[Three more videos below.]

Lach’s famous New York open mic night the Antihoot is responsible for launching the careers of many of the bands people who read this site love the most.  He is, in fact, the man responsible for terms like anti-folk and the movement it represents.

I have to confess I find this kind of odd.  The term is something which has been so ingrained in my musical vocabulary ever since I started writing about music that the idea of it having been invented so recently seems really rather odd.

I always kind of knew I was into anti-folk as well, because the rinky-dinky super traditional stuff has never really attracted me that much, so even before I knew the term I was drawn to bands like The Pogues and Bob Dylan (and even to a degree people like Woody Guthrie and Billy Bragg) who would take traditional formats and give them a good beating before they sent them out there.  In fact, Dylan’s own struggles with the New York folk establishment rather mirror those of Lach, so the concept of anti-folk has been around for a while, even if the coherent, more unified movement which gave rise to the likes of Jeffrey Lewis and Kimya Dawson did not.

Most of the Edinburgh alt-folkies I know speak of the original anti-folk movement with a kind of hushed reverence, so I guess it’s no surprise that most of them are making an appearance at some point during the Antihoot’s three week Edinburgh run.

On the first night we had a couple of Toad Records favourites down; Yusuf Azak and Neil Pennycook from Meursault.  I’ve seen both of these guys perform like this many times however, so the happiest surprise of the night was actually Finn from Trapped in Kansas.  He hunched over his guitar and sang in an oddly nasal voice, but his was the genuine ‘Oh, hello, what’s this?’ moment for me on the opening night, particularly as I had no idea who he was until he mentioned his band halfway through his set.

Invariably in the midst of a Festival best known for its stand up comedy there were a few in the crowd who, by one in the morning, had optimistically decided that they too were funny, funny guys.  Lach himself, as compere, did a good job of keeping them quiet, but the bands dealt with it well too.  Most satisfyingly, I heard a couple of the performers talking about getting their mates down on a regular basis so that there was always a hardcore presence of people who were there to enjoy the music.

One thing, however, which became increasingly obvious as the night wore on was this: when the bands were good, the shushing didn’t have to last beyond the first thirty seconds of the song because the most talented musicians, irrespective of genre, were consistently able to keep the crowd’s attention.  This, I suppose, is the double-edged sword of the open mic night.

I also thought the show benefitted from the format: eight minutes or two songs, whichever came first.  It meant that if someone was shit, they were off too quickly to become tiresome.  That alone makes it worth going along, particularly if one or two people you know are likely to be playing, because there were a lot of good performers there who I’ve never heard a whisper of before.

Dylan has also put a few photos up on Blueback Hotrod, if you fancied a look at those too.