Bloodstrings | The Mistakes | Bunt Cunnies
Club 1019, Vienna
15th October 2024
Neil Crud catches up with The Mistakes in Vienna, halfway through their European tour.
From my North Wales lair, it was easier and cheaper to fly to Thessaloniki and onto Vienna to see The Mistakes, rather than negotiate the logistics of getting to their native South Coast of England. OK, so I was in that vicinity anyway, and it would have been criminal not to have taken the detour to catch them live. I’m so glad I did…
Tonight, this corner of Vienna is quiet; it’s dark and 9.30pm on a Tuesday. Tucked (not so) quietly away behind a petrol station is Club 1019, a Jazz club by all accounts… “We’ve never played a venue with lit candles all over the bar,” comments guitarist Shane Creech as we chit-chat over a beer. Decor aside, tonight the clientele are the deadbeats and the dispossessed and they’re here en masse, demanding to be entertained. The bands are determined not to let them down.
To start the fun and on home turf, are the delightfully named Bunt Cunnies who fed us a diet of reactionary punk-reggae-pseudo-ska. A great bass sound and feel good vibe; “You suck!” they shout, “Cos you never shut up, you ignorant bastard, you selfish bitch,” as they play out the song What’s Your Damage? A kind of disjointed ska number, almost jazz; befitting of the club we’re in – the song, Skateboard morphs in Walking On Sunshine, just for added entertainment.
With a European tour becoming an annual event for The Mistakes, this Dorset punk band are like a musical magnet, picking up more and more followers along the way, and it’s easy to see why. They’re really cool people, up for a laugh, and write excellent tunes.
On gig #5 of an eleven-date tour, these boys from Poole are now a well-oiled (in more ways than one) machine, with their craft honed to perfection. Kip Drewson of Bournemouth grunge band, PlasticGold is their stand-in drummer for this two-week venture. He is like a caricature of Donald Sutherland, full of spunk, and at twenty years old, he’s definitely the baby of the band, but he steps up to the mark and doesn’t miss a beat.
In a sub-genre-packed genre, The Mistakes, deliver pure punk rock; it is as pure as punk rock can be – loud, brash, uplifting, celebratory, fist-pumping and angry; all rolled into a 45-minute set and volleyed right at you with guitars. Vocalist Ross rasps the line; “I’m not quitting, I’m not quitting, I’m not quitting,” the song is I, Savage, an anthemic earworm that has planted and taken root in my head. That’s it! Anthemic is the term, The Mistakes have this knack of reeling out perfect punk rock!
You’d be forgiven for assuming that Drink Up, Boys! is some laddish beer-soaked Oi(kish) celebration of the evil brew. Well, yes… and no, as Ross, Shane, Paul, Angus and Kip (in Lewis’ absence) tell you life’s for living because we’re dying, so, drink up!
What a set! What a performance. The ideal length, left you wanting more…
We did get more, in the shape of Bloodstrings from Aachen, Germany who rounded off the evening with some thumping blasts from their ‘Heartache Radio’ album. Animated gruff vocals and a mad, cool-looking double bassist added value to a heightened atmosphere with an emphasis on fun. Not quite psychobilly nor punkobilly, but there’s a definitely an obilly in there for sure! Great stuff…
~
The Mistakes | bandcamp
Bunt Cunnies | bandcamp
Bloodstrings | website
All words by Neil Crud, you can find his writer’s archive here
Check out Neil’s weekly Punk & Beyond show on Louder Than War Radio
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