It has taken some time to recover from the weekend just gone. It started with an unusual Friday gig at the Curzon Cinema on Shaftesbury Avenue for a late night live performance of a Serge Gainsbourg album dedicated to his daughter Charlotte. It was performed by a veritable South London supergroup: Gavin and Mark from William alongside Markus (Their Hearts Were Full of Spring / Marketstall Records), Gemma (John and Jehn / Hindley) and the lovely Chuckie. The sound was a little off as cinemas are not designed to have bands on stage, you have to turn off all the speakers behind the screen you know, but I was very intrigued by tracks 3 (Oh Daddy Oh) and 4 (Don’t Forget To Forget Me) both of which can be found at Marketstall Records along with more info about this project. I’m looking forward to comparing this album with the original Gainsbourg one which I’m reliably informed is a lost classic. Hitting the 12bar after is where the initial damage was done, but, well, it was open unlike the rest of Soho and they do sell pints and shots and we did have the director of the ‘actual’ Gainsbourg movie with us so it would have been churlish of us not to really.
At this point I would like to thank everybody that attended the last ever William show on Saturday, especially those that came from far away (Birmingham, Coventry and Harrow were just the ones I know about). It was a very, very big party as you can imagine. Actual crowd surfing happened, I’ve never seen that in our little venue, there was a great big stage invasion and even Spiderman put in an appearance. I’m not sure there is any Sailor Jerry’s or Jagermeister left in The South of England now. The Eulogy below was written by Danny twobob. I’m reposting it here for safekeeping as it sums up how a lot of us feel:
William, It Was Really Something
Following in the lineage of the best of the 80’s/90’s indie rock scene such as Yo La Tengo, Pavement, Guided By Voices, Dinosaur Jr* but with a Darren Hayman-esque take on suburban lyricism, a very British ability to write songs about bicycles and a fresh spark that was all their own, William, our favourite ungoogleable band, have called it quits. It is with great sadness that we have to announce their farewell show at the Fox and Firkin on Saturday 31st July 2010. In support are two bands we adore who have been through it with them over the years, Popular Workshop and Sunset Cinema Club.
The thing that always causes pain in break-ups of both the musical or romantic kind is when it feels like not everything has been done. That perhaps there was more life left in it than the parties involved even realised. Certainly, new track Lustreless had already gone into our top 3 William songs of all time and it didn’t seem to us like time to call it quits. It only takes a run through a list of everyone’s top indie bands of the last twenty years (Flaming Lips, Modest Mouse, Sonic Youth) to see that great success sometimes takes a long time in a business so fickle, full of lucky breaks and chance encounters. This felt the case with countless bands who seemed to split when the music was still strong. As with other friends of our such as Their Hearts Were Full of Spring, Chet, Special Benny (who thankfully came back even better) …the feeling that other, more rubbish, ‘human’ factors played a part as opposed to a simple “the music had run it’s course” excuse always makes it harder to take.
Perhaps it was some kind of fate. Did they tempt it spending too much time listening to bands that never got the attention they deserved like The Embarrassment? William were a band that had bona-fide hits as well as the ones that would grab your heart when you paid more attention on the third/fourth listen. As a Drowned In Sound review once said, they “should fill indie dancefloors soon”. The countless times we put them on or saw them play the response was always great. Dancing, rocking out, singing along, mosh-pits in Coventry on £7 pills, shouting abuse at the bassist. Whether playing to ten or 300 people, there was always something special about their performances and they always gave it some fucking heart. Alas though, we’re just the promoters. We can only stop sobbing, hope they’d given it as much of a go as the music itself deserved and that future projects bear fruit half as sweet.
Maybe they were just ahead of their time. After all, Mark Thomas had that whole “has a vagina” rumour going well before Lady Gaga was even out of drama school.
3 skaters, 6 years, 1 album, 1 mini album, lots of Budweiser, lots more good times. Come celebrate the last…
*sorry for using the same old reference points boys
- Danny 2bob
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