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Spiralcat Entertainment > Editorial > Music > Tragic Roundabout Gig Report
I saw Tragic Roundabout live.
It was in the UK seaside resort of Brighton in the summer of 1999. The music venue where I saw Tragic Roundabout no longer exists but before it was replaced with an anonymous shopping development it was a place with character. Well to be more precise it was a shabby deserted hall with a sticky floor and cold unheated air where the acoustics squeezed the music into a funnel of hard noise. We saw a poster in a venue window and went in to see the group without ever having heard of them before, let alone listened to their music, the decision to have a couple of beers and see them was based purely on the name. The band name Tragic Roundabout is a bit of fun with the children's show called the Magic Roundabout, the Magic Roundabout children's show was a show on the BBC. Based on the name I was expecting some kind of synthesiser based tongue in cheek euro electro-pop music in the vein of the French music duo Air or a quirky British soundscape like the desolate but cheesy music pieces of Goldfrapp. The shenanigans that actually unfolded on stage were worlds away from my expectations.
First let's talk about the look. It was the summer of 1999 so I was used to the fashion stylings of Britpop bands like Blur and Pulp, a knowing uncool involving tracksuits, velvet jackets and national health specs but at the same time obviously middle class and well groomed. Tragic Roundabout would be better characterised as the great unwashed. Giant Aran jumpers with cigarette burn holes in them, trousers that had once been shapeless but which had gone beyond this relatively benign state to take on the hint of dread shapes from the collective unconscious due to the unholy forces within, all manner of fashion crimes perpetrated by all with the gay abandon of musical artists who have realised that they transcended such rules long ago.
I have to say that the musicianship on display was of an equally unkempt nature. I was watching the gig with a few friends from the Jazz course my girlfriend was attending and the looks on their faces reinforced my impression that the band had a non traditional view of music making. The vocals were rough as a badger's rear end and the instruments were all resolutely out of time, register, mood, tempo, style, octave, spatial relativity.... All was jumble, nothing matched and all was in yer face, but in a good way, at least I hoped so. I hoped they were on our side because although they gave the impression of amateurs who met at a hippie festival and came together for a single unrehearsed performance there was also something about them that seemed unstoppable.
I was deeply impressed by the nobility and outsider nature of the music. It was very Brighton and even now coming up on ten years since the first and last time I heard that strange music I still joke about it with my friends. Just a couple of days ago I was making such a joke, I compared the The Arcade Fire to a younger version of the Tragic Roundabout but with a stylist (which is cruel because Arcade Fire are accomplished musicians), while I was working at the computer and it suddenly occurred to me that Tragic Roundabout might still exist and might even still be making their music so I googled them and .. drum roll... I found a MySpace sight [sic], and one look confirmed that it could only be them, from the band shot down to the fly walking over the surface of the screen, but how would the music sound compared to the music in my memory. Had they practiced and got good, had they sold out and gone boy band. I braced myself and hit play on the music widget thing.
Well, they have got better. Tragic Roundabout's Myspace page.
