Rock never died, if anything it’s just waking up. And you can kick off almost 48 hours of rock music on Friday, September 20 at 9.00pm when The Landed play a session at the Victory. Ever popular locally, in the words of their website they ‘somehow manage to mix the new wave edge of The Police with Fleetwood Mac’s sense of melody, the harmonic choruses and homegrown feel of a group like Noah And The Whale with the symphonic rock of ELO’. Says it all.
On Saturday the 21st at 1.00pm you can catch a hair of the dog in the Bruff Bar where The Shed settle in for a session. Describing themselves as Indie pop, they’re travelling far and wide as a support act and have recently released their first single.
At 2.30pm head for the seafront and Revved Up where Kopy Katz will be unleashed. They are a wild UK rockabilly band that play originals and cover songs by The Stray Cats as well as 50’s rockers like Eddie Cochran, Johnny Burnette, Johnny Cash and Elvis. They even apply their own unique rockabilly sound to T.Rex, The Rolling Stones, Billy Idol and many others. Cool. Very cool.
As an alternative you can tune in to Narcotic Hearts - a flamboyantly-shirted four piece playing trashy, ‘outsider’ pop, sonically stomping between glam, power pop and new wave. NDGE (pronounced "NUDGE") continue with some outrageous styling and unique fizzing electro-pop. Both are at Format Records starting at 2.00pm.
Later on Saturday, at 4pm, you've got Dr Pepperlips playing New Orleans jazz outside M&G Seaside Treats and 6pm acoustic duo Blue Orchids are playing at the Bath House pub.
Then, to round off the day, and if electronic music and dancing into the night is appealing, at
7.30pm transfer to the Pier for Dogshow, a band that claims to traverse the genre-fluid
astral planes creating music for dancing. Or, to put it another way, they deliver shades of UK
funk to glimmering piano house, further cut with a crooked line of refreshingly droll indie
disco.
And it’s not over yet thanks to some imaginative bookings by our friends at the Clacton Arts Centre. They've pulled together a fascinating line-up of bands between 3pm and 7pm on Sunday the 22nd in the Blue Room of The Albion. Strung Out, a humourous female ukelele troupe, starts strumming at 3pm, followed by jazz funk trio Raz at 4pm. At 5pm it's Armoured Man, a multi-instrumental folk duo and at 6pm Newsense takes over as a freestyle MC and DJ.