not thursday at the bridge
If life is the proverbial box of chocolates, then the boys at Gappy Tooth are not content to offer you boring old Milk Tray. Some safe predictability is all well and good, but familiarity breeds contempt and a little experimentation is vital if you don’t want to get stuck in your mars-a-day rut.
It happens to the best of us, despite our noble start-of-term try-something- new intentions: students are undeniably creatures of habit, with eight weeks being time enough to fall into the same old routines. Certain clubs on certain nights, repeated ad infi nitum.
Fast approaching another anniversary, GTI have been providing much needed monthly blasts of unpredictable, indefi nable entertainment at the Zodiac for almost four years now and the evereclectic line-ups are showing no signs of stagnating. The brainchild of three Brookes and Oxford Uni graduates frustrated by an abundance of generic local nights, Gappy Tooth are a selfstyled shot in the arm of the traditional pub backroom rock gig.
Their fi rst two nights alone saw folk rock, avant-pop, punk, grunge and the elusive beast that is goth-funk all represented. And not content to stop at merely representing diverse genres, entirely different mediums are thrown into the mix, with performance, poetry and photography projections sitting alongside sets from the featured musicians.
In their own words, “If one of Oxford’s metal bands want to play, they’d be welcome, providing they didn’t mind sharing the bill with a trad jazz quartet and a Tuvan throat singer.” Another important element of the great Gappy Tooth venture is The Denture, the lovingly compiled in-house publication, distributed at the start of shows, featuring the artwork, poetry, photography and general musings of anyone willing to get involved.
It also provides some information regarding the acts which will be performing that night • information no doubt welcomed by the uninitiated, who are at this point in the evening probably wondering what they’re letting themselves in for. All this variety doesn’t just mean new acts of course, it means new people.
With a mishmash of genres, generic crowds are a thing of the past, and in a city the size of Oxford, where things can all too quickly get a little sceney and incestuous, this can only be a good thing. It’s a brand new term • branch out, give us a grin and embrace the diversity of Gappy Tooth Industries.
20th Apr 2006