The nation swelters obligingly thru' a summer of hate and vicious bigotry courtesy of Fleet St. and No. 10, whilst popsville makes out like this was the second summer of love. Fine, if all you want is a budget-sized behemoth or a pin up in a punt. But if the idea is to keep its precious little head down, popsville should chew on this one: the only significant talent of pacifists is to bruise friggin' easily. If the dominant national colour last year was red, white and true blue, this year Britian's rank and file came out in one big purple blotch.
We've been seduced, through insidious, breathless entreaties to 'tighten our belts', into trussing ourselves like oven-ready poultry, gagged and bound and ready for sacrifice. Thatcher's made turkeys of us all.
The least you could expect of those golden pop people propped against the bar the the Camden Palace is that they'd tighten their cummerbunds in sympathy; the most you could expect is that they'd offer any analysis of what's going on, like mebbe pen a couple of shoddily scanned lines to tell the class what's happening on the High Stree instead of 'What I did on my holidays'.
That sickening awesome SILENCE that rent the airwaves sometime round the Argies getting whopped last yaer was the sound of pop coming clean. Overwhelmingly oblivious to this country's first non-Diplock war since 1945, post-Pistols pop finally quit pretending it was reporting from the frontline when all is was doing was ridin' on the grooveline.
Me, I'd rather have both; the real golden pop people have always had both the 'front and the groove, but sometimes you have to settle for plain agression, for anyone that's kicking, for a bank like The Sid Presley Experience, who make a magnificent noise that, for the while, is dissent enough.
I could tell you that The Fridge was near empty, 14 people in a suitably cold, bare, white room watching four skinny blokes in black jumping around onstage, but I won't. Let me just say that 'Public Enemy No. 1' was glorious. If V.I. Lenin had arrived at The Finland Station armed with a Fender Stratocaster and a fuzz box, he'd have started his gig pretty much the same.
The Sid Presleys have swotted up on their Frankie Ford B-sides, acquired an intimate knowledge of '50s rock 'n' roll and then messed up the scam beautifully by playing a Chris Spedding cover. The shame! They succeed admirably in sounding nothing like '50s rock'n'roll. They kick instead like Metal Urbain, and in so doing prove the guitar once again as the handsome bastard noise it is.
Here, it's a violent monotone and The Sid Presley Experience is a vainglorious protest--and I'd sooner see Weller back to his outstanding, upstanding best, a wealth of upful, belligerent bands and oh, a thousand proles storming the Winter Palace with McFadden & Whitehead's 'Ain't No Stoppin Us Now' on their Sony Walkmans--but the next couple of months this'll do me OK.
The Sid Presley Experience are a spark to fuel the fire . . . The Summer of pop is dead. Love live the winter of discontent!
- X moore