Persil, Panda Gang and Manatee @ the Point, 11/2/00

Shifty Disco started as an Oxford label, releasing releases by Oxford related artists. But tonight none of the bands were from Oxford. In fact last year, only 3 of their singles club releases came from Oxford bands. Maybe it's a sign of how bad the Oxford music scene has become.

First on were Manatee, from Nottingham. They were quite uninspiring and basically dull. The band are not sure of which direction to go in. Mainly they seemed to be influenced by the 80s styled Bon Jovi rock.. with the lead singer even wandering to the edge of the stage to stare at the audience. There was something missing in that.. attitude.

Then to the opposite end of the music spectrum.. Panda Gang. They seemed to have improved from the Shifty Disco gig in Christmas, however there is still the feeling that the band are more suited to playing in a corner of a resturant somewhere. First they tried their hand at the no-guitar music. So far there is only one band who have managed to pull this off successfully, Ben Folds Five, and the signs are Panda Gang will not join them in that club.

At least Persil tried to be original. From the guitarist's hair and their use of toy instruments there was far more creativity in this band than in the other two bands tonight put together. Unluckily they suffered loads of technical problems and you could see the band were quite fustrated by the end.

Shifty Disco were right to move into Europe. The signs from the UK is that music is getting quite stale. At least with bands from the mainland they try to be a bit different.