Positive Shrew
The best band ever.
Really.
"Are you trying to make people kill themselves?" Olly Guitarist, 1999
The answer is YES
So just who are positive shrew?
positive shrew are me and you, and other people too. We believe that the audience count as part of the uber-band experience. Anyone who listens to our records (which don't exist, causing interesting difficulties) do too become part of the band. Cutting to the chase, positive shrew are 4 people with various instruments.
And bad hair.
 at least on the part of Jonny Guitarist 2.
We are
L Drummer
J Bassist
O Guitarist
J Guitarist 2
We have begun rehearsals, as documented below. The first rehearsal we tuned up for quite a long time, the second was fun, although displayed an unfortunate urge on the part of J Guitarist 2 to wander around whilst playing guitar. Causing blood. And Rehearsal 3 was an odd beast, because we made up a riff. Which wasn't very good, but people seemed to like it. However, J Guitarist 2 decided to embark on a journey into the darkest realms of drone-rock, unabley aided by O Guitarist's intermittent drum solos. The effects fiddling caused J Guitarist's amp to break.
 
However, J Guitarist 2 has christened this riff 'Never Apart Again'
GEAR
We have
Some drums
A bass
3 Amps
A bass amp
2 Guitars
A HIGH QUALITY keyboard
A low quality keyboard
And J Guitarist 2's extensive effects paraphrenalia...
none of which is really necessary, but looks good
Our problem seems to be our lack of songs, and J Guitarist's 2 bizarre desire to be Slint reborn.
 

not that they're dead of course
 

He holds to the assertion that feedback is the purest kind of music.

HE IS RIGHT
although his amp does not agree
Worrying influences appear on the part of O Guitarist...

Mansun,
Levitation,
Black Flag,
Magazine,
Cay,
Ultrasound,
Dark Star,
Sex
Pistols,
Bowie,
Gay Dad,
Aerosmith,
Feeder,
Everclear,
Monkey Boy,
Gravel,
Kula Shaker,
The Sattelites,
Magoo,
Medal etc, too many to list

As you can see, rawk has its place. We will not sound like any of these bands, despite O Guitarist's tragic rerubbing of Levitation's Jay

humour his pride

L Drummer's influences
 

 "um.. mansun, cure, kulashaker, prodigy, TECHNIQUE!!! (no, you don't have to
put that one, but if they visit and see, it could be funny :) i like
radiohead and the ISB.  ooh, and PINK FLOYD!,  man......  jimi hendrix
(inflicted). all sorts.  say, anything.  flanders and swan.  wonderful :)
the hippopotamus was no ignoramus and all that.  i once had a horn and i
wanted to play it in spite of the neighbours who begged me to stop."
She has a bizarre loathing of Pavement(the band)but she is a kula shaker fan so she doesn't count..... but on the other hand she likes...THE INCREDIBLE STRING BAND who were patently great
paradoxically

It should be added that L + O are a couple...and that Drummer is sister of Bassist and vice versa...
 

J Guitarist 2 believes that by listening to classic records he will somehow assimilate their brilliance...watch in awe as this list grows ever more credible by the day.

he may be right
strangelove, ultrasound, my bloody valentine, the cure, tindersticks, magazine,
television, the smiths, nought, velvet underground, dark star, rothko, tortoise, fugazi, the pixies, the
fall, sparklehorse, monkey boy, pavement, joy division, the
telescopes, the birthday party, spacemen 3, jeff buckley....
 
he believes, rather sweetly, that the rebirth of shoegazing is around the corner
his narcissistic tendencies means that he will be attaching mirrors to his shoes should this occur
 
we also like all the bands the above rip off. So there.
J Guitarist takes a certain interest in walls of noise, and powerdrills.
 
J Bassist likes....
"Kenickie. I want to be the next Emmy-Kate Montrose. But with Marie's hair.
I also like Ash and Bis and Blur and Chicks and Foo Fighters and Gomez and
Hole and Mansun and Menswear and Placebo and Radish and Rosita and Silver
Sun and Smashing Pumpkins and Steps and loads of other stuff that everyone
else hates. But sometimes I want to run off and join a jazz quartet."
She has a punk hamster.
 
So why the firkin are you called Positive Shrew?

Picture
the scene... a maths statistics lesson... the teacher's abysmal handwriting
causes O Guitarist and J Guitarist 2 to misread Skew as Shrew...
they realised that this would be the third best band name ever

Also it's just the sort of name you can imagine John Peel saying......
"And tonight we have Positive Shrew in session..."

Although perhaps we're not indie enough.
 

We have no agenda, we have no voice, we are acrid, vague and empty. We are at best a stopgap until someone good comes along. We are the personification of Richard Hell's Blank Generation

WE don't CARE We may very well go goth at some point in our career or even Goi!th....

The new big thing is a cross between Goth and Oi!- it's called Goith...  so obviously we'd just take the old goth classics, pep them up a bit in the new stylee, and bingo, top pop hit...
thanks to Emily Kawasaki, of the 'Infamous' Sexcapades Of  Dan Diego and the 'Twee As Fuck' Chemistry Experiment for letting us nick her idea. She is our biggest fan.
 
 
We
hope it works

j guitarist 2 is a sportz goth, and o guitarist has been known to wear eyeliner and pout like howard devoto
 

soit'snotreallyastepupisit?
 
 

New things...
 
Rehearsal pictures... second one...
click to see it bigger. Or move your face closer to the screen.






Feel our RAWK POWER! that is indeed o guitarist's mother in the top right picture
 
 

WE HAVE LYRICS......shockingly...
 

Epilogue by J Guitarist 2

Has a memorable bassline. J Guitarist 2 wants it to be a high speed thrash number with feedback moments, or (surprise surprise) a shoegazing dronerock number. Keeps threatening to turn into All Over The World by the Pixies.

                          Temporary Wings was awful sixthform angst toss, even more so than the rest, so it has died. J Guitarist cannot find the words to describe its utter embarrassing awfulness...so he will stick with the ever trusty "It was shite."

                        G.F.F. by J Guitarist 2

                         A vicious attack on all those bands who are shite.

                           Hypocrisy you might say....Might be angry hardcore, or a happy clappy drum       machine number. Oh we're so ironic.

There are some other songs, but they're not finished yet. J Guitarist 2 has given up on writing lyrics, pleading shiteness.

3rd rehearsal pictures...the flying boy with the guitar is J Guitarist 2... the black haired one with the Corgan shades is O Guitarist 1 and the girl nestling up to him is L Drummer. J Bassist is so inscrutable she is unphotographable. Plus she wasn't at the third rehearsal.
 
 

 
 
 

4TH REHEARSAL
the fourth rehearsal thing did go well.... we now have two songs... or at least one very long one... a few revisions were made to Epilogue...(or Andy Said as it became known) J Guitarist 2 has written a dreamy shoegazish instrumental and has decided to tag it on to the end of Epilogue, making Theme From Shrew
we took some provocative promo shots, and J Guitarist 2 nearly had a heart attack pushing a car around...
5TH REHEARSAL
...was a bit of a shambles... we pissed around a lot, and J Guitarist 2 did one of his typical sessions of all out guitar abuse... we didn't really achieve anything, but it was extremely hot. We played monopoly. Feel our RAWK POWER! L Drummer and J Bassist left at 2pm. However once the rhythm section had left, Jonny Guitarist 2 came up with an riff reminiscent of early Cure, (or mogwai if you listen to O Guitarist) and attempted to put the lyrics of new song Stay Up All Night to it. Aided by O Guitarist's dulcet tones, a load of miserabilist lyrics were created.... until J Guitarist 2 suddenly realised the vocal melody was a direct copy of Black Sabbath's Paranoid. Das ist keine gut. However, the tune itself was not bad, and J Guitarist 2 is planning to coerce J Bassist into making a drony bassline for it. It may however end up as yet another instrumental. Or even get tacked on Epilogue.
SIXTH REHEARSAL
..was, as even number rehearsals always are, great. We went round L Drummer and J Bassist's house and commandeered the lounge. O Guitarist revealed a thrashy new riff which went down reasonably well to the point that we had made a semi song of it by the end of the rehearsal, by the name of Ding Ding Ding. J Guitarist 2 attempted to get the rest of the band interested in his Temporary Wings tune, but they weren't having any of it, mainly because it is embarrassingly incomplete, and also that O Guitarist didn't feel like singing. *sigh*  However, with some top synth action it might work. J Guitarist 2 also discovered a new effect which makes fantastic dronerock noises and enthusiastically used it with everything. Homemade phasing was kind of achieved by swinging two microphones around. An excursion was made to some woods where photos were taken and J Guitarist 2 skipped around a lot in joy.
SEVENTH REHEARSAL
Was an odd number, and hence was a bit rubbish. J Bassist had a headache so could not attend, so much of the rehearsal was spent standing around asking each other 'So what are we going to do then?'
J Guitarist attempted to get new song Sunblind finished, but was a little waylaid by the fact the bassline he wrote for it was shite. We also had a go at doing Epilogue but as that requires two guitars, a bass, a keyboard and a portable radio, little was achieved. However all was not lost as we connected the microphone to J Guitarist 2's effects pedal and took much hilarity from the extended delay effects. We also played football. Gosh.
However we have been asked to do a song for a soundtrack for an animation. We just have to all get in a room together and write one. Chance would be a fine thing.
CONTACTING POSITIVE SHREW if you're in a band we'd love to support you. we're quite strong.
POSITIVE SHREW DIRECT positiveshrew@shoegazing.com


J GUITARIST 2 hopeful@x-stream.co.uk

L DRUMMER/J BASSIST splj@paston.co.uk

O GUITARIST olly@mansunfreaks.freeserve.co.uk
 
 
 

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