This event is 21 and over
$22.00 – General Admission (Advance)
$25.00 – General Admission (Door)
*plus applicable service fees
Tickets available at The Independent box office (628 Divisadero, SF) with no service charge.
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ASH
1977 came out in 1996. A record from 12 years ago, alluding to a literal (that’s when Ash’s singer/guitarist Tim Wheeler and bassist Mark Hamilton were born) and cultural (punk rock, “Star Wars”) year zero that’s now over 30 years in the dim and distant past.
All of which might be enough to make you feel old, if the opening whoosh of “Lose Control” wasn’t always guaranteed to send you whizzing back to the fountain of eternal rock youth faster than even that monster riff can transport you to rock’n’roll heaven.
Because “1977” is one of those rare albums that is simultaneously locked into a specific period of time and yet remains forever fresh. The nostalgic fuzziness of “Goldfinger” and “Oh Yeah” will always send those of a certain age back to that crazy, hazy Britpop summer when the sun always shone, everything seemed possible and most things actually were. Yet the sheer vigour and vitality of “Kung Fu,” “Angel Interceptor” and “Girl From Mars” makes this wonderful, wonderful album the perpetual sound of youth, as thrilling and unsullied as the first day it was ever committed to vinyl.
Whatever vinyl might be, Grandpa.
The Ash story began in the early Nineties in Downpatrick, Northern Ireland when schoolboys Wheeler and Hamilton hooked up with older, but scarcely wiser drummer extraordinaire Rick McMurray and bonded over a love of metal riffs, pure pop melodies and a desire to be the biggest thing out of Northern Ireland since, well, ever.
I first encountered them in 1994 when their effervescent first single “Jack Names The Planets”—included here as part of the “Trailer” mini-album—arrived in my pigeonhole at NME, on 7” vinyl no less, with little outward indication of the genius that lay within. Even at a time when British music was rediscovering its sense of excitement, records like this didn’t come along very often. When we discovered it was made by punk rock reprobates who weren’t even out of school, well, we had no choice but to investigate further.
In the company of Ash’s career-long press officer, Paddy Davis, I travelled across the Irish Sea to see them play a storming gig at Belfast Limelight in an atmosphere pitched at the exact mid-point between the rock god’s banqueting hall in Valhalla and a school disco. The next day, I traveled to Downpatrick to interview Tim and Rick for their first major press piece. Tim wasn’t yet old enough to drink but we went to the local boozer anyway, them ducking into a booth to avoid the barman’s inquisition while I got the Guinness in.
Photos taken of them that day show them looking so alarmingly youthful that even most teenagers resemble Methuselah’s dad in comparison. Yet, while finding such “guaranteed real teenagers” in a band was a novelty at the time, Ash were soon to prove there was much more to them than mere precociousness. Ahead of them lay all the signs of rock maturity—platinum albums, festival headline slots, Ivor Novello awards for songwriting, innovative digital age-orientated release strategies—but at the time, they seemed more concerned with their exam results and their parents not finding out about their burgeoning rock’n’roll lifestyle.
We returned—once Paddy and I had contrived to miss our flight—with a hangover and one decent quote but the unshakeable feeling that this was the start of something big.