HEAVY DISCIPLINE

Towers Of London, live at Cambridge APU Feb 2005 and Cambridge Junction June 2005
by dizzzee
Junction photos by Mike: more here 
 

Cambridge is scared of Towers Of London right now.  One vaguely trashed APU meant no venues are willing to put them on, and a court appearance for a Mr Tourrette (its just like 1977...).  You could probably shout "TOWERS!" at a passing crowd of Friday nite lager louts and they'd run home to their mummies and National Front teddy bears.  Of course, not everyone thinks Towers put on the best show since Morecambe and Wise.  APU was apparently threatening to close over their February gig, where they supposedly burnt down the venue (or something).  I don't give a shit for any local scenesters whining over the venue they nearly lost; half of you ain't even been there, and you're exactly the same people who stayed away from the Boat Race (RIP) when it needed filling. Anyway, I thought I'd write something about both gigs, seeing as the NME played it's tabloid role to perfection and wrote loads of ridiculous shit, that was more hyperbole than English, about it that YOU believed, when half of you don't even know what happened.
 
Before the gig, Towers were largely unknown, just your bog standard signed band.  Don't assume I was in on the PR bullshit grapevine, I only went to the gig to see the two supports, Bomb Factory and the Suffrajets.  Needless to say, the £2 NUS price helped, especially as it was the opening night of the revamped APU, which replaced the Boat Race as the venue in Cambridge for small signed touring bands to play.  If you wanna hear what I think of the music read the Junction review, but, having been raised in the PC 90s and 00s where bands come and go, only leaving the same impact as an anorexic would leave footprints in sand, I'm still amazed by the brash, albeit strained, and with or without a facade, power and aggression of their stage show.

They trashed the stage like it was the Berlin Wall.  And in a way, it was.  In my eyes at least, smashing anything up has never really been rock and roll.  I've always thought Keith Moon could have just given his drum kit to an orphanage.  What a disappointment.

Apart from THEY DIDN'T TRASH THE VENUE AT ALL.  Except if 'trash' means to put on one hell of a good rock and roll show.  They pulled a few drapes down (which looked shit anyway) and played monkey bar swinging on the lighting rig.  The only substantial damage was to the stage center section of the rig, upon which perched an expensive looking projector.  Now, I don't wanna generalise a region by it's historical academic intellect (and believe me, you can't), but I would have thought a university within Cambridge, aswell as the promoter, could have realised a loudmouthed rock band with a reputation of anarchic (or archaic?) stage antics was quite likely to take offensive of any breakable object mockingly put in their path.  Even support act Bomb Factory managed to brutally assualt it (singer Ranting Jack delivered a knockout, albeit accidental, flying headbutt, which quite possibly knocked some sense, plus an apologetic expression, into him).  Anyway, even then, they still didn't colloqiualise it.  By 11.00pm it was merely swinging upside down from its AC/DC power chord (how poetic) and endangering the front row.  The only ungentlemanly conduct occured as security were trying to cut the band off.  The Rev raised his guitar high above his head and struck a literal axeman pose over a security guard meathead below, who was trying to cut the bands short.  The only winner of this tense standoff was the most unlikely: common fucking sense.  The guitar (and guitarist) remained brainless, and the band, as they had put the vocals through the backline amps, lingered on despite losing the PA system.  Until they ended with, instead of a final power chord and star jump, police sirens.

So, four months, an NME photo special, and a Cambridge Magistrates Court appearance behind them, Towers Of London returned to Cambridge to rock their cocks and scare our ducks.  To reward their PR publicists, and rip off their fans, the gig is a freebie.  So now, instead of just being punk thugs, they're sell out punk thugs.
 
The main criticisms aimed at the Towers' seemed to be from the "You're just overblown cock rock 80s wannabes" to "You make my cock glow and my head hurt, but I like my bands straight and boring so stop it" mental asylums of thought.  So listen up.  Towers Of London are not 'overblown' 'bloated' 'rip-offs' or 'clichés'.  They are exactly the opposite.  Their performance represents the most stripped down and primal of pure animal instinct.  Of aggression and exhaustion, of love and hate, of instinct and energy, of anger and intent.  There is no stage show, no choreographed faux-anything, no poseurs, nor no inch given.  It doesn't represent irony, hero worship or talent.  It just represents a basic band pushed to their extremes.  You don't need to be Freud to understand that a 'You Can Call Me Dangerous' or 'Fuck It Up' is enough to ejaculate catharsis in anyone from the snotty Sid-a-likes to the 10 year old girls (there were many of both), but some of their songs were really fucking poor.  The ones where you wondered whether this was a rock and roll parody or a 'real band' playin.  At one point, shouter Dirk  Tourrette just mimicked the static crowd, with his perfect Rotten sneer (he's spent too long wanking over 'The Filth and Fury') piercing whatever gap between audience and band remained, but he couldn't have looked sillier if his flies were undone.  Underneath the hair and the don'tgiveafuck facade, you just knew he realized that it was his fault, and not ours.  "Thanks for comin to the funeral, Cambridge" said he, without a reverant glint in his eye. 

Anyway, when they teared into 'Pretty Vacant’ or 'On A Noose' without any of the bullshit popular 'punk' preconceptions or prejudices, regression becomes attractive and not restrictive, as wearing a straight jacket would to a very underdressed man on a very cold day.  If only we could all see so clearly.  Their biggest punkliment is that the 10 year olds (and probably the punkdrunks too- those guys really are fucking stupid rotters) probably didn’t know which was a Pistols cover.  Whatever.  Enough.  Towers of London ARE a band of contradictions.  Spray spitting beer in the air before soloing behind your head is probably the most un-punk rock thing you could imagine, but star jumping your way through three chords despite the fact your trouser are gonna split probably is.  If there were a punk political spectrum, Towers' would be out as uniformly right as Hitler (hair and wanky solos) and past the righteous Gandhi left (three chords, attitudes, songs) at once.  You don't know whether this is something new or the same old.  All I know is that I've never seen a band play with such simultaneously conflicting energy and inertia.  They don't know whether collapsing with exhaustion would be a triumph or a defeat, so they'll keep playin until they find out. 

There is no humanitarian Berlin Wall to separate those who love and who hate.  And Towers of London are going have to accept this.  But acceptance brings belonging, and the only belonging they feel is to their own egos (just like you and me then).  They will piss you off.  They will rip down your pathetic venue and not even toss over it.  They'll spit on your camera lens and still offer a practiced sneer.  But don't hate them like they hate you.  They are just a hardworking young band, desperate to be the best band in the world.  And what are you doing that's so great anyway?

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