MEGA BOG

 

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: MEGA BOG/NIGHT WORKS AT THE ISLINGTON, ISLINGTON – 14/11/19

There are two pubs in Islington called THE ISLINGTON: one is called The Islington and so is the other one, which must cause no end of confusion. But luckily not for me, because I’ve been here before, and know how it works. 

NIGHT WORKS consists of a man who introduces himself as Gabriel. “Hi, I’m Gabriel,” he says. “Night Works. How is everyone?” There are a few muffled mumbles, but no one really answers, which seems a bit rude. There aren’t many people here and it’s quiet in the back room of The Islington. Almost silent, kind of weirdly. 

  Onstage, it’s just Gabriel, who sings over pre-programmed beats, and plays guitar that is covered with delay like when you used to have sugar in coffee. He has long hair, and wears trousers that can’t quite reach his shoes. Gabriel lives in Margate, he tells us, by the sea. He has a friend called Antonia, and he’s been making a new record for what “feels like seventy years”.

It’s good to see a couple of the original Rough Trade tote bag guys who I first saw at the Hand Habits gig all those weeks ago, and who I haven’t seen since. One of them is totally bald, and wears this kind of admiral’s jacket with stripes on the cuffs and badges pinned all over it. He stands right at the front, as before, and watches on like the captain of a ship, content to see things going just as he had expected. Occasionally he takes pictures on his little actual camera. The other man has some grey hair and is wearing what I would call a pullover. He keeps his beer on the floor by the stage, every so often squatting awkwardly, and not without effort, to pick it up and return it after he has had a few sips. I can’t help but think that he’d be better off just holding it.

MEGA BOG are psychedelic. The musicians spend most of the gig with their eyes closed. It’s close-your-eyes music. Music to close your eyes to. It makes me think about The Doors, and taking acid in the desert, like in that movie, The Doors. 

  Centre stage Erin Birgy is a inscrutable presence. “Never smother the mystical song that rests deep inside you,” she sings, which makes some sort of sense, and, “Alone, stupid scorpion,” which doesn’t so much. 

  For the last two songs they are joined by a woman called Marie who plays the triangle with unusual intensity, and the bongos with her index fingers, and a man called Alan who tootles away on a saxophone, seemingly indifferent, for good or ill, to anything that’s going on around him. 

  It’s a really short set, and it ends abruptly without any sort of this-is-our-last-song warning.