Half an hour into the Rezillos’ set, a mosh pit is forming.
By my reckoning the total age of the drunk,bald and balding middle-aged men in the mosh pit is close to four figures.
I can’t believe we’re all still here and still (knees allowing) pogoing. Soon it will be the fiftieth anniversary of punk. Think about THAT for a minute
Back in ’77, The Rezillos … stood out. It sounded punky. But the singing was different. They used to have a Dalek on stage. They had boy/girl singers. They sang in Scottish.
John Peel played their debut single Can’t Stand My Baby to death on his show and it was GREAT. A bit different from the snarling of the first wave of punk bands to hit.
The support tonight is the immaculately named Dick Venom & The Terrortones. A rocky, horror-influenced noise, and a Rocky Horror influenced frontman giving it loads. We love you, Dick.
The Rezillos love doing this and being here and the original cartoony, kitschy concept of the band means they can bridge the years quite easily.
Of the original band, bassist William Mysterious is no longer with us and principal songwriter and guitarist Jo Callis was recruited by the Human League after the original band split in 1978, but original drummer Angel Patterson remains and as long as the band’s faces Eugene Reynolds and his wraparound sunglasses and Fay Fife (greatest joke name ever – “Where are you from?” “Ah’m fae Fife”) are up front then it doesn’t matter who’s on stage with them.
In fact, I ended up on stage with them myself after a particularly big crowd surge. It was that or fall over and I chose safety and brief rock and roll stardom. The band didn’t seem to mind. Things may have gone differently if it was Kevin Rowland or John Lydon up front…
It very briefly flashed through my mind that this is how Chas Smash of Madness and Bex from Happy Mondays got started, and I contemplated staying up there and having a dance but bottled it. Sigh.
The new tunes they played were surprisingly great. No deviation from the template here, Take Me To The Groovy Room, another one whose name I didn’t catch and the and ??? as well as recent single No.1 Boy :
Excellent nostalgic gig. Yeah, the sound wasn’t perfect. Yeah, they’re getting on a bit now – but then down in the mosh pit so are us middle-aged dreamers, dreaming of our youth when we had a bit of fire in our bellies where now we just have 40-plus years’ worth of beer there.
Beats the hell out of growing old gracefully.
You can hear a couple of old Rezillos tracks, and a live version of the new track Take Me To The Groovy Room on this week’s Beat City podcast here:
Also includes tracks from the new albums by …
The Moulettes …
Kate Tempest …
and Lee “Scratch” Perry …
And a themed section involving songs about the finest of all the fruits