Written by Christopher Lloyd

13th February 2007

Cast your mind back to 1991. Rave. Vicks. Idiots in stupid clothing. Glow Sticks. A truly horrible time for music. It may have been a ‘scene’ but to many others, and me it was abomination of the house scene that preceded it.

2007 and music once more is in a sorry state. There are a few good bands around, as there were in 1991, but not enough to justify calling anything a‘scene’. Tonight’s headliners, Klaxons, made the mistake of giving their music a tag in an interview once, ‘New Rave’. Oh dear, this was all it took for the NME to vociferously ram the ‘New Rave’ scene into the public consciousness.

Where once to be fashionable, you went to the high street and bought the same clothes as everyone else, now you pick up NME, glance over the many full page adverts and promotional features for such ‘alternative’ boutiques such as Topshop and Next, and marry that together with what NME are telling you is fashionable (New Rave), and what do you get?? New Scenesters, or New Ravers.

Klaxons are a very good band. They proved this tonight by blasting through the bulk of ‘Myths of the Near Future’ with energy and passion aplenty.  The only down point of the set was their awful cover of Kick Like A Mule’s ‘The Bouncer’.

Joint headliners CSS don’t fall into the laughable ‘New Rave’ scene. Live, CSS put back the soul into tracks that made their debut album come across a little flat. Considering that the band was given hardly any stage time to shine CSS was the band of the night.

The other two bands on the bill aren’t worth a mention.

Call me miserable, but they were glow stick waving fashionistas.  I hate glow sticks, they’re not cool, they’re stupid and the audience had them en mass. I wish glow sticks were flimsy and made out of toxic chemicals that burn through skin and bones. They annoy me immensely.  For me a glow stick is a reminder of how bad the early nineties were for music.  I shan’t feel bitter about it for too long though, no doubt NME are already coining up a new ‘scene’ which will kill off new rave before it’s even begun.

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