“I don’t wanna go to work today, I don’t wanna work my life away”

I went to Virgin Oil Co. yesterday to see Liquid Sisters. I had only recently half-accidentally bumped into the band and I was immediately impressed, so I had to go and check ‘em out live. The fact that the band features (or featured?) two former members of one of my all time favorites, Grumps, didn’t actually put me off, either…

When I arrived around ten o’clock, the venue was empty. Virgin Oil is a rather average Italian restaurant operated by one of Finland’s biggest daily consumer goods chains. It also has a bar downstairs and a stage upstairs. I think the capacity of the venue is around three or four hundred, but there were around twenty people there.

I thought it had something to do with the Finland – Russia football (soccer for the American Idiots) match which had just ended, that people would trickle there from other bars where they had been watching the game, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Thinking about it, I don’t think there are too many people who appreciate both football and a) all-female punk rock b) drag queens. (Except for me, of course.)

Morgan Deveraux was the first act of the evening. He/she (don’t you just hate languages which use different personal pronouns based on something as diverse as sex) was really entertaining. Correct me if I’m wrong (I’m not that familiar with the genre), but don’t most drag queens just act like they’re singing? Well, she doesn’t. And I’ve never seen a drag queen on stage with two guitarists who also play on top of the playback. Strange, but entertaining as hell.

Next up was Kide. She was one of the guitarists on stage with Morgan Deveraux and her band featured almost the full lineup of Liquid Sisters. Straight-up rock n’ roll has never been my cup of tea, so I’m not sure what to say about her performance. I don’t think I thought it was bad, but the fact that I don’t remember too much of it says a lot, I guess.

She joked that it was a support gig for her trip to Berlin, which luckily wasn’t really the case. There were apparently about five people who had actually paid the admission of 6 € to get in, the rest of the thirty-something “crowd” were on the guest list. I’m still kind of pissed that I didn’t get my ticket in advance, it would’ve been cool to have a ticket with seat number one. Or even three. (Of course there weren’t any seats, but the advance tickets did have numbers printed on them.)

Kide is playing in Berlin on at the end of this month, so all you Germans out there (I’m pretending I have an audience here…), go to Monster Ronson’s Ichiban Karaoke on the 26th of June. (Oh, I should probably mention that Liquid Sisters is playing there too.)

My initial impression of Liquid Sisters was based on the three tracks they have on their MySpace page (someone really should offer bands a way to promote themselves with a Free Network Service). It was kind of off-the-mark. I thought they were more generic riot grrl punk than they actually are. Live, they were a lot more versatile, bringing into mind as different comparisons as Dead Kennedys and Crass.

They played a set which contained apparently all their songs, plus Somebody Put Something in My Drink (by the Ramones, of course) as an encore. Their lyrics differ a lot from one track to another, which is nice. A combination of political, personal and humorous content has always appealed to me. (The title of this post is from one of their tracks, not sure what it’s called. And, for the record, the reason why she doesn’t want to go to work today is “because it sucks ass”.)

After the gig was over I had to thank the band. The first member I spotted was the singer Peppe. She was really impressed that there was at least one person who she didn’t know and who had paid to see them. So impressed, in fact, that I received a free copy of their “Fuck That Shit” EP from her. It contains the same recordings they have on MySpace, so it’s not really anything shiny and new for me (except that the cover rocks!), but for the first time in my life I have record which has authentic signatures of the band members (well, almost all of them, anyway) on the cover…