well - which is always going to go down well with me.

This is a pretty tight band who play with a real passion for basic rock 'n' roll.

The mic stand position hints at a Lemmy influence - actually they were friends and the Motörhead legend lent Nigel a bass at one point. Poses are pulled, shapes are thrown, and in the best rock 'n' roll tradition - stuff goes wrong! Nigel suffers a wardrobe malfunction involving some seriously low altitude flying...

...and in a 'basic schoolboy error' moment the guitar strap detaches itself from his well battered and worn bass - although it certainly does get given a hard time!

The band's own songs are catchy infectious rock 'n' roll, but at the end of their set they really up the ante by unexpectedly launching into a great cover of The Ruts 'Staring At The Rude Boys', followed by a cover of the Sex Pistols 'Pretty Thing' - they really end their set on a high! Juvenile Wrecks are a great rock 'n' roll band and I look forward to the next time they return to the UK.

Like the first band tonight the headliners hail from West London. I've seen Dirty Strangers several times now and although they are good and experienced musicians held in high regard by other musos I have never really been able to get into them.

They play rock 'n' roll with a punk attitude and a Stonesy feel, so with those boxes ticked they should be right up my street, but for some reason I never quite connected with them. Maybe it's their over-reliance on their connection with Keith Richards - who I think has actually played with them in the past, and the fact that band leader Alan Clayton co-wrote a song for the band with the Rolling Stones guitarist - which is actually pretty cool. And if I wrote a song with Keith Richards I'd crow about it too - as Alan Clayton usually does at this band's shows and I can't blame him.

They are a tight unit and they do have some songs I like, but for some reason I can't put my finger on they have left me cold in the past. However, for some reason I enjoy them a lot more than usual - they seem noticeably better tonight. Not that they aren't good usually, but there seems to be a little extra magic in the room tonight - and I think that the band can sense it.

Juvenile Wrecks are definitely the band of the night for me personally, but I enjoyed the other bands too. It was good to see Electrics for the first time and I look forward to seeing them again at some point, and no doubt I will cross paths with Dirty Strangers again in the future.

PS: In a recent development The Quireboys have sacked original singer/frontman Spike - leaving the band now with no original members who played on the band's classic debut album 'A Bit Of What You Fancy'. Spike has responded by recruiting original band members Nigel Mogg and Guy Bailey to form his own 'Quireboys' - featuring 3 members who actually did play on that first album, as well as 2 more early members who toured with the band. And they have announced a London show for December with new music to follow. Watch this space...