SHOPPING

 

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: SHOPPING AT ROUGH TRADE EAST, SHOREDITCH – 7/2/20

The DJ stops the record.

  “Can you put the music back on, please,” says Billy Easter, the bass player of SHOPPING, “we’re not ready yet.” Which turns out to be an understatement.

  When they are ready it takes them three attempts to get beyond the first few bars of the first song. “We haven’t played together for a year,” explains Easter, after two attempts to start the first song have come to naught, “and we’ve never played these songs live before.” 

  But please don’t think I’m being critical. I like it when bands make mistakes. I like it when things haven’t been polished too much.

  

Shopping are another one of Rachels Aggs’ bands (see Chapter Seven). Her creative exuberance can clearly not be contained by just one post-punk trio. Shopping, though, are, perhaps, a more straightforward type of post-punk trio than Trash Kit, and they’re not taking it all too seriously. There’s quite a lot of onstage banter. 

  Aggs is keen for us to dance. “I know it’s early, but it is Friday,” she reasons. “It is Friday, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” someone says.

  One thing I’ve noticed is that people in bands never seem too sure what day it is.

  At one point she joins the crowd and starts pogoing, in an effort to make us do likewise. But no else does, not really. Not that we’re not enjoying the music. It’s just not really that kind of thing. Some of us have come straight from work, and our feet ache, and most of us are holding something, bags, backpacks, drinks, that kind of stuff, making dancing awkward, if not virtually impossible. And many of us are middle-aged men which adds a whole new layer of difficulty.

  They remain endearingly shambolic throughout. Before one song the drummer, who goes by the name of Andrew Milk, asks, “Do we all start together?”

  “I don’t know,” says Easter.

  In truth, only Aggs seems to really know what she is doing.

The lights come up very suddenly at the end, and suddenly it is suddenly very bright, like someone coming into your bedroom at seven thirty on a sunny spring morning and opening the curtains, and saying, “Come on, get out of bed, time to wake up,” repeatedly, over and over again.