Fuck Me, It's Peppermint Patti!

Manic Cough and Ebony Bones play Peppermint Patti at Chapter Arts (Paul Griffiths)

Woody Allen once said

"…don't knock masturbation, it’s sex with someone I love".

Hammers and nails are integral to us men, with our words following in their path. We're the kings of simplicity, we know what we want and grab it in king-size proportions. Whereby, it’s been said, women live in an exotic land, where hammers and nails are pink and held in jam jars.

Peppermint Patti, a hairy armpit character of garish proportions with responsible shoes, was an iconic Peanuts character. Now, at the pinnacle of the Cardiff anti-scene, she's been morphed into a Frankenstein entity; a promoter who focuses on female-fronted bands. Described by the ambivalent Internet Encyclopaedia as “…Peppermint Patti (largely featuring noisy feminist/lesbian bands)”, Patti takes over the Chapter Art Centre in Cardiff every Saturday night. The portentous building blocks of the Chapter host strange visual legacies. For sure, two hundred Peppermint Pattis vibrating to the sounds of noise is a chaotic introduction to God’s day off!

The crowd is a mix redolent of Bassel’s Liquorish Allsorts, a blend of ages and parental superstars hogging the background chairs. Faces swap, morph and expand as the final two acts enter the doldrums. Some distressed panda pops that possibly escaped from Bristol Zoo welcome the return of Manic Cough. “Manic Coughing” is the official symptom of Annie walking out to the stage, with her black sticky hot-pants and skin-tight top glued onto her gyrating body. The image sticks to minds of teenage boys as they watch her steamy movements through pixels. The Bass player Deliah contributes with Picasso genius in a Psychedelic Band top hat and all the trimmings. Jimi Hendrix breathes though her clothes as she baffles her crowd with her mutterings. Even Joe Calzaghe would think twice of entering her ring. One lift of her bass end and he'll be seeing tweedy pies.

Cough’s minimalist style focuses on the roughness and power of Deliah’s bass. Her heavy lines and unwashed rhythm produce a pop-punk riot gloriously reminiscent of Le Tigre. Manic Cough’s image is overwhelming, and the sexually-charged performance of Annie is a tantalising concoction of shock-art vaudeville and Debbie Harry new wave cool. Media exploration has delivered sexual progression of great proportion, and the internet delivers highly-charged freedom; could Debbie Harry exist in the year 2007? Pointless bantering and pub trivia can be spilled through these pixels all night. Harry had it, Britney wished she had it and Annie’s got it.

Their songs scream in your eardrums. "Egg and chips!" What?? Can we deliver these gems into our high streets? Four jumping colourful characters with musical bits. The high streets? Forget that. Push them into our schools. ‘Lips & Hips’, Cough’s magnificent new single, is delivered with accidentally on purpose offbeat timing, and their green lip-gloss and dirty stockings image and street-smart attitude is beatific.

Whooo! A breather and one more tame German imported lager passes the lips. The exotic carnal begins in the form of Ebony Bones. Men delve into a four-year prison sentence, awaiting the next World Cup. All of a sudden it's here tonight in Cardiff. We pretend the beautiful game pleases our eyes more, but wait … the cameraman has just spotted a chocolate beauty....... ZOOOMM INNN. Ebony Bones is a mixture of blurred indie male musicians and three voluptuous Caribbean queens dressed in garish pantomime outfits. Large colours blossom on their uniforms whilst large whistles and party-horns are blown. An electric combination of New York, Japan and Jamaica. With song titles such as 'Don’t Fart On My Heart' and 'Your Future X-Wife', they're the Half Man Half Biscuit of the Amazons.

The Ebony sound is of a virgin state; a mixture of exotica pushed through a punk-rock envelope. London has always lived in its own head; its art and music seeming to isolate us northern village idiots. Garage music was passed through my southern friends’ hands during University days. "What is it?" I'd ask. I was naive and presumed the Big City would produce some new epic sound. And this was the dream - Ebony Bones. Unfortunately on the first trial of garage music my amp blew up… I've always believed in fighting for your beliefs, and my amp believed in beauty and emotion.

The music comes to an end, the venue a closure. A new hunting ground beckons, a place where randoms exist in the headiest spirit of Patti; ambiguous and glamorous as the metropolitan night.

© 2007 Paul Griffiths

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