Thursday, 05 August 2010
No one can love a balance sheet as much as they love a song. Here we are again. When, twenty one years ago, I first found this music, the idea that I now would still be seeing these bands, loving this music, in 2010 – the year we make contact – couldn’t possibly exist.
We lived for today then, being what, 17 or 20, young, immortal. We were going to live forever. The mistakes our parents made, the mortgages, the moustaches, voting Conservative, becoming hard and cynical and tired, we were smarter than that. We saw it coming. And whilst we didn’t quite get it right, at least we banished Simply Red ; even though it took a while for the corpse to stop twitching.
The music though, the trends of art, a band would – irrespective of if it was any good or not – be popular for a week then disappear forever as “uncool”, remained. This Band Was Your Life. Because of haircuts and shorts and logos, the music was – as it always was – an afterthought. But not to me.
You can’t argue that New Order sat down and debated which one of the Joe T Vanilli “6 Am M25” remixes of “1963” was better or worse and thus worthy of release (in actual fact, none of them were). They didn’t care. Hence, when asked by the Canadian record company the title of the b-side of a single, the managers flippant response was “I Don’t Care”. Which became the name printed on the label.
So this music mattered. It became a philosophy : long-forgotten lyrics became snatches of a design for life. A line like “I can’t kick aside the kick inside” or “Life, it’s not what I thought it was”, wrapped in a hit single with a bright cover were ways we made sense of the world. People, drawn to the things that help us through a life. Like film, art, and football, these are the things we are drawn to, we need – a life without this meaning could be meaningless. No one can love a balance sheet as much as they love a song.
Saturday Night then, in Tunbridge Wells, sees The Wonder Stuff, much loved but critically ignored, play their traditional set of small provincial shows : towns that maybe have been forgotten by London, but towns that have not forgotten.
Opening the set for the first time in 8 years with “Mission Drive”, the band – and it is a band locked into a united groove – raise the tempo before the song explodes in a climax of fiddles and guitars and frenetic drumming. And it is exactly the same as it was twenty years ago ; as passionate, and as meaningful. Sure, you may never see the words The Wonder Stuff in the Top 40 again. But who wants to be there? There’s always someone younger, and more desperate, with a target aimed on your back.
It’s the smallest, sweatiest, and shortest Wonder Stuff show I’ve seen. And it’s, as ever, an experience. Some things you see with your own eyes, and no words, no film, can ever quite capture exactly what happens : the chemistry between stage and crowd, between lights and noise, where there’s a sense, almost magical, that the combination of the elements has created something more than the sum of the parts. Alchemy? Blood, Sweat and Tea?
Sandwiched between a slot at the Cambridge Folk Festival, The Wonder Stuff play their most determinedly folky set ever : not one song in the main set sees the band turn to their fiddle-free guitar shouty configuration. There’s no sign of “Unbearable”, “A Wish Away”, “Don’t Let Me Down” – aside from on the curtailed setlist that time constraints ruined. And mostly, they weren’t necessary. (Admittedly, I have spent about half a year with The Wonder Stuff).
What was refreshing to see was two ‘new’ songs ; the band dispatching “Fill Her Up And Foot Down” and “The Cake” from Miles two most recent solo records – both of which were recorded with 60% of The Wonder Stuff - in the set. These songs are as good as anything else in the set ; and I’ve seen enough bands go crap and boring and old to know when the signs are starting to show. And they aren’t.
Miles – aided by his companion of 27 years Malcolm Treece – and his new bandmates ; new being relative as Mark, Andres and Erica have been with the band six years now, the most stable lineup the band has ever had. The shows are as passionate and thrilling as they have ever been. Yes, you can watch this stuff on a TV, or maybe listen to it on a CD or an MP3, but nothing will ever quite come close to – or be as powerful – as the experience in the flesh. There will come a time when we are all too old to do this ever again, a time when other bands, bands you haven’t heard of, bands that don’t exist and made of people whose parents probably haven’t even met yet, will mean this, as much as this, to their fans, when there’s a moment when the songs that kept us going through shit days at work and heartbreaks and the daily, dull, drudgery that gets to be the days that make our lives ; and whilst all this has yet to come for some, for now, for me, we had this, and we lived this and we meant this. It’s not about press, or fame, or getting rich. It’s about the music, and the feeling, and sheer bloody joy of the moment. And there’s little enough joy in this world.
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actually..
Written by markreed on 2010-08-05 06:45:45
not the shortest Wonder Stuff show I've seen, come to think of it.. but the shortest, and most intense, headline show. |
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