Trash @ The End, London
11 February 2002
The End is a fairly bad venue for a live gig. The room where Bobby Conn is playing tonight is wide but not deep enough to hold the capacity crowd who have sweated their way into the bar area to witness Chicago’s favourite Judeo-Christian Edutainer develop his own particlar brand of FM Radio cabaret Art-Rock. Add in the lack of monitors for the group, and it’s quite a pleasant surprise when the sound is actually acceptable after all, even if the crush is a little close for comfort. When Conn and his band eventually sweep onstage, it’s to the stunned laughter of a crowd who’ve just witnessed the sartorial elegance of a group decked out specially for the night in charity shop shell suits and Scandinavian Black Metal face makeup.
What a show they deliver. With a band who can bring more sleazy Funk than Jamiroquai could ever exude, out-Rocking Rush and aiming for epic Prog heights last visited by High Tide on their cosmic sailing ships constructed from violin and lurching powerchords, the larger than life stage persona of Bobby lets rip in a maniacal range of facial expressions. Slicing wafer-thin pieces off the American Dream and serving them up with a side order of relish at the horrendous stupidity of it all, songs such as “A Taste Of Luxury” revel in the decadent excess of Western Civilization while stabbing cruelly at its overworked cultural heart – its Pop music. Copping riffs and grooves from Soul, Disco and Funk and slamming them into the deranged mania of the past’s radio friendly icons of oddity such as Harry Nielsson or Richard Harris is one thing, but then smashing them up again in a tightly-controlled rage of bombastic Hard Rock fury is another level of near-genius.
The twists and turns that the posing duo of Jonathan Lee Joe at the bass controls and Strawberry guitarist Mark Ruecker (introduced as being from Slade…) wrench from their instruments are equal to the face paint as they assume the required positions to match glare with mock-cock-rock postures. Drummer Colby Stark turns the clever thrick of hiding at the back under a wide stripe of mascara while delivering a fantastically complex set of rhythms and percussion hits, but it’s the glamourous duo of the demon violinist Monica BouBou and Bobby Conn in his flowery suit and Rock Star shades who hold the limelight. There is something particularly crazed about the shredding of image in the post-modern constumes which reflects the songs – the swinging intensity of “Free Love”, whith its question “Where have all the dirty, dirty people gone?”; “Whores”, which Bobby sings sweetly while dedicating it to all the people who have to work for a living; the ironically self-indulgent swaggering croon from baritone to falsetto of “Baby Man” or the hard-rocking thrash of “Pumper”, guitars held erect in stadium style. All beg, borrow and malform familiar shapes and moves into a thorough evisceration of Modern mores and imagery, and when Jonathan whips off his purple top to reveal a Union Flag vest, or Mark bashes a tambourine while still clad in turquoise shell suit and face paint, small moments of bizarre collage are acheived visually to match the music.
However, it’s the genuinely breathtaking classics of post-Pop insurrection which Bobby has penned that the band deliver full force tonight – the near blasphemous Rock Opera “Rise Up!” with its revelatory insight into the world of Jesus Christ Crackhead; the damned Funky “No Revolution” with its low and dirty analogue synth bass; and above all the storming shoutalong “United Nations”. Here is where the live experience of Bobby’s ambitious call to musical arms finds its peak of expression so far in songs which can be chanted, boogied and pogoed to in simultaneous release and immersion into the very fabric of revolutionary edutainment. With the manic gleam in Bobby’s eyes to generate some serious onstage drama, with the generous range of string arrangements and keyboard stabs from Monica BouBou scheming to pull the music into the stratosphere, it’s a performance which largely makes the following Trash Club seem somewhat flat and samey in its Indie Glamness. As the encore kicks in to “Never Get Ahead” and its observation that fellating the boss will do no good is set to the disembowelled and hyper-Funked remains of the Jackson Five, the jubilantly defiant yet still crowd-pleasing groove concludes a show from a legend in the making.
-Linus Tossio-
