This is my first visit to the Islington Assembly Halls, part of Islington Town Hall and at the heart of one of the most hated councils in London. But even hate figures like this council get things right once in a while and the decision to allow gigs in this hall is one of them. It's a great venue with a nice big stage and good acoustics and the sort of sprung floor that bounces as people walk around. I had to move at one point as where I was standing felt like I was on a trampoline it was so springy!
Still who better to see in an establishment venue than THE DEVIANTS: Mick Farren's extremely long running band although this is mainly the classic line up rather than original line-up. But hey, let's face it a chance to see them live is cool either way.
They open up as a 4 piece sans Farren who is obviously still doing his make-up backstage or something similar and kick things off with a great version of Police Car, the old Larry Wallis classic with Jaki Windmill and Duncan Sanderson sharing the vocals and, it has to be said, they look like they have all lived full lives. Nonetheless, it sounds damn good and most of the old heads in the room are singing along.
Then Mick Farren saunters onstage and perches himself on a stool and sings People Call Us Crazy. No I can't believe they would do such a thing Mick, but Andy Calhoun, resplendent in his leather trousers, unleashes a cool guitar solo as Mick tells us why he's crazy. Then we are onto Billy The Monster, who could be a person or a reference to a certain narcotic (who can tell?) but this is proper old school agit-pop and keeping with the Pharms, Mick tells us the next song was inspired by reading an article about someone who made Bright Blue Methedrine. It sounded like they might have imbibed or wanted to on this showing, with even Russell Hunter's drums seeming to speed up as they got more of the Medication Blues.
Keeping with the band's counter cultural roots they did Living In A Police State, a song that seems rather current no matter when it was written and good to see some shit stirring going on in the town hall of a borough that loves its cameras and bullying tactics more than most. Perhaps they also need to hear new song The Fury Of The Mob before they arrive to tear down the tower of babel we may or may not be living beneath. Whatever, the song also had some great tribal drumming from Jaki and Russell.
Drugs are, of course, never far away from this band's agenda and Cocaine and Gunpowder are a combination that kills almost as much as this song does with a cool guitar solo from Andy Calhoun before Mick gives us a choice of what the penultimate song of the set should be. I'm glad that the rest of the audience agreed with me so they played I'm Waiting For the Man with Duncan taking the lead vocals on a version that sounded like it was based far more on the Ziggy Stardust version than the Velvet Underground's with missing lyrics and repeated verses that don't usually repeat. No matter what, I love this song and it was a cool version. Oh and yes I'm sure someone will point out that the Deviants' covered it like this before The Dame did, but that's just my frame of reference for the song.
They closed with Time To Leave now or whatever their final song was called. It was a great set closer of a song with a nice false ending and a good way for these old Legends to depart the stage once more. Take the chance to see them live if you can as in Mick Farren's own words they won't be alive much longer!!
After the break, on came CHUCK PROPHET & THE MISSION EXPRESS whose Temple Beautiful tour is now in its second year and as a sign of how well the album has done they are playing to about twice as many people who showed up at Dingwalls for the first London show of this tour last year. It is also one of the largest venues Chuck has headlined in London since leaving Green On Red all those years ago: at this rate he'll headline Wembley in 2025!
From the opening Dollar Bill Blues it's clear they are in fine form and ready to give us a good show and once Chuck has told the sound guy to turn it up everything sounds so good that we won't even need any Credit to enjoy it. But we will enjoy Credit as Chuck begs for a little credit. Well the last year he has got plenty of it and as he shares solos and licks with James De Prato on Doubter Out Of Jesus, there are not many doubters in the Assembly rooms. Yes, the band are certainly back on the angry Island once more but it didn't sound like the had to negotiate a Storm Across the Sea to get here and it just sounded crystal clear and cool.
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No one was on auto-pilot for the Automatic Blues but we were all more than ready to sing along to the Temple Beautiful. I've never heard a Chuck Prophet crowd sound so happy to sing along as they did to this great version of it. Who Shot John? is of course a good question and the song sort of gives us the answer as Stephanie Finch's Keyboards accentuate the song's denouement.
Well as the weather is finally nice, Summertime Thing seems fitting and as Chuck says before they play it they have a song for every occasion and in this case they have the hottest day of the year so far to sing about.
White Nights Big City is dedicated to the late great Harvey Milk who was one of the first American politicians to talk about gay marriage back when that was good enough for people to want to kill you for suggesting such a thing. Then we got a tasty version of Sonny Liston's Blues. He may have been a man of few words but this isn't a tune of few notes: it's a great song followed by one of the big hits from the last album, The Left Hand and the Right Hand about the Mitchell brothers and any other set of warring brothers like the Davies and Gallagher brothers.
Time for some Baseball and time to get Willie May's Up At Bat once more for another solid innings to lead us all to start singing along to a great version of Shake Some Action: a song guaranteed to go down well in London. James De Prato then put on his Twin neck guitar for Castro Halloween, a very cool version it was too.
The Stephanie stepped out from behind her keyboards and came up front to sing All Is Forgiven, a song that sounded real nice. Chuck then didn't repeat last year's most head scratching moment when he brought on Dave Kusworth for his Bowie tribute and instead he sang a duet with Stephanie, taking on The Merseys' Sorrow that Bowie covered on Pin-Ups. A very good version it was as well. They decided it was time to Do Something Wrong, well isn't it always? They then closed the set with the now classic You Did as we all need to know who put the bomp in the shooby dooby bomp!!
After a huge round of applause it didn't take long before they were back for a well-earned encore that opened with Chuck telling us about his recent Chuck off with Mr Berry when the other Chuck had to ask what key Tulane was in even though he wrote the song!! Still we got a damn fine version of it and they followed it with a long version of I Call Your Name which broke down in the middle for a verse and couple of choruses of Dr Feelgood's classic She Does It Right before going back to I Call Your Name. Chuck also told us to walk up Upper Street to the Hope and Anchor to kiss the pavement outside in tribute to the venue!! This was a fitting end to another brilliant Chuck Prophet show.
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