REVIEW: mssv showcases the vibrancy, strength and depth of Reading’s music scene

If you’re the kind of easily pleased stand-up comedy fan that never misses Live at the Apollo, has every Peter Kay DVD ever released and would pay £120 to see Lee Evans at a comeback gig at the O2, Reading’s a pretty decent town to live in.

For anyone happy enough to just accept whatever eager little shill Auntie’s bashing us around the head with as ‘a night out’, Reading has you covered.

When a prominent/overexposed stand-up goes on a national tour, they always find time in between presenting a radio show, recording three podcasts with some other posh comedian mate and filming a Sky One series about canal boating up the Nile with their nan to swing by RG1.

Not so with bands.

Sure, we get musicians coming through here. Either on tour or as part of some festival set-up but rarely are they acts that would attract the attention of a casual music fan. Not even a 6 Music producer would be too familiar with some of the acts we see swing by Sub89, South Street, The Purple Turtle and The Facebar.

It’s understandable.

We’re just a little too close to London for sizeable musicians to bother scheduling a stop-off on their way to Oxford. No matter how tempted their keyboardist may be to check out what the new TK Maxx in The Oracle is like.

So, as a town, we have to take what we can get. And what we get is largely due to the work of a very small number of people.

The two most dedicated and hard-working of which are Heavy Pop’s Dave Maul and Club Velocity’s Sid Siddle.

The former champions new music and tirelessly organises events and festivals, the latter dedicates himself to bringing interesting, left-field and often slightly older artists to town.

If you’ve lived in Reading for any length of time and seen any amount of live music, chances are that you’ve seen something that one of these two have organised. Last Friday, I saw something that Sid and Club Velocity put on.

Now, like I say, we don’t get the likes of U2 performing here. And it’s been nine years since UB40 played The Hexagon. You have to dig a bit deeper into the music box with the acts. And that’s fine. In fact, hey – it broadens your horizons. That’s a good thing. Let’s be honest, if you like U2, you’re not really trying very hard, are you?

That may sound like I’m being a sniffy hipster. And maybe I am. But I’m no muso. There’s always someone able to out-John Peel you. In this case, it’s everyone in The Facebar at 8.30pm with me who’d heard of the band about to play. And I mean actually heard of them. Not heard of them in the way that I’d heard of them – because a mate told me he was going to gig and I so I looked them up on Spotify.

That’s not to say that the American trio mssv (‘main steam stop valve’) don’t have a profile or impressive credentials. In fact, they have CVs that made me a little embarrassed that there weren’t more balding 40- and 50-year-old men sagely and appreciatively nodding along to their spacey, jazzy, experimental rock noise.

Drummer Stephen Hodges, guitarist and vocalist Mike Baggetta and bassist Mike Watt have played with the likes of Iggy Pop, Tom Waits, Mavis Staples, Bob Dylan and Sonic Youth.

I’d try to explain their style of music so you have a better idea of what it sounded like, but given that mssv are often referred to as ‘post-genre’, it seems that even the experts aren’t overly sure.

All I know is that it was three old-ish American fellas who are all masters of their instruments, playing a bunch of slightly odd, very good songs in a dark, somewhat dingy (in a good way) venue that’s just perfect for watching slightly odd, very good bands in.

Of course, we followed the unwritten rule of a group of people going to a gig at The Facebar and had a few drinks down The Butler before (and after).

That’s a non-negotiable.

Also non-negotiable is the fact that you have to pay with cash if you want to buy a ticket on the door. Which is fine, it’s just worth knowing in advance. Especially when you’ve just come from The Butler. Where it’s card only.

Club Velocity puts on basically a gig a week and has done for over two decades. Unless you’re a big-time music type with a collection of Meat Puppets T-shirts, you might not have heard of (m)any of the acts. But for a fun night out, it’s worth taking a punt on someone.

For instance, Swiss rockabilly band Hillbilly Moon Explosion are playing Facebar on July 6. Who knows, eh? Maybe you’ll like Swiss rockabilly. It can’t be any worse than watching J*sh W*dd*combe, can it?

Shit Things In Reading has a Facebook page, and also blogs about the town’s pubs at https://shitandnotshitpubsinreading.com/