Becoming A Musical Warrior

Twinning Rocks

(At The Shed)

Stereo Grand, Phase 4, Smokin' The Profit,

The Truth and The Soul Smiths

Another night at the shed for a music junkie like me, I’m starting to

notice the light podge beginning to form due to all the beer!

My Beer even began speaking to me.

Well the night, I was invited along by Nick Rose from the band The Truth. Having spoken to Nick on many different occasions and bumped in to him at Sumo, I was honoured at the invite.

Again we arrived early and everybody else arrived fashionably late of course. The first thing that struck me as odd was the amount of foreign people pottering around inside. I soon found out that the head liner Stereo Grand was the Belgium winners of the 2009 Nouvelle Vague.

Phase 4 started the night with a bang, if you have never seen Phase 4 perform the first thing you will notice is the amount of members in the group, secondly is the slightly strange array of musical instruments to bring to the stage. Trumpets and trombones are not everybody’s idea of punk music, but once you listen to the rocky, ska punk music Phase 4 deliver you will be fighting the urge to jazz everything up with a bit of brass. The bouncy, youthful funk rock that quickly filled the air was amazing, reminding me of Less Than Jake. A cracking start to the night from another young and talented Leicester band.

Then came an addition to the line up The Soul Smiths, I don’t know much about the band, the music was very varied through each individual song and the vocals were great, over all some good music.

Smokin' The Profit is a well know and confident five piece band that are familiar with the lime light. The first major difference when listening to the band is the quality of the live performance which over shadows anything I had heard on MySpace prior to the night. Smokin' The Profit is as punk as you get and their enthusiasm for music shows right through the performance, a good Leicester punk band.

This is where I began to lose the plot, in the little world of Adam that I live in 95% of the time, a headliner band plays last? So when the head lining Stereo Grand took to the stage I was a little puzzled but didn’t mind as that left the space free for The Truth to play.

So on to the stage came the Belgium band Stereo Grand, all dressed in different items of red and black clothing they became visually distinctive, their presence and attitude on stage was of confidence and a strong belief in themselves and their music. Their music was great, I love how people talk with a foreign twang but sing so English. The use of mixers throughout their set was good to but just went on to long and the songs became a little to samey.

This was the moment me and Nicola had waited for all night, so desperately waiting to hear The Truth play, then the headliners started packing away the equipment so we all sat around for a not so impressive 30 minutes. I don’t know why it worked out the way it did, but I did come away with the knowledge that its best left as the headliner plays LAST!

The Truth is the most diverse group of folks I have had the honour of watching, there is no fashion style that the members stick to, all dressing how they feel most comfortable and all driven by the joint belief that music is the one true language of the world. Performing both cover tracks and their own material The Truth will have you feeling great, feeling like a real musical warrior. The lead vocalist Chrissie has an amazingly powerful voice that has to be admired and throw Deven into the mix for ‘Insecurity’ and you have one hell of a catchy song. You can’t help but become infected by the feel good factor The Truth bring to the stage, the musical warriors struck again, even receiving a memorable helping hand from Stereo Grand on backing vocals.