Gig Review : Ginger, Robochrist, The God Damn Whores - Bradford Rio 23/01/07 **** So here we are, the hardcore, the die hards. We've seen The Wildhearts, we've often been there when the Wildhearts havn't, we've bought albums by the various side projects and filled our cd shelves with the various contract fillers that have marked much of Ginger's output, and tonight we're at Rio in the snow. Doors 7pm, the lad on the door says that Ginger hasn't arrived and so the doors won't open until 7.30, they open promptly at 8pm. We sit in the pub for a while laughing and wondering whether the gig will go ahead, to our general enjoyment, it does. The God Damn Whores are Random Jon Poole, an ex-Wildheart on vocals and guitar, Jase Edwards (ex-Wolfsbane) on lead guitar, er, Ginger on bass and Denzel on drums. Their sound is sort of oddball/experimental Wildhearts. I don't think Jon is the best singer around, but he certainly seems to be enjoying himself. They thunder and clunk their way through the set, some of the numbers are a bit stop start, but one or two were sort of heavy (Caprice) style and quite decent. Edwards is a great guitarist and young Denzel really thumps buggery out of his drumkit. Robochrist, well, what on earth is going on here ? In one way, I salute people who set off on their own musical odyssey, people who make music that is so willfully odd that they could never ever become big or popular, Robochrist is that man. What does he sound like, well, if you crossed Strapping Young Lad with the BBC Light Entertainment back catalogue you might be getting close to his strange orbit. At one point he is joined by two hoodied backing singers, oh look, it's Ginger and Random Jon again, who appear to be shouting "Beefy, beefy." I laughed, we all laughed, some people actually applauded. Finally Ginger and his band take to the stage, hang on, I recognise those blokes, it's Random Jon on bass, Jase Edwards on guitar and Denzel on drums, how odd. Things become clearer when Ginger explains that this is yet another "contractual obligations tour", that explains the poor timing then, why else would you schedule your tour to miss the launch date of your new album ? Then again, you're in Wildhearts country now, and anything can happen. Ginger plays a good set scattered with songs from Valor Del Corazon, Yoni, the Silverginger5 project and a couple of obscure Wildhearts tracks. The audience enjoys everything, but it's hardly going crazy, we stand down at the front for a while, but there's nothing doing, this isn't the seething pit that greets Ginger's main band. Despite the rather ramshackle nature of the evening, I've had a good night. Tim assures me that The Wildhearts are putting out a new album in a couple of months time, and a proper tour will follow, so until then we'll just put this down as yet another chapter in the increasingly odd story of Ginger's musical career, don't worry 'bout me, don't worry 'bout me........ God Damn Whores MySpace Robochrist MySpace Ginger's MySpace P.S. If anyone hs any decent gig pics and they would like to see them posted here, do get in touch....yorkshiresoul@gmail.com