MUSIC LIVE REVIEWS
air. NEW 1994 PRODUCTION!
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GLASGOW PAVILION
' WED-(RI 9-11 MARCH
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EDINBURG PLAYHOUS
SAV-SUN 12‘
8/0 031 -557 2590
STAGE
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a: TICKETS FROIIL§§_,50!!*
gmzaturmg NORMAN COOK) plus MISTY OLDLAND GLASGOW King Tut's, Wed 16th feb/ EDINBURGH Venue Thurs 17th Feb
THE HOUSE OF ZGKKHBWRS
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plus support 8: OJ GRAHAM WILSON I GLASGOW The Tunnel, Tues 8th March
GLASGOW BARROWIAND SATURDAY 19th MARCH
Meat Puppets
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Thurs IOU! Feb NINE
H Id- TiCKETS: Virgin Records, Glasgow & Edinburgh. Credit cards & info TOCTA 031 557 6969, Queen's Hall Box Office 031 668 2019
' The List 11—24 February 1994
Mon 14th
Thurs 1 7 th
Fri 18th C-CHARGE
Fri 25th JUMP CITY Sat 2601 VOODOO QU
.4 n Evening II 17h
SOUL
HERSH
BELOW ZERO
EENS & AC Acoustics
EDINBURGH Queen's Hall, Friday 15th
April
Fri 11th & Sat 12th Feb SULTANS OF PING plus Emperors of ice Cream Girl Noise Valentine Bash
Tues 15m LIES OAMNED LIES & Murmur LORNA BROOKS 8: Sugartovvn Sat19th HIDEAWAY BLUES BAND &THE RHYMES Wed 23rd URBAN SPECIES & Honky Thurs 240. JOHN LENNON TRIBUTE(lnstant Karma)
V LIVE
Plaza, Glasgow, 2 Feb. Armed forces. The frontline troops, wielding bass and guitars, are uniformed up: army, navy and airforce. ; James Dean Bradfield is in the pit, flung in the throng, bellowing and bawllng. ‘You. Love. llS!’ llicky Wire is doing what he’s been doing for most of I the night: not bothering to try too hard ‘ to pretend to play his bass. instead, he pants and pogos and makes half- E hearted attempts to windmill his arm a la Townshend. llichey James perfects his thousand-yard stare. With locks shorn, Sean Moore finally looks more like a Manic and less than an 18th century public-school pageboy. ‘You. Love. llS!’ Brutally, abruptly, the racket is sheared off at the neck. The Manic Street Preachers have left the stage. Their set was a perfect 65 minutes long. llo encores, no pack drill, no messing. Even the feedback they leave thrumming thickly in the air is sweet oblivion. Eeeh, what a band. They did some covers but doesn’t
MNIO STBET PBEAOHEBS
matter what. it’s been said before, but it’s worth saying again: already, Manic Street Preachers could have a cracking Greatest Hits. Dug up and dusted down, even the long-gone ‘llew Art liiot’ is a marvel, sioughing off the stonn-in-a-teacup toytown punkery of the original single. But that’s what you get when you mix with the wrong crowd. To wit, ‘ilrug Drug llruggy’ (‘abcd, E'), ‘Love’s Sweet Exile’, ‘Motown Junk’ (‘llevolution, Revolution . . .’), ‘Slash And Burn’, ‘Motorcycle Emptiness’ (‘oh no, neon loneliness, motorcycle emptiness’ - rarely has so little sounded so great), ‘La Tristessa Durera’.
And more. And even more. Manic Street Preachers relentlessly pile onwards, firing a blitzkrieg after blitzkrieg of iron-bailed pop anthems. Armed forces. The shock troops are still shockingly good, still trooping on, still fighting the punk-rock wars. flock ’n’ roll is our epiphany, you bet. (Graig McLean)
ELASTIGA
lilng Tut’s, Glasgow, 4 Feb.
Fashion, styles, labels - all intrinsic to pop music, all problematic. For example, tonight within five minutes I spot half-a-dozen Justine Elastlca lookalikes with unkempt hair, crumpled shirt, scruffy pullover, skinny tie, thousand-yard stare. low is this sad mimicry, or is it cool that it’s not enough lust to be into the music? It’s easy to scoff at the rather desperate recent press patronage of a handful of second generation llew Wavers, but hysteria levels at Elastica’s first Scottish headline gig suggest The Kids really are unearthing those old Undertones albums and rediscovering the delights of dog- eared pop. There are even reports from the heart of the moshplt that some were actively PMOlllG. And if anything can rehabilitate the sartorial fortunes of the humble V-neck sweater, i’m all for it. I can pretend I’ve been a year ahead of trends rather than fifteen years behind.
Then there’s the much put-upon Elastica, the subject of such utterly intensive scrutiny while they’re still learning to crawl (at least Suede had a couple of years to be crap before they hit the front pages) that they’ve
apparently relinquished any further interview responsibilities for fear of continued overexposure. And here am I, adding ‘The list”s tuppence worth. Why? Because the proof of the pudding is tasty indeed.
i only delay in mentioning the performance, because it’s exactly the same as their llingmaker support at The Tunnel last llovember. ‘llne llp’ still sounds like Wire’s ‘Strange’, ‘Vaseline’ is still Blondie-meets-The Banana Splits, urchin guitarist Donna still moves in stilted fidgety jerks, the whole glorious party still lasts half- an-hour-and-no-encore-cos-we’ve-run- out-of-songs.
For all its brevity, their set heralds so many possibilities, for Elastica and for the fortunes of spiky pop in general. We could see the return of handclaps on records. Magazine might be trendy again. We might even get some Gang Of Four on the radio now. it’ll be like lief Leppard never happened. For at least sixteen minutes. (Fiona Shepherd)