Greggs and Loathing (andVan Halen): On The Road With Hey Colossus
Recently Toby Cook hit the rock trail in search of the new 'serious' Hey Colossus. What he found was pastry based snacks and loud rock music. Photo gallery by Katja Ogrin
"It's all well and good when we bang on about Hey Colossus being the nearest thing the UK has to inheritors of the crown of the Butthole Surfers, yet if their festival opening set on Friday in the Warehouse stage proved anything, it's that if they'd stop fucking around they could easily be the most vital noise rock outfit in the county; seriously, they could be headlining a festival like this. No doubt they'd tell me to fuck off were I to put it to them that if they'd just put down the bong… they could achieve a greater deal of relative success, and in fairness they probably should – why should I stifle their creativity by insisting they do something as mundane as to take it a bit more seriously?"
I wrote the above back in 2012 as part of tQ’s coverage of that years Supersonic festival in Birmingham, on the eve of the release of Hey Colossus’ then most accomplished record, the bizarrely titled Cuckoo Live Life Like Cuckoo, and just after group had played to what was at the time, by their own admission, most likely their largest ever audience. It’s a statement that’s running through my brain repeatedly as I take an early morning bus ride across South London to meet three-fifths of the sextet at the home of drummer Rhys Llewellyn, before squeezing into a car with them to make the long-ish journey west to first Cardiff and then Bristol…
Read the rest of this great piece here: The Quietus
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