Friday 10^th September

Well, at least the signs were promising. After a fairly listless few months made up of new-line up rehearsals and recording, The Puma Sutras seemed set to finally justify the reams of purple prose they have inspired from local pundits. First gig of the new season, and with a new four track demo to push, surely the opportunity was there for them to silence their critics once and for all.

Sure, it began well enough, if a little raggedly. ‘Somebody for Everyone’ and ‘Rock n’Roll Dreams’ are splendidly raw with Dan Haywood coaxing a series of delightful solos from his shrieking axe in the process. Completely gone is the relative slickness of the previous incarnation, these days they most readily recall a sixties garage band in their prime. As Bil and Richard contibute some delightful harmonies, Dan shows exactly how a lo-fi guitar anti-solo should sound.

However, after this initial blast, things quickly unravel and the old problems begin to surface once more. It’s almost as if they lose interest. Richard Turner is a brilliantly gifted guitarist and song-writer but possesses only a rudimentary knowledge of the bass guitar. And Bill’s smug ‘witticisms’ broadcast from behind the drum kit are wearing slightly thin to say the least. Overall, there is a horrible sense of malaise and neglect creeping throughout this band that suggest the time has come for a very radical re-assessment.

Daniel Haywood is undoubtedly an extremely talented and original musician in every sense. No one is currently working to such levels of imagination and vision as he. His achilles heel is however that for whatever reasons, he doesn’t believe it. He doesn’t believe the praise of countless reviewers and encouragement of his peers. Instead he seemingly wants to fail and make his own self doubts come true; recruiting substandard musicians; playing small gigs for ever diminishing returns and presenting the band as an under-rehearsed mess. We can only speculate on why this may be. One reason, and this is a mere guess (and a question too); what does a song-writer do when the emotions that inspire his songs run out? When he begins to feel better, or a little bit easier, everyday?

Maybe tonight’s gig was a mere symptom. The answer and the cure; write some new ones and get a band in to do them justice! Perhaps the Pumas wilful decline is not so much the product of a desire to fail, more the desire to move on. As time dulls emotional wounds, playing songs born of them becomes unconvincing and in itself painful – who wants to be remembered as a failure? Or constantly reminded of times of hurt and betrayal? On stage, Haywood seems a man carrying a huge emotional albatross around his neck, and perhaps the longer he continues the Pumas serial underachievement, the easier it will become to rid himself of it once and for all. In a band where emotion has always been the key, this is an issue. Only one person can turn it around and arrest the decline. Otherwise the Puma Sutras are in danger of becoming the star that burned a little too brightly…