The Rebel auditions for a Stewart Lee support slot

Another year, another summertime The Rebel gig at the Windmill in Brixton. Yeah man, it's all very repetitive. These summer residencies of his have been a mini-fixture in my world since they first started - in 2017, I think. Are they any good? Well, I keep going so I reckon I'd have to say they are (some past appreciations here, here and here, and on the Country Teasers here). Yes, they're good if you like crunching beats, droned-out vocals, a certain degree of hanging around as the costume-wearer extraordinaire adjusts his latest unwieldy outfit, and a general air of anti-pop abrasiveness - please ban music and drive it underground etc. Except, in fact, Mr Wallers has been at this thing so long that - presumably for his own amusement if not necessarily ours - he also throws in some seemingly off-the-cuff comedy (or anti-comedy) to spice things up. So here we had him riffing about being late for the gig because he couldn't get into the Windmill after landing his santa sledge on the building's flat roof because ... it doesn't have a chimney. Of course! It's funny because it's not funny. As he himself says, it's like Stewart Lee being funny because he's not actually doing comedy but doing comedy about comedy. Which is fine. At times The Rebel's twisted, surreal take on lugubrious country-and-western or balladeering can almost be music about music, but actually I think it transcends that. It's never a novelty thing or pastiche, or it's not just this. Some of his best stuff involves blindsiding you with seriousness - a song about Iran's nuclear threat, another about a 1970s-style Protect And Survive public information film ("if your grandmother or any other member of your family should die, put their body outside the shelter..."), or something tender and personal - a song about corresponding with an apparently depressed David Edwards from Datblygu. By contrast, I'm personally less keen on his recent "fun" covers of the Cure's Killing An Arab or Julee Cruise's Mysteries Of Love.

Christmas comes early to Brixton: The Rebel in his santa suit, 3/6/24

Er, yes. These vital thoughts on The Rebel are all well and good (or not), but actually what particularly hit me with this gig (or just ahead of it) was a realisation that I've now been seeing The Rebel do his pleasingly twisted take on musical minstrely for more than 20 years. The other week I stumbled on a tape I'd done from one of his shows at the Notting Hill Arts Club's now long-gone Rough Trade Afternoons. The cassette's labelled 10/6/00 (can that be right?). Way back, anyway. Sounding more purely William Burroughs-does-C&W in those days (no grizzled beats), but still recognisably The Rebel. In this particular set he does David I Hope You Don't Mind (which he still does now) and the sound and approach is largely the same. And that extends to the comedy/anti-comedy. He finishes this Notting Hill gig by doing a song in Welsh (presumably something by Datblygu) and then signs off by saying, "That was an old song made popular by Leonard Cohen from the album Recent Songs". Hmm, what a joker, eh?