Last night I slithered and slid over the snowy streets of Oxford to see Space Heroes of the People and two other very fine bands at the Wheatsheaf.

Picture Book are on tour from somewhere far away and were great fun. Space Heroes of the People have a new song since I last saw them, not to mention new remixes of some of the ones I am familiar with. And now with live vocals replacing the vocal samples, thanks to a new vocoder. The evening was rounded out with the band whose name I have temporarily forgotten (Rabbit Spleen Happenstance or somesuch) who played 1920s jazz while wearing hats.

As always I tried taking a few snaps of the band on stage, and as usual the dim lighting mostly defeated my little pocket camera. The guys in Picture Book in particular moved too rapidly for my camera to even believe they existed. Some people were taking photos with much more impressive-looking equipment, so there are probably better shots out there somewhere, linked to from the Last.fm entry for this gig.

Pleased to see also that cleanskies has made it and is now fit enough to be going out again. Afterwards oxfordslacker and I helped carry the instruments, on the strength of which I got a lift home, which was a relief—I had left my bike behind in the underground car park at work after wrenching my knee earlier in the week falling off because of the snow and ice.

Saturday I spent doing the usual catch-up of household chores like taking the compost thingy down to the bottom of the garden, which felt a little more adventurous than usual because the garden was all over refrozen snow and lit with brilliant sunshine. I remembered my big clunky boots this time and made cracks in the snowy crust on the way down. (If you click through to my Flickr photostream there are photos of some other mysterious footprints I found.) The big boots and the crunchy refrozen snow also allowed me to stomp confidently in to town to visit the comics shop.

Actually the Epiphany Roadshow, as bluedevi has titled her spoken-word + comix performance. The Port Mahon, in keeping with Oxford’s tradition of dimly lit stages, kept the room dark enough that my camera was only barely able to take photos. (Jeremy reports that she has had more success with the use of synchro-flash, but I didn’t think of that.)

Comics are notoriously difficult to do in a time-based medium. Deirdre solves this by writing prose as well as comics: for the Bear Temps the comic on the screen parallels the short short story rather than directly illustrating it, and the one about Burning Man has the comic and the narrative working as ironic commentaries on each other. No idea what someone with no interest in comics would make if it, but I really liked it.

After that I watched the Brickwork Lizards with their oud-powered retro-jazz songs. Including a version of Misirlou partway between Dick Dale’s surf guitar arrangement and the Greek original. Good fun.

Earlier in the day I cycled to the new(ish) M&S, a food-only store that I quite enjoyed, although cleanskies’s also been taken there and doesn’t think it’s all that. I appreciated their inclusion of cycle parking, which is much finer than MegaTesco’s efforts.

Also attended the Cellar to see Baby Gravy, Space Heroes of the People, and Casio Kid and the Ultimate Soundfuse. I found myself in conversation with a guy who was visiting Oxford on the way to a christening and as we were discussing the recent rainy weather he slipped out his iPhone to show the forecast for the week ahead. In the darkness of the club, the phone itself is invisible: all you see is the symbols dancing and swooping about in his hand. Physically it is slightly smaller than I had expected—it is more plausibly pocket-sized than most smart phones. Apart from that, I didn’t learn anything that interested people cannot see videos of on the Apple web site. Actually holding the thing left me a little non-plussed—already I knew it can do all these impressive things, but actually demonstrating them to myself seemed kind of meaningless.

They had a different stage arrangement this evening, with the drums on one side of the stage rather than at the back, the better for us to appreciate their efforts. This also placed Jo and her electric bass front and centre, which I think works well—at least if you’re like me and are interested in seeing how the different playing styles she uses work in different tracks.

During lunch cleanskies and I ventured into French Connection, drawn in by their red tee-shirt with little birdies on it. After almost buying it we found a much cooler grey variation that happened to be a better fit. Very convenient, especially since she was to appear on stage tonight!

After work I sloped down to the Cellar to watch the latest Space Heroes of the People gig. Seeing the same tunes performed several different times is making me more aware of how having a sound engineer who knows his onions makes it sound infinitly more awsomer. Jo´s electric double bass was clearer in the mix this time so I could follow her part and watch her hands as she played the fiddly bits.

Witches (if that´s the right spelling) followed and were pretty cool: four guitars, drums, plus a trumpet for that hint of Ennio Moriconi. It being a school night, I snuck off before Rock of Travolta.

Downsides; lots of queuing in the cold—all the stages are separate venues within the Butlins camp, so required door staff and blah—and some of the music was not unlike the wall-of-sound performances I have attended here in Oxford, so perhaps some of the novelty was lost on us. On the other hand, there is a certain amusement value to hanging out in Butlins drinking champagne coctails, staring at the rain-swept amusements, and trying to track down the last copy of the Guardian in Minehead—and we got to got to a Iggy Pop performance, which was just amazing.

I better post these snaps quickly because Jeremy’s camera has an awesome Photographing Gigs in Cellars special mode. :-)

Went to see Space Heroes of the People do their first gig in the Cellar tonight. It was great, partly because I haven’t been to a gig in a while, and partly because it was great! And awesome! I already have 4 of their songs from the demo CD, but of course they sound different live—‘Def Con One’ especially is much bigger in the drums (or perhaps I’ve just never given it the volume it deserves…). Two tracks not on the demo CD: ‘Steam Driven’, in which Jo uses her electric bass as a surprisingly versatile percussion instrument (which sounds good in addiiton to being impressive to watch), and ‘Dinosaurs! Dinosaurs!’, which has Jeremy (cleanskies) as guest vocalist.