The Telescopes @ The Victoria Birmingham 13/02/10

In 1989 The Telescopes released Taste, one of my all time favourite lp's. They were a massive band for me in my teens, from hearing 'The Perfect Needle' on John Peel show, and my first gig of the new decade took me back to those days.

As previously documented here, Stephen Lawrie has been revisiting the early Telescopes material, either acoustically or backed by the support band, on sporadic dates around the UK. Thankfully for me (as i missed the other dates), this has now resulted in a proper tour.

The venue was an upstairs room of a great Birmingham boozer called the Victoria, and was part of the Sound Of Confusion monthly promotion which showcases the kind of shoegaze/noise/psychedelic thing that the Club AC30 & Sonic Cathedral nights do in London.

The first band One Unique Signal from London were the only support worth a mention. Mainly instrumental apart from the odd inaudible vocal this 5 piece gave it everything. The triple guitar assault sounded especially amazing. Luckily these guys were to provide the Telescopes backline for the nights main event.

Crashing in with 'There Is No Floor' the band perfectly captured the noise assault of the early material and it was great to see that Stephen Lawrie had lost none of his venom in the preceding years. Clearly these songs still meant everything to him as he screamed them out whilst rolling around the floor. From my Red Stripe addled state it's hard to remember the set list but it did seem way too short. Anyway i think it included To Kill A Slow Girl Walking, Precious Little, Sadness Pale, The Perfect Needle, Please Before You Go, Silent Water, the previously mentioned There Is No Floor, ending with Suicide.

Fucking great.

I look forward to new Telescopes material in 2010.

Another review of the night here

Great set pictures from the tour here