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Nick Morgan and crew
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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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BLACK KIDS,
CUT OFF YOUR HANDS |
| ULU,
London
June 18th 2008
What
is it about black and bouncers, Serge? I mean
take my pal the six-foot-six retired bouncer,
who, ‘though I’m sure he has never
bounced anyone in his life, always, but always,
wears black. And whether it’s ‘sophisticated’
club or disco, we’re all used to black tie,
or faux black Armani suit-attired, bull-necked
giants standing arms folded with barely-suppressed
menace by the door. But the stakes have been raised
recently by the black paramilitary look, of which
I have seen no better exponent than, well, we’ll
just call him Mad Ivan the Terrible, to spare
his blushes, at the ULU. |
 |
| He’s
standing at the left-hand side of the stage, patrolling
the stage-door and overlooking the crowd at the
front. Black-clad, knee-length boots, leather gloves,
he’s got some sort of waistcoat on that seems
to have every sort of combat device imaginable –
cuffs, teargas, taser, first-aid kit, stun-grenades,
i-Pod, Captain Rock cigars, RPGs, AWACs attached:
you name it – he’s got it. He’s
glowering over the crowd, trying to spot cameras,
but spends must of his time gesticulating wildly
to an unknown person at the back of the hall, sort
of in time to the music. Maybe it’s the new
dance craze. Do the Bouncer anyone? |
| His
mission is to guard Black
Kids, the new pop sensation from the
USofA, (Jackonsville, Florida, to be precise) who
are so hot, with a debut album, Partie Traumatic,
produced by British guitar ace Bernard
Butler (“the musical genius behind Suede”
or so I read somewhere) and a Glastonbury appearance
this weekend, that they’re almost going into
meltdown. However, before they get a chance there’s
(from New Zealand) Collapsing Cities (whom we missed
due to Chinese Chow, not a band, but our dinner)
and Cut
Off Your Hands, who are also preparing
an album with the help of Mr Butler. Cut Off Your
Hands, nice boys who look as though they all must
have gone to the same public school, hit the stage
at a pace and volume that suggests that they’re
determined to blow the much-hyped headliners off
stage, and they almost do. Singer Nick Johnston
manages to fall, punk-style, into the crowd within
a few seconds and ends the first number singing
from the top of the speaker stacks. Waving madly,
Ivan responds by handing out Army surplus earplugs
to all and sundry; I find that despite the pain,
I’m tapping my feet in a ‘quite pleasant
really’ sort of the way by the time they leave
the stage. |
| Our
ears still buzzing, Black Kids arrive. Apparently
much of their appeal is how they look – which
is little, large, black, white and unforgivingly
young, with all-eyes and pouting Ali Youngblood
and Dawn Watley on keyboards and vocals on the right,
Kevin Snow on drums at the back, Owen Holmes on
bass to the left, and in centre stage, all Hendrix
hair Reggie Youngblood on guitar and vocals. It’s
really a 2008 version of the Cure meets the
Archies, both in appearance and sound. Very
artfully put together and well performed, but with
about as much substance as a cartoon character.
But the kids love it, particularly at the front
of the stage where the moon-eyed girls drooling
over Cut off Your Hands have been replaced by a
reeling gang of frenetic bodies – all boys,
beer and acne – whose cavorting during ‘Hurricane
Jane’ drives Ivan into a state of apoplexy. |
Black
Kids |
|
As they try and throw each other onto the stage
he charges through the door, knocks Youngblood to
the side mid-song and captures the centre of the
stage, baying at the audience, hands on hips, neck
muscles bulging, head turning like a plasticine
Hulk about to burst. But it all settles down and
eventually, Bernard B. (wearing an impossibly tight
pair of jeans) takes the stage to join them on his
nice guitar for some of their catchier tunes of
the night. When we leave they’re encoring
with something that sounds remarkably like Orange
Juice’s ‘Rip it up’, but as I’m
not an intellectual property lawyer I’d better
comment no further. Good fun if you like to dance,
but as my old Mum famously said of the Internet,
“I’ll give it twelve months …”.
Wrong on that score I have to admit, but on this
one she might just have been right. - Nick Morgan
(concert photographs by Kate) |
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Nick's Concert Reviews
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