Cowpuncher
Live at Rocket on Monday, 10th July 2000
The third night of the FutureSound 2000 competition sees the first noise-fest night, a completely raucous mental affair - in a controlled manner of course. First up tonight are One Minute Warning, who end up as being the calm before the storm. One Minute Warning played one of their better sets, judging by comments in the crowd and from my own experience. Vocally, excellent. The band lay the trail of bitter-sweet mis-matches, going from the beautifully quiet vocal beginnings to their punk-rock pogo distortion, a true break up of the pleasure pain theory. Very good to listen to, and with a three minute classic of a punk rock song to end the set, it'd be difficult to beat.
But thats not taking into account the fact that Djingo are also on the rosta for tonight. Djingo are brilliant. "Show me the Money" kicks more ass than anyone or anything. A stage show to kill for, with hardcore RATM, Korn, Dog Eat Dog, pure noise ripping through each and every audience member. The band managed to get the audience participation thing going, vastly missed since Beat Route 62 opened up the competition the week before...thoroughly enjoyable, and its obvious the band enjoyed it too. They end with their usual "Jump Around". To say I've only seen this band once before, its a tribute to them to say that I actually felt a part of the band, involved and truly humble - its even more of a tribute to say its not really my scene, yet I'd class them as the best act up so far out of the nine.
Finally, up come tonights "headline" act, or more simply, the last act, Cowpuncher. Following the excellent set performed by Djingo the start to the Cowpuncher set is nothing more than a shambles. The band cite "technical difficulties", and the first song sees a mid-track and impromptu guitar change. Following this though, I have to say the set improves ten-fold into a very enjoyable affair, musically along the lines of Djingo, though at times the faint trace of "singing" was to be heard, such as early 90s grunge band Soundgarden or perhaps Faith No More. In the main though this was another mental metal-come-hiphop affair. "We've got a CD out soon", says the singer, fumbling to reveal the CD from his pocket. "Its out now" pipes up the drummer. "As you can tell, we're sometimes good...they even let us do a CD" concludes the vocalist.
Another great night, I think perhaps that Djingo will have shaded the night as far as complete mayhem goes, perhaps to fight it out with One Minute Warning as to technical ability / vocals / etc, but they came out as my favourite.