No Borders Review
WORDS: Yasmin Begum (Youth Editorial Group)
The No Borders Festival, organised by No Borders South Wales, took place last weekend in TJ's in Newport.
Put together by the same nice people who do Anarchist Prisoner and Gagged! benefits, I had been excited about this all week.
The two-day festival kicked off on the Friday with Bristol-based crusties Jesus Bruiser, who are popular on the squat scene in the West Country. With their somewhat indeceipherable and baffling brand of anarcho crust-lite 'allotment' punk, the set was rather alienating. The two vocalists took the front of the crowd literally by force, breaking the fourth wall, going over the barrier and singing (I use the term singing in the loosest sense of the word) in the non-existent moshpit.
The music was in a similiar style to other crust bands such as Dirt and Conflict, and had dual-vocals. They lacked any stage presence whatsoever, and played an uncompromising and somewhat noisy set. Jesus Bruiser didn't include the crowd in their performance and didn't talk between songs, something slightly irritating as you could never really tell when one song ended and another began. Scary stuff.
Cosmo, good as ever, got the audience's attention and held it well, with his hiliarious commentary between songs that never fails to entertain. With music that crosses a huge spectrum including bluesgrass, folk, hip hop and rap, he provided a very entertaining performance. Songs about the BNP, fascism, piss-takes of Bob Dylan songs and a spin on the Swansea-song Oi Mush were received by the audience extremely well. Cosmo's music and lyrics are refreshing to that of the Cardiff scene, I would highly recommend going to see him.
KilnAboy were next up, a regular band at gigs in the south Wales area who illuminated the evening and were the first performance that got people dancing. Within minutes of playing Flannigan's Ball they covered Billy Brag classic To Have And Not To Have which had a lot of the moshers at the front singing and grabbing random people from the sidelines to dance. KilnAboy are a mixture of both traditonal folk music and punk rock, complete with mandolin and accordion. They're in a similiar vein to bands such as Flogging Molly, Gogol Bordello and Against Me!
Described as legendary hardcore punks, No Choice lived up to that bold statement well. They showed both impressive musicianship and showmanship when it came to playing infront of the crowd at TJ's. No Choice have been around for twenty-odd years in Cardiff and the surrounding areas and play with the energy of a band half that age, proving themselves as not just another punk outfit reliving its glory days, but as a respectable band whose music is melodic,well-crafted and reminds people that punks still do have some things to say with their highly intriguing social-commentary.
They've just released a new album on Newest Industry Records that you can pick up at both Damaged Records in Jacobs Antiques Centre and Spillers Records in the punk section. They're usually playing gigs around these parts and have been a part of the anarchist-benefit gig scene since the early 1980s.
Headlining Friday night were Inner Terrestrials. These guys spend most of their time in mainland Europe and have been touring non-stop this year with sixteen countries on the list so far. I felt extremely lucky to have seen them as they rarely play Wales. Their hugely catchy sound had the whole of TJ's pogoing to their up-beat dubby ska punk rock. Despite the cold and damp weather outside, Inner Terrestrials put a huge optimistic turn on the evening and left an ambiance of excitement in the air with most people looking forward to what Saturday had to offer. . .
Day two of the self-proclaimed two day festival of punk, ska and folk started off at around two o'clock. The day beforehand, numerous leaflets had been printed off about a protest that was taking place outside the Home Office's Border And Passport Agency in Newport against ID cards. ID cards come into place for foreign migrants and foreign students studying in the UK next month, and the folks at No Borders understandably disagree with this. At least 40 people showed up, regardless of the piercing cold wind and drizzle that had set itself upon Newport.
Afterwards, there was a showing of the film Batons And Bombs in the John Peel section of TJ's. EDO has a factory that manufactures weapons on behalf of the British government in Brighton, and because of its obvious controversial and sensitive nature; the government tried to uneffectively ban this film. This just led to a nationwide tour of the film in various bars, clubs, social centres, squats and all sorts of odd places to watch a movie across the UK.
Batons And Bombs was well informative and gave an eye-opening look on both the arms industry and the brutality of the police. Most films in my experience that deal with issues such as these seem to be preaching to the converted, so to speak, but this film was delivered to appeal to a wide range of audiences; even the most jaded viewer would find this interesting.
Saturday night was a bit of a blur. Something to do with which bands wanted to play and which sparked a great deal of confusion as to who was playing when. I wasn't sure which band was on when, or who was playing after them. I was totally bemused as I wandered around looking for the vegan pizza that was being sold.
I visited the wide array of stalls that were selling things such as anarchist propagada, band merchandise and information on human rights. The usual stuff that you see at gigs organised by the radical-leftists in the Newport and the surrounding south Wales area, but intriguing nonetheless.
Solo artist Tracey Curtis, a previous member of Shelley's Children, arrived armed with just a guitar. Curtis was one of the two folk acts playing on Saturday; her delivery of her charasmatic songs about subjects such as human rights right down to birdwatching truly warmed the heart of every person who was listening. Melodic acoustic music with a social conscience. Great, innit?
In between Tracey Curtis and Catch It Kebabs, a notorious local woman (I have no idea what her real name is, I'm not sure anyone knows it, even her. . . [it's Sue, apparently! - Ed]) only known as The Grananarchist wandered on stage ranting about something, but was quickly removed. I spoke to one of the organisers who told me this was a regular occurance. Apparently The Grananarchist hijacks any sort of leftist benefit. Hiliarious!
Headlining Saturday was the eight-man strong Catch It Kebabs, a ska act from Barnsley in Yorkshire. They provided a strong, melodic sound similiar to British ska bands of the eighties (such as The Specials) and the showmanship was absolutely flawless. They gave us all a reminder that ska was definitely not dead! They played impeccably and now I see what the big fuss about ska is, I take my hat off to Catch It Kebabs for their set that was definitely the highlight of the festival.
Around midnight, hardcore punk rockers Rejected took to the stage but most of the crowd had dispersed to catch buses / trains and those who had set up stalls were beginning to pack things up while people took boxes of books to vans. We followed suit and walked down to Newport train station and as I walked up and down the drizzly penultimate second platform waiting for the last train home, I wondered how the festival really went.
I thought that it lacked atmosphere and ambiance from other gigs I had been to in TJ's, such as when I saw Citizen Fish play, organised by the same people. I felt that I'd been living there for two days and that, in all honesty, is not a good feeling. Not that many people showed up, but you could put that down to the weather and the venue.
I pondered over how this could have been more of a sucess, I thought about what would have happened if more people showed up - not just the usual crew of anarchists and punks. I let my mind wander and hoped that if No Borders South Wales or any related groups do something like this again they do it differently. Maybe that they do it sometime during summery months when it makes more sense to leave the house.
Maybe there could have been a wider word spread about it so more people would have showed up, or a wider range of entertainment that broadens over just music and a movie. If so, then something really, really stunning could be achieved.
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