Cuttings

FLAG OF CONVENIENCE / HAPPY MONDAYS / IGNITION Manchester A SWIFT glance around confirmed it. This wasn't the place to be. It seemed as if Bruce Springsteen was playing in the pub down the road. It was if there never existed a band called the Buzzcocks. And then... Suddenly a major performance was born out of the disaster. Ignition (the brightest sparks on the Mancunian circuit) fell foul of a nasty virus. Only their lead singer, a cocky little chap of no more than 17, bounded furiously onto the deadening stage and hurled himself into an impromptu Billy Bragg set. His enthusiasm was ably supported by great songs, a great voice and a sackful of the purest talent I've seen for many a year. Guts and confidence grabbed our attention. Amazingly well-crafted melodies made me yearn to see the band in full. The little lad chugged away, using his naivety as a defence, using his youthful vibrancy as an attack and forcefully throwing his all into a set which boasted a social com

HAPPY MONDAYS  THE WEEDS Manchester Corbieres "Hello," they said, "we're The Weeds from Los Angeles." But they're not, of course. They're from round here. The trio of Andrew (guitar and voice), Simon (drums) and Mikey (dreadlocks and bass) are just what you'd expect to find growing at the bottom of the garden, where the wild things are. Wild, though, in the domesticated sense, for they're not the sort to roll on the floor. They play, fiendishly simply, a form of pretty, modestly unmodelled music. Their songs are branching out but not over-running the undergrowth of basic, wonderful chord changes. They seem impermanent but they take root remarkably easily. Equally unfashionable and just as capable of sprouting freely through the cracks in anybody's crazy paving, any day of the week, are the disquieteningly-named Happy Mondays (can Mondays ever  be so?). With perspiring, resounding frustration they thunder the sound of northern council