Girls Against Boys

Electric Ballroom camden

3rd December 2013

Way back when in the good old days and all that a couple of bands were very important to me in my musical education, these bands included the usual suspects bands like Fugazi, Black Flag, Husker Du, The Pixies, Minor Threat, Rites of Spring, Dag Nasty and a band called Girls Against Boys.

I first heard about Girls Against Boys from a friend at college and picked up a copy of Venus Luxure No.1 Baby on see through yellow vinyl, from the opening bass line of In Like Flynn and the way it slowly developed until Scott's vocals kicked it was like wow, and I suddenly realised what a great band this was.

The crunching sound of rockets are red still contains one of my favourite lyrics, I'm not crazy...but I'm trying.

I saw them many times in the 90s at some great venues including the sadly now closed Princess Charlotte in Leicester, Sheffield leadmill and once at some place in Nottingham where I seem to remember them playing in almost total darkness supported by another amazing band Brainiac who's time was sadly cut short with death of singer and noise makerTimmy Taylor.

After some great albums some 10years ago they called it a day and I thought that was it, they played a few shows Scott and Alex played in Paramount styles, Eli went on to produce stuff including a cool album from The Soft pack and errr James Blunt.

Anyway I was excited to hear earlier this year they were back and playing a few shows mainly in Europe, I was massively excited to hear of a UK date and booked my ticket as soon as they went on sale.

In the meantime they released and amazing new ep The Ghost List not just because I love the band, but because it's a great sounding record.

Anyway show time!

Since the last time I saw them we have all got a little older I mean it's I guess 20years since I first saw them but music is great for providing and provoking memories and it was a real delight to see these guys again.

Starting off with Tucked in and playing through some classic songs like super fire, go be delighted and learned it the Two Bass attack of GVSB was sounding immense.

Eli was jumping around like a crazy man, a bit of shadow boxing on the stage and I'm still to this day intrigued by the way he puts a bass through a wah pedal and the sound he gets from it.

Half way through the set they played 3 songs off the new ep which sounded great live, let's get killed is one of my favourite tracks of the year.

Ending the hour long set with bulletproof Cupid, in like Flynn, kill the sexplayer, let me come back and rockets are red finally bringing it all to a conclusion.

It was great seeing GVSB performing live again, hopefully this wont be the last time and hopefully the ghost list isn't a farewell release but hey none of us are getting any younger these days.

Next up is another one of my favourite 90s bands Rocket From The Crypt at Koko. A Fugazi reunion now would complete it for me but I'm pretty convinced that will sadly never happen.