This evening my wife was on duty in the hotel in which she works, so rather than sit at home alone I did what I had been meaning to do for months: go to the Chameleon Bar, and check out the amateur bands that play there every Monday evening.

My wife had rung up in advance and gleened that the band plays from 8pm until 10pm.  I arrived at 7:45pm, and found the door locked.  So I hung around outside, trying the door periodically, to no avail.  Every now and then some youths would turn up, bang on the door, and a greasy looking chap would speak to them and let them in.  I thought this was some sort of VIP entrance thing which a newcomer like me wasn’t entitled to.  Only when it got to 8:15pm was I sufficiently pissed off to bang on the door and demand entrance, at which point I discovered the place had been open all along.  Only in Russia does a club attract customers by locking the front door.

Unsurprisingly, the club was full of students, ranging in age between what looked like 12 and 18.  Or maybe I’m just getting old.  The students reminded me of those I attended university with in 1996, wearing unwashed trousers six sizes too big, shirts my old man would have been embarrassed to wear in the 1960s, and plimsoles which looked as though they’d been left rotting outside for an English winter before the owner deemed them cool enough to wear.  In trying so hard to look different, they ended up all looking the same.  One bloke even had on a lumberjack shirt, the kind not seen outside the backwoods of Canada since the 1980s.  And even he looked more fashionable than the fella with the German army shirt.  Several of them had backpacks, which identified them immediately as students no matter which city we were in.  A word of warning to those who wish to avoid being duffed up by drunkards: never wear a backpack with both straps unless you are wearing Scarpa boots and a Helly Hansen shirt, or your backpack is a military bergen.  Two of the students on the table next to me were struggling with some English homework, and feeling generous, I spent ten seconds inserting ten missing words in ten blank spaces to allow them enough free time to enjoy the band.

Which was awful.  The lead guitarist, of which there were three, struggled for half an hour to fix this complicated computerised pedal contraption which – when it was working – emitted various sounds which guitars were not meant to make.  I was reminded of a comment made some years back by a good friend of mine who was an excellent guitarist that if you need a load of electronic gear to make your guitar sound good, then your guitar is shite.  When they finally got going, they turned out to be a teenage metal band along the lines of…I don’t know, I don’t know any teenage metal bands.  Usually I switch off when I hear them come on the radio.  At a guess, someone like Feeder or McFly.  I knew they were in trouble when it transpired that their bass guitarist was the most tuneful out of the lot.  That said, they did possess one element essential for rock and roll success: a drummer who looked as if he would blow his brains out as soon as stardom had been achieved.  Unfortunately, this chap looked crazy enough to do it on his second night playing as a pub band.  They did get better towards the end, or maybe it was the three pints of vodka and orange I’d drunk for student prices which inspired this improvement.  Appropriately enough, the band was called Headache.

So all in all, a disappointing evening.  But I have heard some pretty decent bands show up at the Chameleon Bar, and I reckon it’s worth visiting again.