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Nick Morgan and crew
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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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Brixton
Academy, London
April 30th 2008 |
| It’s
the 30th April 2008, and thirty years ago to the
day some of us now gathered here in a thinly-attended
Brixton Academy marched through the streets of London
with around 80,000 others to Victoria Park in Hackney
to inaugurate the Rock
Against Racism movement. |
| The
famous Victoria Park gig (a Clash classic) was celebrated
at the weekend by tens of thousands of people braving
the rain to attend a Love Music Hate Racism Carnival,
funded by (amongst other people) Morrissey, who
generously stepped in at the last minute when a
major sponsor pulled out. Good old Mozzer. You may
recall RAR was inspired by a letter written to the
New Musical Express and other papers complaining
of Eric Clapton’s racist remarks made at a
concert in Birmingham in 1976, ending with the famous
postscript, “Who shot the Sheriff Eric? It
sure as hell wasn’t you”. A second march
was held in Manchester, with a concert headlined
by the Buzzcocks and Graham Parker (sadly our coach
dropped us off next to a too-tempting Boddington’s
pub next to the now sadly defunct Strangeways Brewery,
so we missed the walking but managed to get a cab
to the gig). And the rest, as they say, is history.
But tomorrow sees a nationwide election for local
government in England and Wales, and a vote for
the Mayor of London, so this celebration of the
past is fused with thoughts for the future. |
Tony Benn |
The
political bit saw a variety of speakers brought
to the microphone by MC Tom
Robinson to preach, largely if not exclusively
to the already converted (and highly committed)
about the dangers of the extreme right. We heard
various trades union leaders, and Red Saunders,
the man who wrote that now famous letter. But pick
of the pack was veteran campaigner, former Labour
MP and Cabinet Minister, Tony Benn. He’s getting
on a bit, and it’s perhaps not surprising
that most of his remarks were framed in the context
of his grandchildren and his hopes for their future
and the world they would live in. But his eyesight
must be failing him. Why else would he have ended
his speech “I have faith in you, the younger
generation, to make this world a better place to
live in” when the average age of the audience
was 47? The speeches came as the stage was being
reset for each band (“I’m only on between
two turns” said Benn) – as some of them
went on for slightly longer than planned, the musical
element of the evening was somewhat compressed. |
| It
began with Thirst,
a Brixton band championed by Robinson on his new
music radio
show, and signed by Ronnie Wood to his Wooden
Records. It’s frenetic guitar-driven stuff,
a bit noisy and badly mixed, but with bags of energy
(as they used to say back in 1976). And they do
sound interesting on disc, or rather digital. They
were followed by the
Levellers, who if you don’t know are a
rather dated and crusty folk-roots punk rock band
with a drizzle of political attitude – a bit
like the Saw Doctors with a dash of Das Kapital,
or an agit-prop Status Quo. And they’ve got
the mad bloke with the kilt and didgeridoo. The
name of course refers to the Levellers of the English
Civil War, largely “the better class of person”
who were campaigning for greater property and political
rights for the middle-classes, but whose ‘radicalism’
was kidnapped during the twentieth century by a
procession of left-wing historians, most notably
Christopher Hill. But hang on, you knew all of that
stuff, didn’t you? The music, very festival,
very bouncy, and sadly a bit lost in a half-empty
Brixton. |
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The
Levellers |
Walford Tyson |
Misty
in Roots date back to the mid seventies, one
of the great pioneers of British reggae, along with
ASWAD and Steel Pulse. They were strongly associated
with the RAR movement and also closely linked to
the Ruts. But whatever the band’s pedigree,
reggae can be a bit pedestrian, particularly in
a formal theatre setting. Not a bit of it with Misty
in Roots, fronted by vocalist Walford Tyson, who
managed to fill a very large stage, backed by very
tight band and featuring some excellent and imaginative
brass arrangements. Their songs were a mixture of
African roots, like ‘Musi-O-Tunya’,
inspired by an extensive stay the band made in Zimbabwe
and Zambia, and pointed political comment, like
‘Cover up’, an indictment of institutional
racism. It’s very, very, good stuff indeed.
But they were brought to an end abruptly, as the
stage was readied for the Alabama
3, political campaigners Non Plus Ultra. They
began with ‘Mao Tse Tung’, vocals by
D Wayne Love, and then singers Larry Love and Devlin
Love took the stage for ‘All night long’
from the recent MOR album. Love (Larry) had problems
with his microphone for the first four songs or
so (almost half of the set), and the sound was something
of a mess throughout. It couldn’t even be
fully retrieved by the appearance of Mr Segs on
bass. Moreover I have to observe that Mr Love (Larry),
what with his new hair cut and all, looked as though
he’d been overdoing it somewhat. If I was
his mother I might be worried. And the set was clearly
rushed as the band played against the clock. So
sadly not the A3’s greatest moment. Not really
their fault. |
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Alabama
3 |
| Nor
perhaps was it Hope Not Hate’s. For the record,
for all the sermonising, the following day the Labour
Party was trounced in the elections, the extreme
right British National Party gained a seat at the
London Assembly (won in Patriot Billy Bragg’s
parish) and Labour Mayor Ken Livingstone was ousted
by Tory Boris Johnson. It just goes to show that
unlike Moses you can’t always turn the tide.
But we enjoyed the music – particularly the
wonderful Misty in Roots. - Nick Morgan (photographs
by Kate) |
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