Gave Me What I Want: The ending of Kids in Glass Houses and my teenage years

Today marked the day where Kids in Glass Houses announced their ending. To be quite frank with you, there's nothing new about a pop-punk band shutting down shop and moving on. It's life. We'll get over it. They weren't chart toppers, they didn't end world poverty, but KIGH provided me with an introduction to the world of live music and local talent. And for that, I am entirely indebted to them.

Music didn't interest me until I had my first iPod for my birthday, aged 12. I was never particularly into music; none of my friends were, and I had had a crack at playing the cello in primary school, only to realise the lack of talent I possessed and promptly returned it. However, that iPod Shuffle got me into music. Its sole function was to play hours of music, and there was something alluring about an iPod to a 12 year old. Anyway, I digress. I started listening to music, and got myself into the usual blur of Blink 182, Slipknot, punk, and the heaviest possible noise Limewire could muster for me. Anything remotely poppy was frowned upon.

As I had become more interested in music, so too had the rest of the people around me; it must be a puberty thing. A neighbour of mine had started having guitar lessons, and we spoke very regularly on music; namely what was the heaviest thing we had heard that week. Like all good music 'passing down' sessions, his had started with his older sister. This time she mentioned her friend's band. They had just released a demo, and she had kindly (and rather forcibly, as big sisters are) introduced their sound to him, who then played it to me on his phone in the street. The song was 'Me Me Me'.

Jump to a few months later, and I was sat in a music lesson. They weren't fun or enjoyable at this stage in school; we were a bunch of snotty nosed, bum-fluff toting hormone bags that had the sole objective of obliterating everything in our path, so it's quite obvious why the music teacher didn't allow us near anything of any value. This particular lesson, however, involved her testing us to see how much we knew about chart music. She plugged her Mac into the stereo, held both very close to her chest and out of our zone of destruction, and played us various chart songs and some more niche offerings. Lostprophets had a play, so to did Metallica and whatever else was in the charts at the time. The last thing she played was a rather familiar but nameless tinkling of guitar chords: 'Me Me Me'.

'Anyone heard this before?' she quizzed, eyes bright and a bit too eagerly. I raised an unsure hand, owning up to potentially embarrassing myself at my lack of knowledge. Smile still plastered on her face, she had great pleasure in explaining that the band was in fact called Kids in Glass Houses, and that they were local and going places, and the guitarist was from our school. It had a quick acknowledgement from us as a class, and then we carried on dismantling the tables and generally being young offenders.

As my interest in music grew, the next step was to scour music channels for days on end, searching for something new and exciting. Still on a diet of heavy metal and noise, it seemed weird that a music video adorned with pink neon lights and leather jackets would interest me. It had a familiar tone, something recognisable. It was the music video for 'Easy Tiger' on Kerrang. So, the local boys were doing alright. I didn't realise people from The Valley's could 'make it' and be on TV. Crazy.

That summer, they played the Big Weekend in Cardiff. I went down with a few mates and it was a fantastic. It embodied so much of what was important to us as teenagers; loud music, a day without parents, and plenty of awkward encounters with members of the female sex. I entered my very first moshpit (we all remember our first), and as a group, we managed to push, claw and bite our way to the very front. Ben Fogle may have been on some pretty epic adventures, but none were as amazing, tiring and downright impossible as ours. We made the front.

Soon after, they opened for Fall Out Boy in what used to be called the CIA. Life was better when the CIA was actually called 'The CIA'; the Motorpoint Arena sounds as appetising as the collection of liquid that transmigrates from food in a food recycling bin. Again, more biting, stamping and pushing got us respectably close to the front of that gig. My skin had been peeled by a mixture of girl's makeup and everyone's sweat, but the gig itself was utterly incredible.

A friend's Mam happened to be the person in charge of writing the music for the string sections in Dirt. As a very kind lady, she offered us to go into the studio in the Atrium (something else that's had a pretty diabolical name change to something more corporate) and listen to it being done. We got to spend some time in a rather sweaty studio with our idols at the time, their producer (the guy from A. I know, who?) and some musicians swiping away with their bows and sheet music. Getting to hear one of your favourite band's tracks before anyone else was the biggest 'fuck you' to all my friends that I have ever had. I tried desperately to memorise the rhythms and melodies, but like everything when you're 16, it floated gently into one ear and straight out of the other. Pretty cool though, eh?

To this day, I still place their Christmas show in 2009 in Clwb Ifor Bach as one of the top three gigs I have ever been to. I'm pretty sure it was around the 23rd of December, and snow brought the UK to complete and utter pandemonium, so much so that the first support band didn't turn up. Instead, Aled, Iain, and two of their friends came out and filled the opening slot with some Glassjaw covers. They really went for it, guitars and heads flying everywhere. It was a nice contrast to the poppy melodies of KIGH; to hear Aled covering Glassjaw's 'Tip Your Bartender' and the gentler, but still encapsulatingly dark 'Piano' seemed bizarre and yet utterly right. These were the bands they listened to as teens themselves, the seeds that KIGH had stemmed from.

Due to the snow, Clwb was at about half capacity, but everyone clambered to the stage. Everyone suddenly became friends, and we were all out for good time. We screamed and chanted along with them, and they even kindly covered 'Killing in the Name Of' and Mariah's 'All I Want for Christmas'. Everyone danced, smiled and screamed their way through the gig, and no-one left with anything less than a Cheshire Cat's grin.

Most recently, I met one of my best friends through a mutual liking for KIGH. We now share a house together in our second year in Uni. How weird is that?

Basically, Kid in Glass Houses aren't a groundbreaking or particularly big band, but they provided me with a soundtrack for my teenage years. Through the shitty bits of growing up and girls, to getting drunk for the first time, KIGH weren't far away. Listening back to recordings of the band I was part of when I was 16, it's amazing how much they permeated our sound. My bassline carries a rather large whiff of 'Easy Tiger' about it, all done subconsciously. Rather aptly, as they come to an end, so to do my teenage years. Now at the respectable age of 20, I am now expected to start thinking of work, of life, and monotony. Shame. I quite liked the teenage years.

Cheers, Kids in Glass Houses. It was a pleasure. See you in October for the farewell tour. Smart Casual is currently nestling between Queens of the Stone Age's 'Songs for the Deaf' and Rage Against the Machine's self-titled debut record in my top 5 albums of all time. You want it all, but you want more.

Review Time: Gibson Midtown Signature Bass

I promised myself to post at least once a month, but a delightful bout of constant illness last month put a swift end to that. So, to make up for it, I'm writing a review (something I secretly enjoy and occasionally post on review websites. Yes I am one of those.) on a bass. And to be honest, it's a startlingly handsome one. Ladies and gentleman, the Gibson Midtown Signature Bass in Bullion Gold.

Oddly enticing looking thing, isn't it? It pricked my attention partly due to the way it looks, and partly because I had never seen one before. To me, it looks like the result of a fumble between an Epiphone Jack Casady and a Gibbo EB-3 at a Hot Tuna gig. Here are the mugshots of the parents, to help with pinpointing its genealogy.

So it's got its father's hips, and a slimmer lower horn and electronics courtesy of its mother. So it's going to be a boomer; big dubby tones, smooth and creamy, with a certain hollowness to the sound that has the strange ability to fill a large room with brown-note inducing bottom end. Usually the thing I hate. And in the Gibson Midtown, its business as usual, except I don't quite hate it.

It booms. It really booms. Planting all the strings through the big neck humbucker, you get that famous earthquake inducing bottom. But in all honesty, its not dominating. It's more subtle than that. It's like an EB-3 that's gone to finishing school and no longer wipes its nose on the curtains. I mean, it still spills wine over the furniture and burps mid-meal, but the belch is followed by a quick and polite apology, and a reverential clearing of the throat. It compliments, as opposed to shouts. It creates a wave that jangly, Weller-esque tones can float on, and carry themselves into ears rather soothingly. For a big old Boomer, its got some finesse.

That said, and I feel this may be a little uncalled for or due to my own negligence of the EQ, there was a tiny bit of muddiness on the lowest notes. But again, that is part of the Boomer's character; if I wanted utmost clarity, I should've tried something a bit more modern. I played it through a nice little Ampeg Fliptop/Portaflex rig, which was excellent, and really complimented the character of the Midtown.

There's a delightfully simple set up to the electronics on the Midtown; one volume knob, one tone, and a three-way pick-up selector. Cranking the tone knob to the darker side of things, the neck pickup develops a bit of character, and shows its heritage. Keeping it clean provides a perfect bed for clean guitar tones to waft over.

Flicking the selector to the middle position, we see the introduction of the bridge pick-up in the sound. It's a small humbucker, held a bit closer to the strings and gives an overall clang to the sound. Personally, I think it's redundant in a bass like this. The deep, dubby tones produced by the neck pick-up are crashed over by snappy, yappy pinches that highlight just how longer your fingernails are that day. It doesn't detract from any of the bottom end, but adds a metallic clank that isn't needed in this context. Think of the neck pick-up as a big old St. Bernard; big, dignified, a bit slobbery, but full of love. Place atop its back a little, annoyed Yorkshire Terrier, yapping away at the very thought of its own existence. That Yorkshire Terrier is the bridge pick-up, and it doesn't make for a particularly inviting package.

I flicked the selector down, silencing the St. Bernard, and gave the yappy thing a chance to redeem itself. It does a good impression of Jaco Pastorius, but nothing more. On a bass like this, it is about as much use as Yahoo Answers; it provides no solution, nothing productive and adds nothing of any benefit to the sound.

Onto the feel of thing. Nicely balanced and fantastically finished, it is a thing of beauty. I can't remember the exact price, but I feel it was just under £1300, say £1268 or so. To be completely honest, I was surprised at how little this was for the quality. The colour, much lighter in person than in the picture above, carries with it a bizarre finish; visible brush strokes up the neck did make me ponder on quality, but the lacquer and fitment of everything suggests that this is part of the handmade character. It's a sturdy beast, not delicate in the slightest.

I read a lot on the Gibson website about the unique construction; their new way of building the Midtown, yadda yadda yadda. I hate sales rhetoric because I am very often drawn in and take the bait. Frankly, the way this thing was designed carries no impact with me. All I can say is it's a fantastic bass for the old-school deep reggae beats, a finely cut accompaniment for laid-back tunes, and with a bit of fuzz, could even carry off some of the more docile heavy tones, a la Jack Bruce. The quality is top notch, and it looks fantastic.

Please, Gibson. Get rid of the bridge pick-up, bring the price down by a hundred quid or so and we have an absolute future classic that could happily be used week in, week out for the next 30 years. Just don't expect to fire machine gun triplets at Mark King on it though; she's a Boomer, and always will be.