The crowd at Madam Jo-Jo’s aren’t doing much to make the band feel relaxed. Primped and prissy, boys and girls pout with constipation, and when the band open with classic single ‘Mister Mental’ they find it hard to let go of their pretence. Some joker thinks he knows best and manages to wind up lead singer Guy McKnight to the extent that a fight breaks out between them at the end of the song. So far, so sorrowful.
Once built on knowing-cartoonism, the Halloween cowboys now seem fed on a sinister aggression that antagonises the crowd where it once united. Perhaps they’re just bitter that their new material is a mere shadow of what the band produced at their peak. “Love Turns To Hate” is the most coherent of the new stuff, despite it lacking the subtle sprinkling of Matchbox Madness that made the likes of ‘Celebrate Your Mother’ so memorable.
Things slowly pick up after a smattering of former glories like ‘Chicken’ and ‘Psychosis Safari’. The band seem to relax with it, and as a result their performance gets better and better. McKnight scales the speaker rails and DJ booth like a giant ghoulish spider and by the time they do play ‘Celebrate Your Mother’, everyone’s singing and clapping and jiving like the undead. Suddenly the band have regained their muse.
With highs and lows, the gig ends abruptly, with many great songs left unplayed. The 80’s Matchbox B Line Disaster are a band to be revered, but tonight something was lacking. Perhaps in the two years since they fired up the matchbox engine, the people who loved them have changed and moved on – the band’s shortcoming now is that they haven’t – if tonight’s show is anything to go by, they’re stuck treading water.
article by: Alex Hoban
published: 02/08/2006 14:51
FUTURE GIGS
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