Welcome to the slightly cheaper seats......And a momentary lapse of Reason.....is that what it is in a name?

And I hate to do it, but I can't avoid it.Because I'm reminded of Pink Floyd....

 Pink Floyd you say? yes, Pink Floyd.  And do people really care anymore? I can't deny that once I cared. A lot. The last time I saw the original Wonder Stuff (ie in their first lease of life) was in a muddy field in stratford in Avon,an experience for which I went only because it was their last gig. To hear those songs for the last time, was the only reason I went. And the only reason why I cried the tears I did during "Can't Shape Up".

Back in 2000, I spent a week of nights in this building watching The Wonder Stuff. Well, THEN they sold out 5 nights here, which works out at about 10,000 people, give or take a few. Tonight, they played one night, for which less than half the capacity of the venue was sold out. Which means that now, there’s less than a tenth of the people of back then. Maybe that’s quite telling.

Following the rather public seperation of the long standing Wonderstuff lineup of almost 20 years into two camps late in 2004, tonight saw something that one camp referred to rather disparagingly as a band that "Purports to be The Wonderstuff". Sadly, I'm tempted to agree......but deep in the back of my mind was the nagging and inescapable air of desperation and a futile attempt at relevancy. After all, their last two singles reached No.90 on the Official chart and nowhere in the second case means that, well, There's a few sadder sights than some bloke about to hit 40 pretending to himself he's still got it and relevant to things, rather than accepting the inevitability of the oncoming years. But there's been some years and tears under the bridge, because you see, since then there’s been a lot of history and upheaval in the band, mainly to it’s detriment. To follow the chronology....

01.1998 - Miles Hunt and Malcolm Treece do “Miles Hunt” acoustic shows.

02. 1999 - Miles Hunt does a solo album. “Hairy on the Inside”.

03. 2000 – 2001 Wonderstuff Reform, as a four piece of Miles Hunt, Martin Gilks, Martin Bell, Malcolm Treece, along with Stuart Quinell and long time keyboardist Peter Whittaker for live shows. They play live. A lot.

04..2002- Miles Hunt does another Solo album. The line up is....Miles Hunt, Andres Karu, Michael Forentino and Stuart Quinell. So that’s 50% of the current line up of the Wonderstuff, then ; and 50% Amazing Meet Project. And it turns out, with future lineup changes, that 75% of that lineup have been touring as the Wonderstuff……

05. Wonderstuff drummer/manager Martin Gilks and Fiddle player / bass player decide not to continue playing live anymore, and them being some 50% of the band for the past 15 years, well, that’s that, really. That's up to them. If they choose not to play anymore, thats their right.

06. 2004 - Miles Hunt announces intention to records a third solo album, tentatively titled "Escape From Rubbish Island". The line up is Mark McCarthy, and Luke Johnson. At the end of the sessions, Malcolm Treece comes and does a little work on it.

07.The Wonder Stuff release a new album called “Escape From Rubbish Island”.It is the solo album now released under the Wonder Stuff name, recorded in the same studio as the announced solo album with the same muscians and with the same title!

08. He tours the album with the name “the Wonder stuff” with Andres Karu (from his solo band), Mark McCarthy (his flatmate) and Malcolm Treece.

09. Which means that seeing the Miles Hunt shows in 2002 would have meant that 75% of the band were at one point or another (now or future), members of the Wonderstuff. Which is odd, because of the band that toured as the Wonder Stuff in 2004/2005, only 50% of them had previously been in the Wonderstuff.And 75% of them had played in Miles Hunt in a solo capacity previously.

10.So what is this? Isn’t it a new version of the “Miles Hunt Club”? Eh? There were more members of the Wonder Stuff in his solo bands than there are in the Wonder Stuff right now! With the current line up touring what was supposed to solo album anyway, this isn’t the Wonder Stuff. It’s the Miles Hunt Experience doing Wonderstuff songs, nothing more. And the number of people who turned up shows how few people are buying into this mechanically recovered version of the band. A Tesco Value version of the Wonderstuff. 25% love In reverse / amazing Meet project (or 25% Amen in the studio) , 25% Radical Dance Faction, 25% we Know where you live, 25% Miles Hunt.

Which means tonight, I didn't enjoy The Wonder Stuff as such, but I did enjoy watching the Miles Hunt Experience perform a set of Wonder Stuff songs...

Welcome to the Miles Hunt Experience, then. At this rate, if it carries on with this level of critical and commercial disinterest, then in a couple of years time, the fans memories of the band (as was) and their non-existent commercial viability will knock the band on the head in an ignominous way , the way that oh so many reformations end. When the fans ask about new material, they get it, and suddenly its not that good anymore, and then, its all over. People stop turning up because they don’t want to hear vast chunks of new and unfamiliar material. They turn up for the same reasons they turned up initially. To be nostalgic. To listen to the old stuff that they love. Have grown attached to. The new stuff?

It’s an indulgence on the artists point in a way, because the fans don’t necessarily want to hear it. They want the good stuff. The Old stuff. Sing us the songs we know. We don’t want to listen to your 40 something whining. We came to see you to take us away from our worries of today, not bang on about with a bunch of new stuff you are worrying about. I mean, if the Sex Pistols had released a second album of new material in 1996, would it have done anything except destroying the mythos of the past 20 years? This is the Achilles heel of reformations – the belief that because people want to hear the old songs, that they must want to hear new stuff too. They don’t. they come along to relieve the years gone by, not to hear the new stuff.

Give us “Unbearable”.Give us “Don’t let me Down”. Give us “Size of a Cow”. Don’t give us any bullshit. Give us the indie jukebox from 1991 like a human marionette. Let you entertain us. And that’s the rub. You’ll forever be caught in your own shadow.

And it's inescapable that the vast majority of fans aren't here because of your album that charted at no.149 last october. They're here because of your No.1 album in 1991, and vast selection of over 16 hit singles, songs that we knew and loved a long time ago. Not because of rebranded solo album hell.

To be honest, the gig reminded me of sex.

The kind of sex you have when both of you know the relationship is doomed and empty, when the sex turns cruel and meaningless, a physical activity that is just going through the motions. It's like fucking your girlfriend, but when you close your eyes you're imagining yourself with someone else.

Maybe an ex. Maybe the girl at work who flirts sometimes.  Maybe the friend of a friend you see down the pub and are playful with. And maybe you can fool yourself for a little while, but when you open your eyes and get the crushing disappointment of  reality and the apathy, it's made everything sour. Time is running out and you don't want to drag yourself away, because  you know one time it will be the last time, and you’ve still got hope. Hope that it won’t end this way. That everything will turn out OK.

But Everything is Not Ok. Everything will not turn out just fine. All is not well, not this time.

The Wonder Stuff? in name, only. It's a name with some considerable reputation and an established fanbase. But in reality, It was the Miles Hunt Experience trading off the name of a band now gone forever, tarnishing years of memories for a quick fumble in the bikesheds and a inevitably doomed attempt at resusitating old memories and success. And Mark McCarthy shouldn't be in this band. It’s not that he's not a terrible bass player - but he's just totally unsuited to this band. A clanky bass that sounds like it should be rattling off an old Varukers 7" is not the stuff of the pop charts. It's not The Wonderstuff neither. It sounded like they'd taken Steve “bomber” Harris off Iron maiden and put him in the centerstage. Sounded like they'd got an old reformed punk guy straight outta brixton (or rehab, whichever is closer) for the ride.

I’d rather not see the name dragged through the toilets of England to tarnish the memories in the vain and futile attempt at artistic relavancy. I mean it doesn’t sound like the Wonderstuff, and it doesn’t look like the Wonderstuff. I would rather they used the name the Miles Hunt Experience and give it some dignity, and not hide behind a band name, when it's not a band.Before hand when watching the Wonderstuff, it felt like a band. Now it felt like I was watching some bunch of guys on stage playing songs, not a band, just a bunch of guys playing songs. Compotently and efficiently, but not a band. Nothing near. Just a bunch of guys on stage playing a bunch of songs writing by the singer.

The legacy of the Wonderstuff is too great to go out this way, in a haze of beerbellied wankers in the crowd, general apathy and derision looking at their watches whilst yet another new song they don't know plays on. Theymight as well have called every single new song "Escape to the toilets" or "Bog Break moment" for all the enthusiasm they are greeted with.

I don’t want it to end this way, but it is inevitable now. After maybe another album bought by a vast minority of punters and zero profile, the once mighty name of The Wonder Stuff isn’t merely reduced to the nostalgia circuit, but worse. Much worse.A vanity project, a failure.

To apathy, to ignomy, of a band trying to prove they are relevant and still by artistic hubris, when the world has turned and changed and shifted, and the band remained stuck in the delusion that they can again make it big once more in an even more fickle and even more heartless world of cookie-cutter popstarz. To go out without grace, but in a blaze of anonymity.

All this proves is just how dated, how irrelevant the band truly are now. I mean, to me, this is not the Wonder Stuff, but a fraudulent repackaging of a solo album hawking the old bandname around in a vain attempt to be relevant and get some more sales.Now, I’m not saying that the two Martins who decided not to continue with the band in 2003 are faultless and they are far from blameless, but the Wonder Stuff this isn't.

It's like collecting the money from the pension book still every two weeks and pretending the body still lives.Foolish, pointless and embarassing.And they deserve better than that. We all do. No matter how much the lead singer is locked in horns with the others, No matter how much he feels driven to prove it's still an ongoing concer, all he is doing to showing how little relevance he has now to a world thats moved on, onto to different things.

And as for that new material? Well, the so-called fans tonight here stand still anytime a song less than 12 years old is played. They look bored. They tolerate it. But as soon as an old song is played, and there’s a lot of them because there’s only two songs here apart from the new album which date since 1989, they jump up and down, take off their shirts, expose their beer bellies, push people around, and act like utter idiots who think they’re 19 again. And in the minority are the fans all too eager to lap it up have got their pedals to the metal, heartily accelerating into the brick wall of middle age, thankful to god there’s a Wonder Stuff still around, no matter who is really in the band, because they can thoughtlessly carry on pretending they’ve still got it, whatever it was.

I'd quite frankly rather that there was no such thing as the Wonder Stuff anymore, because this is embarassing and at times, painful.Its a shame, because I really fucking loved this band. I still do. But not as it is now.

There’s nothing as dangerous to a band than the fans, sometimes. Tonight shows that to be true. Because the legacy of the Wonder Stuff isn’t so much pissing on its chips as napalming them with glee, embodying the Vietnam-esque mantra that "we had to destroy the village to save it". Thats not so much passing the torch as pouring it with kerosene, and setting it on fire.At this rate, no one will care when the final show truly comes, playing to a thousand bored punters at the half empty Wolverhampton Civic Hall....and at this rate, That'll be July 2006. At latest.

I never thought I'd say it, but much as I cried a few tears at the final gig in 1994, this time, there's no tears to cry.Just regret it ever ended this way.Miles once said if the band ever stopped being fun, he'd stop doing it.Well, its' no fun tonight. Not me, no fun to be alive.....

As for the new songs, it’s obvious the crowd aren’t really interested. Most of them, they don’t want to hear. Because the new songs are the same things the band used to rile against. Don’t play that awful song. Because then we’ll know the party has gone on too long. And this ain’t a stairway to heaven, but a pathway to oblivion. Goodbye, Goodbye, Goodbye , So Long, So Long, So Long..

And from the Wonder Stuff, it’s Goodnight Though. Too late, Too late.

Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register.

Powered by AkoComment 1.0 beta 2!