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 Everett True

SWN Festival, 2007 – ‘I woke up one morning to discover that my girlfriend had changed into Courtney Love…’

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Chris Anderson, Larry Pickleman, Everett True @ SWN

Randomly saw this, posted by Larry Pickleman. Liked it, so I randomly decided to re-post it:

SWN Festival – Clwb Ifor Bach – 2007 – Larry vs Everett By @Everett True

It wasn’t like the venue was heaving at the edges, anyway. To help celebrate the inaugural Welsh SŴN festival in Cardiff, Radio 1 DJ Huw Stephens had asked Plan B Magazine to put together a (British) antifolk bill – as recently championed in its pages – and it was perhaps not so surprising that the audience rarely bothered double figures when the headliner was, um, myself…. …But Larry still managed. As he ploughed through his songs – bedecked with wrong-sized guitar and a homemade mixing desk guaranteed to fuck up even the sturdiest of microphones, and songs about “midgets” sticking up the bank and people walking by on the other side of the road, screamed full-pelt like an Irish Republican skinhead engaged in running skirmishes with the police over quirky bouncy tunes that bring to mind (Thurston Moore-beloved) hardcore obstructionists Whitehouse fronting a battery of Oompa-Loompas – he managed to clear the club of even these few hardy souls: reducing the crowd to a severe rump of, um, the other antifolk performers and Louis’ perverse mate. It was an inspired performance, entirely out-of-keeping with the surroundings: the fact that his wife (mertle) had provided such a mesmerising, sweet and downright cuddly view of hometown life only helped to increase the feeling of awe. “Well, you’ve watched everyone else,” he grinned as he took the stage. “And it’s up to me and Everett to save the evening.” Well, fuck. I tried. My crowd rose from around one person to over a hundred in the space of 10 minutes, as folk started to pour in for the club afterwards: I raced from my sure-fire alienation number (“There’s a man going round taking names/There’s a man going round taking names…Death is the name of that man”) into a rant about how “This one goes out to my 23-year-old self, fucked up on alcohol,” repeated rapid fire, changing the age each time, right into the one about how “I woke up one morning to discover that my girlfriend had changed into Courtney Love…now, this wasn’t so strange in itself, but what was odd was that Courtney Love had now changed into the living personification of evil,” then into a quick AA rant about how all my friends deserted me a long time ago (pointing to an imaginary bottle of whiskey in one hand, and an, um, real bottle of vodka in the other – my first drink in three years) and then stopped momentarily, not really caring or heeding what sort of storm my sole band mate Chris might or might not have been blowing up on saxophone. And there was absolute fucking silence in the venue. No one was talking. No one was applauding. And the place was rammed. Everyone – just everyone – was staring stage-front in shock. “Guess I’ll have to give you that one Everett,” commented Larry afterwards.

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