Live Burn 6: London, England 2004 & 2006

Live Burn 6: London, England 2004 & 2006 93 Feet East, Brick Lane, May 31, 2004: This was the first show of our May / June European Tour in 2004. We just come off a crazed US tour with Fourtet a month earlier, and a few months before that we did our first and very well-recieved tour of the UK after the big Wire article. Vibracathedral Orchesta & Jack Rose were also on the bill. The show was wild and very LOOSE with just about all of VCO joining the Sunburned set. We've definately played better shows but this was an amazing night where we met new friends and legends like Edwin Pouncy and Pete Coward. These were the days when we'd roll 3-4 vehicles deep to shows and fly 8-12 of us to Europe with plane ticklets fronted with my bartending money. We were new to this: we'd check in combo amps as a 'suitcase' by cutting a slit in a cardboard box so the amp handle would stick through and then watch it get manhandled by baggage handlers, Nothing broke! Traynor makes good combo amps... The days when we'd gather around and enjoy Chris Corsano's unveiling of an entire (sawed-in-half) drum kit that fit into a regular suitcase, Nights before flights preparing all the suitcases like Rambo. The days when we'd remember to pack a full-size pig megaphone for reasons now not remembered, and sell cartons Amercian cigs at the European merch tables because we saw that cigs were so expensive over there. They were a Hot Item! These were the fun days of cameras before smartphones took over our brains and negatively effected a good portion of our society... The defunct music mag "Loose Lips Sink Ships" sent out Andrew Male to write up the show with the amazing photographer Steve Gullick, look them up... Andrew wrote the best description of this night and of Sunburned or really any band/ gig that I've ever read. "Tramping the plastic glass underfoot, this whisperer on the right moved up close behind, hung on, swallowed, pressed into motion, cold glass against the arm, hissing through teeth, cursed the band... Coming out of the speaker, not drum / guitar shop music, but asthma wheezing, the dull thumping of horses, of bees packed and buzzing in the chest, against some comforting, somnambulant schizophrenia of sound, brain tuning in and out, ghostly voices that bear no resemblance to the viewed act, a rattlesnake caught in an iron foundry, monks on downers, all groans, eight or twelve members, Critter, Chad Cooper, Cousin Rich Thomas, Phil Franklin, Reverend John Moloney, others[*] - in a circle beating out chain-gang rhythms, led by the rhythmic bass of aged schoolboy Rob Thomas, in the centre of a stage that looks like the aftermath battle scene of some '68 hippie riot, protestors trapped in the dying control centre slowly picking up their daft instruments of wood and metal and wires, an indefinable band formed from band members in Franklin's Mint, Fisherman's Faggot[*], Shit Yourself, Faxed Head, Ghetto Breakers, a band born in 1997 from something called Shit-Spangled Banner, some abstract psychedelic free trip with frowns and roots in Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac and Cream, Funkadelic and Ash Ra Tempel, Sly and Sun Ra but made out in the dark woods by the demons and LSD... and then it starts to change, kick in, guitar, rhythm, removed from everyday reality, some sick marriage of those two Sawyer families of American myth - Mark Twain's ragged-trousered truant leading Texas Chainsaw Massacre's pallid, flesh-hungry family up from the rusty iron winter depths of their stuckboard kill-pit and into the sun, some ragged drum bugle corps reborn as artistic community, a missing mountain family sleeping with a car full of tapes, the children of John Fahey turning their dark and violent desires into a mystic broadcast on the King Biscuit Flour Hour, incomprehensible transmissions of hypnotic Native American chant and chime, a backs-of-envelope Rime Of The Ancient Mariner for a damned rat-pack brotherhood trying every combination of blast, chime, clank, slam, scream, thunk and mental-institution shout-in-the-dark in the hope that, one day, they'll maybe play the right combination of notes and all will be well and they'll eventually find their new exotic world, of white sand and bright light. Five six years ago when everything seemed healthy, and the ultimate edge of the avant-garde was guys on lap-tops making cerebral dance music you couldn't dance to, this family didn't realise what was happening. Now this family are happier because George Bush allows people to say, "Well governments are evil, they don't even care..." This band don't even know if kids in their twenties have any idea of what happened in the sixties but maybe that's better because they'll regard that as a failure, how revolution how got co-opted so just showing someone that something can exist, that isn't pre-packaged, that they're doing something deliberately different, will help. Tonight this isn't their CDR, Mind Of A Brother from 1997, that made speakers sound like they were powered by twigs, bird-spit, and fear, but the sound you come upon in a clearing. Some people think that anyone can just get up there like those fucking jam bands for tourist scum out in New Orleans, but this is music for moving, a band elevated to a state of hyperactivity-in-public trying to inspire one guy, one woman, anyone, a band who've been around for a long time until they were sure they developed something really unique. Jackie O'Motherfucker? The No Neck Blues Band? No, Sunburned Hand Of The Man, No-one else sounds like them. It's a heavy sound, the kind of sound that leaks across floors into eager and absent mind, filling hair and clothes and mouths. The two girls smile and walk up. Did you like this, they ask. We thought it was the worst band we've ever seen, isn't that right? And she was laughing. Laughing hard. But, you know, in a good way." - Andrew Male - 2004 "If everyone liked what we were doing 'd know we were doing something terribly wrong. If Sunburned Hand of the Man rprotests anything it's reality itself. What people consider to be reality is not what reality is. It's protest against what's happening every day. We're trying to slip something under the curtain." Rob Thomas 2004 *Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org › wiki › Faggot_(food) Faggots are meatballs made from minced off-cuts and offal, especially pork (traditionally pig's heart, liver, and fatty belly meat or bacon) together with herbs for flavouring and sometimes added bread crumbs. It is a traditional dish in the United Kingdom, especially South and Mid Wales and the English Midlands.] *93 Feet East was played by Michael Josef K, David Bohill, John Moloney Ron Schneiderman, Robert Thomas, Paul Labrecque, and Valerie Webb with everyone from Vibracathedral Orchestra joining in. Corsica Studios, Elephant & Castle, Sunday August 27, 2006: We played here twice in 2006, this is the second time. We loved this space and both times we played there were packed. This audio which has some issues comes from the video camera that Sarah O'Shea used to film the show. A highlight reel of this video can be watched at the No Mask Required facebook event page. Players at this show were: Mick Flower, Phil Franklin, Bridget Hayden, Michael Josef K, John Moloney, Rob Thomas, Ron Schneiderman, Keith Wood and Tom Kirton, our friend from Wales whos now the mayor of a small town there, who was supposed to do sound that night but bailed and joined us on stage. Original Photo by Steve Gallick, logo by Phil Franklin, design / layout by Sarah Gibbons & John Moloney.