Seeking a platform, the pair hurled themselves into the nether-world of the local blues circuit. Playing regularly “up north” with a series of pub drummers whom Martin will only refer to as "mercenaries”, the band found themselves learning the ropes in the traditional way. Glen: “There was always this nagging doubt that we were playing to the wrong crowd. People would say things to us like ‘you’re not a blues band, you’re a rock’n’roll band’ or, far worse, ‘if you dress up smartly you’ll be playing the main stage next year’. We didn’t want to know.”
The crunch came after a particularly grim trip to Holland and Belgium. Glen: “We were on the ferry coming back and we were so depressed. We broke the band up completely for six months. I got a job in a furniture warehouse. It was tough but it mean’t that we got our enthusiasm back.
Martin: “By this point Glen had bought a bass and I was starting to write. We’d meet up and listen to stuff like Neil Young and Shuggie Otis, but predominantly Dylan. He opened the door. It was like a big whack around the head in terms of songwriting. Suddenly I realised that I could write songs that went beyond all these blues cliché’s. Then once we’d asked James (Irving) to join on drums everything fell into place. For the first time we were playing with someone our own age. At last it felt like we were a band...”
The 22-20s had yet to release a note when in the middle of last year, word of their lacerating live shows reached the ear of Heavenly Records boss Jeff Barrett. In one of those unseemly scrambles for signatures the record industry thrives upon, The 22-20s rapidly became the subject of one of the biggest A&R scrambles in living memory, culminating in an oxygen-free show at the Camden Dublin Castle. Stranger still, as the band ended with an apocalyptic thrash through Slim Harpo’s ‘King Bee’, it saw MD’s of major labels in that rarest of positions: unanimous approval.
The reasons for such reckless enthusiasm are obvious the second you hear their new six-track mini-album ‘05/03’. All the depression and frustration of their early years -the staple of the blues- is channelled into these recordings. At turns loose and lazy, at others fired by a jagged fury, it’s the most visceral live document you’ll hear all year, backed with lyrics which cut any lame accusations of revivalism to the quick. If you thought ‘Such A Fool’ was a damning indictment of it’s subject , fast forward to the incendiary ‘The Devil In Me’(I hate the world/And everything I see/I don’t live/I only breathe’) or ‘Messed Up’ (‘I didn’t mean to take it out on you’). Imagine Hendrix on sulphate, but with the nihilism of Nirvana. “The lyrics are things I need to get out of my system” explains Martin. “‘Such A Fool’ is about this guy in we know in Lincoln. He’s the biggest cunt in the world. I got in a fight with the guy. Looking back, it was good. It put some fire in my belly." "For me, the intensity in the lyrics should match the intensity of the music. We’re striving for that primal rock’n’roll element that Dylan had in ‘66. That was missing with Britpop, and it’s the same reason the White Stripes are a great band. And why Neil Young is great. We’d rather make three great albums than be known as this great live band.”
Listen for yourself. From the rage of ‘Devil In Me’ and ‘I’m The One’ to climactic set-closer ‘King Bee’ it proves The 22-20s potency. In an independent music scene cluttered with make-weight rock revival imports, ‘Live’ is the most thrilling sound a British guitar band has made in years.
Protection - we do a lot of it these days. Sun cream for our skin, sunglasses for our eyes, condoms for you know where - but do you remember to protect your hearing?
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V Festival Confirms More Acts!
