Last autumn, after I’d placed a Sun Araw track on an Uncut psych CD called "Seeing For Miles", I fell into an occasional email correspondence with Cameron Stallones, the LA musician who records under that name.
The hiccup of The Slits’ no-show on day one of Club Uncut’s residency at Brighton’s Great Escape didn’t dampen spirits for last night’s more typically full-on and varied affair.
Searching the internet for setlists yesterday, I came across Pavement’s set from the Brixton Academy on November 20, 1999; the last time I saw them play live.
Club Uncut has decamped to the seaside for the duration of The Great Escape, the three-day festival in which mostly new bands fill Brighton’s plentiful pubs and clubs. Our weekend starts, though, with a disappointment, when The Slits are a late cancellation, leaving a contingent of Northern Irish girls I meet here specifically to see them in a mood of gloomy resentment.
The first thing Paul Major says when Endless Boogie shuffle onstage is, “This is the last song of the night.” Droll joke, it seems. But 35 minutes later, as the band come to a juddering halt and ponder whether to attempt an encore, it turns out to have been true. One song, infinite possibilities.
