The
Stranglers/The Godfathers: UEA Norwich, Monday 25th March
Peter Coyne has had a great tour
he tells us, but he’s not having a good night tonight. Despite his opening
rally of ‘let’s do it!’ the Norwich massive haven’t responded well, much to his
chagrin. Twenty-five minutes in he tells us we’re a ‘tough fucking crowd’.
To be fair it’s a blameless
situation. While the locals can be forgiven for a lack of energy, coming in
stone cold sober from sub-zero temperatures on a dismal Monday night, the band
on stage are working their arses off to produce the kind of full-on feral
garage punk that ought to be taking the roof off anywhere, anytime.
Despite their name The Godfathers
exude a nuanced air of menace which is more Reggie Kray than Vito Corleone,
deploying a Jimmy Pursey-meets-the Stooges combination of emphatically accented
raw-throated vocals over a hard beat and penetrating guitar licks, the latter
veering between guttural R&B and psychedelic rock with flashes of surf
twang. A combination like that, and the songs to go with it, can’t but win out
in the end.
‘I Can’t Sleep Tonight’, the first
number from new release ‘Jukebox Fury’ is dedicated to the brothers Ramone for stylistic
reasons that are soon made clear, and starts to work the thaw; while the
long-lease they took out on Lennon’s ‘Cold Turkey’ thirty years back turns out
to still be paying dividends.
By the time they serve up their
old Syd Presley classic ‘Hup Two Three’ and climax with a rousing ‘Birth School
Work Death’ there’s no doubt they’ve rammed their point home.
If nothing else they’ve warmed the
crowd well for The Men in Black. After nearly forty years in the game The
Stranglers have so many hits under their belt that they could comfortably turn
out year after year as a straightforward nostalgia act, no questions asked. It’s
to their credit then that they produce a set mixing the familiar with the unfamiliar;
the latter including both new material such as ‘Mercury Rising’ and
half-forgotten back catalogue entries.
Of these some are pleasingly
appropriate, particularly ‘Norfolk Beach’, and others less so (‘Nubiles’?
Please! Did Jimmy Saville die in vain?). Such is the band’s level of confidence
and slick professionalism though even the casual punters who have come for a
sing-a-long show no impatience with the mix.
The reception is warm from the off,
and if ‘Toiler on the Sea’ and ‘Goodbye Toulouse’ would hardly have topped the
popular poll the opening bars of ‘Grip’ set the hall alight for the first time.
It seems almost cruel to say it, but Baz Warne has occupied centre stage with
the band for so long that Hugh Cornwall seems little more than a distant
memory. On the other hand the unexplained absence of septuagenarian drummer Jet Black is disturbing, and when he makes an impact
substitution as a breathy ‘European Female’ drifts to a close the welcome is
tinged with some degree of relief.
He sticks around for the rest of
the party which features everything we came for: a creepily dramatic ‘Nice and
Sleazy’, full-on blasts of ‘Something Better Change’ and ‘Straighten Out’ and,
inevitably, a ‘No More Heroes’ to wave us off back into the stubborn and
unwelcome late-winter weather.
Neil B.
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