![]() ![]() Authentic military garb, neatly trimmed hair, hobnailed boots, only Childish’s Van Gough-channeling handlebar mustache suggest any hint of madness. Gentlemen killing machines at your service, ma’am. So if, in fact, the Wild Billy Childish live experience is the visual and musical equivalent of British officers out on the melancholy piss, then the Buff Medways are that exact same group of blokes two days before, alert, spit-shined and bayonets at the ready. The gig even ends on a suitably shambolic note when he announces that he’s out of songs to play, so we’d better find something else to do. Such is the measure of a man that when the club owner tells him that the police have booted his car, he simply passes the hat/fedora around the club and keeps playing. It’s an electrifying performance, either literally with Childish howling into his microphone and thrashing away at a guitar – both plugged into the same amp, all a distorted visceral and mystical channeling of the true satanic roots of the blues, or organically as in chills and shocks in my fingertips as Wild Billy takes off his fedora and soulfully sings his way through a cappella versions of songs like Leadbelly’s “John The Revelator.” Of course we get the soon-to-be hit single, “Troubled Mind,” pounded out in bleeding-fingers-primal fashion and he even nails the Roger Daltry stutter goddamn perfectly. He reverse-heckles the famous musicians in the audience, asking them how to tune a guitar, chiding them about using too many chords, and giving florid descriptions of the old blues numbers that he covers tonight, along with a clutch of Buff Medways originals. He’s presently joined by his Buff Medways drumming compatriot, Wolf Howard, also looking like a slightly drunken officer slumming it, shuffles through the lyrics sheets at his feet and launches into a rambling monologue about the origins behind The Friends of the Buff Medway Fancier Association, continuing even when it’s apparent that he’s lost the audience at a far-distant stream of consciousness trip, and he never stops the monologues. s lost snap-brim fedora, and proceeds to – swoon – set up his own equipment.cool, touted as an inspiration by such zeitgeist hoppers as Kurt Cobain and Jack White, takes the stage quietly, looking like a cross between Sherlock Holmes and General Custer, clad in old British army dress fatigues and a flannel hunting coat with Dick Tracy “Wild” Billy Childish is his name tonight, it’s his bluesman alter-ego y’see. And it’s only on a random Sunday evening, in the cramped subterranean confines of the 12 Bar Club, that I am finally able to come face to face with the man. One of my big goals during my stay here in London was to see garage rock auteur/wildman Billy Childish of Thee Milkshakes, Thee Mighty Caesars, Thee Headcoats fame/godhood in full-on live glory. Shut your mouth child, you’re in the presence of genius. MaBuff Medways The Dirty Water Club, London, UK. ![]() Wild Billy Childish 12 Bar Club, London, UK ![]()
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