The Garage, London
7 May 2002
There’s been a fair amount of good press come Bobby Conn‘s way since he last visited these shores in February. Appreciative album and live reviews in the national papers. A full page photo (wearing a lurid 80’s shellsuit) and enthusiastic write-up from Ted Kessler in the 4th of May edition of the NME. Badly Drawn Boy Damon Gough‘s description of The Golden Age as “the best album he’d heard in a decade,” can’t exactly have hindered the spreading of the Word either, for reasons of his celebrity if nothing else. Then there’s the upcoming show supporting Supergrass at the Royal Festival Hall on the 28th of June as part of David Bowie‘s otherwise appallingly billed Meltdown. All in all, it seems that Bobby’s star is on the rise.
I have to say, The Garage is one of my favourite venues. Admittedly the sound is only any good if you stand in exactly the right place. The apex of an equilateral triangle drawn between the left and right speakers is just right though, and tonight there’s plenty of volume to fill this mid-sized venue. As always, the band’s strong sense of collective identity is ably expressed by their matching dress. Tonight it’s lime-green vests and tight yellow trousers. Ok, so the vests look a little like Y-fronts but that just adds to the overall eccentricity of the their appearance. This is the third time I’ve seen Bobby play this year and also the third change of costume I’ve seen the band employ, which says a lot about their playful sense of on-stage presence as well as their obvious desire to entertain.
Musically speaking, the live Bobby Conn experience serves up substantially more Sabbath in the mix than on record. The band are a versatile machine well-oiled by continuous touring. Their ability to retain a certain looseness, as well as the power to instantly lock into each other when tightness is required, means the songs are delivered with an offhand experimental ease that keeps them sounding fresh every time. Clearly this is a band with a fittingly perverse sense of playfulness as to what constitutes a “pop song”. Hence the single that they’re currently touring, “Winners”, gets easily the most avant-garde rendering of the night, its tight white-boy Funk suddenly turning into epic, surging drone-rock. For that alone, you gotta love them…
Of course, the cause for admiration hardly ends there. Monica Bou-Bou‘s omnipresent violin is as essential to the sound as ever, forming an electrifying counterpoint to the guitars whilst remaining adaptable enough to play lines otherwise expressed on the far slicker, yet no less wonderful, album versions of the songs. It is Bobby’s voice, however, that impresses above and beyond everything else. As I was trying to explain to some friends of mine before the performance: “Yes… he really does sing that high.” Every high note he hits and every vocal swoop he makes brings home just how great a vocalist Bobby is. To the few acquaintances of mine who didn’t seem to “get” the levels of irony at work on his last two albums, here is the answer to the question, “does he really mean it?” Every last fucking word. There’s no doubting the passion in that voice.
Of many highlights, “The Golden Age”, “Winners”, “White Bread” and a new song (provisionally titled “Relax” on the spot by Bobby) that follows on from “No Revolution”, catch this reviewer’s attention. The mutant Jackson Five Funk of “Never Gonna’ Get Ahead” remains their undisputed finest moment though; a two-fingered salute that puts the Man firmly in his place whilst sending the crowd into a strutting, hip-shaking frenzy with a sense of impossible sureness about itself that makes it sound like a hugely popular Disco-anthem from an alternate universe. Whether Bobby Conn’s music makes it over to a more mainstream audience remains to be seen. Undoubtedly it is “good-time music,” but this is party music with a dark barb of lyrical irony rarely seen in its more popular contemporaries. Live, at least, Bobby is irresistibly entertaining. One can only hope more converts to his cause will swiftly follow.
Those Supergrass fans won’t know what hit them…
-Sean Kitching-
