Reviews

One of the criticisms often made about live music in Guernsey, both by band members and those who like to attend gigs, is the lack of suitable venues. In recent months we have seen the St Margaret's Lodge become a regular venue for the island's younger and heavier bands and both the Doghouse and Fermain Tavern have continued their long traditions of staging live events. But with only the latter two actually purpose designed for staging live music, venues have consistently remained slightly lacking.

Steve and Rachel of Remainder 3.

After tonight however, hopefully we will be able to add another location to this list, as Rouges, the club formerly known as 54, hosted two of Guernsey top live talents in Remainder 3 and Gay Army.

While the space is maybe not designed specifically to house live bands, the stage being merely what was in the past a raised seating area, and there being no specific place for the sound man to be housed, the sound quality in the room tonight was some of the best I have heard in a long time. And that's credit not only to the venue but the bands and the sound engineer.

Taking to the stage first were long-standing alternative indie favourites Remainder 3. Making their first appearance since last year's Summer Wave festival the band have not missed a step, despite several of their members making more regular appearances in various other acts.

Nick of Remainder 3.

The band's sound tonight was extremely deep with the combination of a wall of sound style from Nick's guitar and more straight forward rock 'n' roll from Steve's mixing with the pounding rhythms produced by Barney's drums and Pete's bass to form a sound that mixes the indie rock that was produced in Britain in the 1990's with the sound of the late 80's/early 90's Seattle scene. This, of course, topped off to great affect by Rachel and Steve's dual vocals.

The real highlights of Remainder 3's set tonight were their last two numbers, 'Sinners and Saints' and 'Red', though the set had no real low points. The only problem the band seemed to encounter this evening was that while the audience seemed to appreciate the band they did so at a distance with very few venturing toward the stage leaving a large empty gulf that the band valiantly did their utmost to fill with their music.

Following on from Remainder 3 were another band whose style could be described as a form of alternative indie rock, dark disco maestros, Gay Army. When I last saw this band they filled the small venue of Pieces Bar with a fantastic sound and managed to get a good portion of the crowd up and moving, tonight however, was slightly different.

Major Dirt of Gay Army.

At the start of the band's set they seemed to experience some problems with the sound, which came across to us in the audience by the fact we couldn't hear much from Corporal Punishment's keyboard which lost a major element of the bands sound.

This seemed to affect the band as well, as, for their first few songs, they didn't seem to be performing with the energy I have seen them exhibit in the past. Once the sound problems were sorted however Gay Army really started to unleash their ammunition.

With Rear Gunner Riley making various scouting missions onto the still largely empty dance floor, to try and coax some of the audience forward and simply fill the space that still existed there, his performance tonight, once it got going, was the same top level we have come to expect.

Rear Gunner Reily of Gay Army.

The real highlights of the band's set came with newer song 'Purple Hearts' and relatively old favourites 'Radio On' and 'Cracked America' which received major rounds of applause from the assembled crowd, even if they still didn't cause too much of a stir on the dance floor.

What really stood out with both bands tonight, besides there excellent songs and musicianship, was that, unlike many of the island's younger bands, neither Remainder 3 nor Gay Army are trying to conform to a specific style of music, and this I feel gives them an added sense of credibility as they are just playing what they play, without thinking of clever generic tags for it.

As an opening night for a new venue, tonight's show seemed to me to be a great success. As, while most of the audience may not have had their dancing shoes on, they certainly were there, with the upper tier of the club's lower level and most of the dance floor area packed. So fingers crossed after tonight we will be able to permanently add Rogues to the small list of viable live music venues in Guernsey.