'Hot Music Live Presents' fundraiser for The Tin #15
Feature
It's good to keep learning & I must admit then when I began by organising what I thought at the time would be a one-off ‘Hot Music Live Presents' flavoured benefit gig for The Tin, I could not have envisaged the curve of awareness raising that I'd experience.
Firstly, I consider myself reasonable informed but I had no idea of the profundity of the existential challenges to independent music & arts venues. Factor in charitable identities & missions which maximise community and inclusive involvement while minimising pricing in order to facilitate access to the people with fewest resources and you have financial tensions which are hard to reconcile. Single one-off fundraisers are not enough I'm afraid.
Very thankfully however, I probably also underestimated the numbers of artists & audience members eager to respond. Last night's event was the fifteenth of these events & I have to say that the continuation of the series is driven as much by the desire of artists to be involved & give freely of their time & talent as it is by other factors. Hence the sixty or so who've played so far really do deserve credit & respect.
This time the lineup was Danny Ansell, Rosetta Fire, las vedas and dogmarket.
Yes we are still in the realms of diversity of style (and part of the strength of the response to the issues is that The Tin enjoys the support of artists of such wildly differing identities: which helps broaden the base of this sort of engagement but also of course reflects the venue's own values: so many different artists wish to help out because The Tin opens its doors to artists regardless of how they describe their music.
But there's more to diversity than just how you play. Unpicking the stories of each artist & how they came to play last night, you hear human narratives. Danny for example has played there in his estimation for two decades & feels at attachment to a place which helped launch his long & subsequently successful career. He was far from the only one playing who first performed on the old stage at the other end of the venue, but several had not yet played on the "new" stage before.
dogmarket as a live concern was a revelation to me: and I am not sure how many people present had seen them before. Judging by the records I was anticipating them requiring banks of kit to replicate the complexities of the records: but no: such is the state of electronic technology that it could all be carried (easily) by two people: small but mighty kit plus a guitar and (again not anticipated by me) a trumpet. Now SADGAYELECTONICA is such a niche genre that I'm not sure if it raises many expectations in me, but brass definitely isn't one of them.
Admittedly doubling the number of musicians compared with the recordings was pretty clearly necessary in order to replicate them but the vibrancy of the live versions which made great use of the interplay between voice, guitar, trumpet, synths and laptop produced a performance which veered between the avant garde & highly melodic whimsical pop (often in the same song) which required a lot of attention from the audience to follow but which rewarded this. It wasn't all sad (though it had some sad bits) and the electronica had warmth which the name doesn't always signpost to people.
I'd seen las vedas perform at Leamington Peace Festival only a fortnight earlier & their was a performance which just goes to prove that bands do successfully adapt sets and performances to fit the occasion. There was a substantial overlap in setlists but delivered in the confines of The Tin as opposed to the space of the Pump Room Gardens seemed to concentrate & distil the power of the band: they were noisy & boisterous outside but indoors this verged closer to the overwhelming. Was it just me or did their darker songs (most of them) gain potency & become more frightening inside without the summer sun to mitigate them? You could see last night more easily why certain social media take down posts relating to las vedas. If they fear that this band is in some way advocating self harm, it may be because they use a rubbish AI tool which can't tell the difference between a water pistol and a firearm or just maybe the darkness of the lyrics (delivered by artists dressed in Hawaiian shirts and shades: how's that for artistic tension?) threatens them?
Equally the exuberant stage movement which rocked the large outside stage becomes something else when relatively confined: this is a band you cannot ignore.
I was so pleased that Rosetta Fire who are just coming back from a long dormancy dating from 2019 were available to play. They had never graced this particular stage before and even some of the other Leamington based musicians present hadn't ever seen them before: striking especially in the context of their being one of the biggest & best bands from that town prior to the hibernation: there are plenty of reviews in this magazine to back this up if you visit our archives.
They are back with a renewed zest & sense of mission (which may well include an element of making up for lost time I suppose) so please do keep an eye open for their newly recorded single (which of course was played) and they are currently building a programme of live dates. Given the quality of the performance last night, you're in for a treat if you are able to catch them.
One factor for sure was their obvious delight in playing again & the very positive audience response (there was a lot of dancing, pretty much all of it by people who'd never before seen them) which drove them ever upwards. Of course they remain highly talented musicians which is the basis for what thy do, but observing people experiencing such joy does communicate something extra to those watching & creates a particular impression. Talking to people afterwards, it was interesting how they praised the vocal harmonies: whether this is something they've been working on recently or whether I'd been too dim to remark on them in earlier reviews is a good question.
Danny and his band, as mentioned above, had the personal element of his history with the venue but as you'll know, he is an artist with burning values which tend to inform the songs he writes & certainly ignite his performances. Danny Ansell at any gig hurls himself in with gusto and passion but give him an event which fires him up on issues he believes strongly in and you get something extra special. On this occasion, the opportunity to state his feelings on The Tin, the importance of local independent venues, accessibility of places to play for as many musicians and their audiences and the specific location of Coventry and he had multiple openings to express his emotions. And Danny being Danny, he'd long ago already written songs which fitted the subject: "Lemonade Wage" and "A Sky So Blue" for example fitted so neatly & were in fact dedicated to The Tin and the city respectively.
It was a suitably emotional end to another great night of top quality original music which continues to demonstrate the breadth & depth of local talent. However enjoyable it was though, the big lesson is that a single event is not by itself enough to sustain a venue.
Please do therefore try & pop down to The Tin when you can: the range of music (and now they are doing regular comedy shows too) is as eclectic as these ‘Hot Music Live Presents' ones so there is something for everyone and of course while our HMLP gigs have a local focus, the other events draw from across the world.
May I also please draw your attention to this link again:
https://www.zeffy.com/en-GB/donation-form/donate-to-support-the-tin-music-and-arts
We haven't fixed any more dates for HMLP fundraising events but please do keep an eye out for announcements as there are a lot more talented artists we'd love to involve & the need for the events is ongoing.
