I agreed to go to this record launch without listening to any of the band's music and judging them purely on the picture on the email invite In was sent that meant I recognised the singer Mark Thorne from his days in Bubblegum Screw who almost had a moment back in the Myspace days and guitarist who I'm sort of certain I've seen before although not sure who with, I was then happy to find out they had Healthy Junkies along for support who are always worth seeing live.
I totally missed the first band on getting in just before Healthy Junkies hit the stage, the last time I saw them at Rebellion last year I think it was the New Bass players second or third gig with them, well tonight it was the temporary drummers first gig as the regular tub thumper had gone down with Chickenpox, but you wouldn't of known it was deputy drummer as he fit right in.
They opened with Copycat which is one of their songs that always sounds good live and Nina Courson was quickly into her stride spitting bile at the imitators that litter the music scene while Phil Honey Jones guitar licks really got things going and most of the crowd were into the good trashy punk as they should be.
I think they did Never Want You Again next that got as close as they do to sounded grungy rather than trash punk and the newish bass player has really got into it and sounded great. Runaway Devil has some strong lyrics of a girl who ends up doing things she may regret later it's a great dark punk song about how life can go so very wrong.
Nina then announced they were playing a new song called Je Suis Free and it sounds a lot like the bands normal songs and during the song the sound and lighting guy changed the lights from white and blue to red so the band looked sleazier than they had and it helped the atmosphere or it should have done if one of the photographers at the gig hadn't reacted as he did at the end of the song by loudly having a go at the lighting guy and telling him to put the lights back, the cheek of it was gobsmacking.
The band ignored him as did the lighting guy and they launched into a great version of These Boots Are Made For walking not quite as good as Rats On Rafts recent version but still good and punky and owing more to Lydia Lunch's version than Nancy Sinatra's but at the end of the song the photographer did something that should have got him thrown out of the gig when he grabbed the microphone to bawl out the lighting guy. It was embarrassing and totally uncalled for he really should have put up and shut up as no one else seemed to agree with him.
Witches needed to cast a spell on the photographer but instead sounds more like a punky grunge song about all sorts of bad things happening as the lights got progressively deeper red and the stupid photographer continued to fume and make a fool of himself.
I have the next song down as Miss You but it might be called something else either way it was a very cool grungy trash punk song that worked nicely as we all tried to ignore the photographers continuing hissy fit before they closed with a wonderfully ramshackle cover of the old Wipers classic D-7 a song I first heard being murdered live by Nirvana many years ago. This time as the song went on it got progressively sloppy as if they were trying to fall apart just as the guest guitarist came on it was a cool and messy end to an otherwise very tight set.
After the break it was time for Neon Animal who are trying to bring back rock & roll from the dead or so the title of the band's debut album would have it, They chose to attempt this by opening the set by sort of fading into things slowly all trying to come together before Mark Thorne started singing he was dressed for the night in very tight olive green leather trousers and what looked like one of those silk jackets with shoulder pads that marks and sparks sells to middle aged mums to make them feel sexy of course on Mark it looked just a touch camp and that's no bad thing as what I guess was called Dreaming got going it lurched all over the place almost as much as Mark did.
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Mark then explained the first song wasn't from the album but the rest of the set would be the songs off the album and then went into Spin that lurched between being a bit Pychedelic Furs and a bit Electric Chairs the band seemed pretty together but Mark was trying hard to be an Iggyesque frontman while at times forgetting to make sure he was singing into the microphone.
Mark has a somewhat interesting idea of in-between song banter that was mostly about the kinds of gay sex he wants to be involved in before they played Kiss Like Dynamite that certainly had some of the bands fans singing along to it while Mark strutted around like a bargain basement David Johansen and the band sounded a bit like Smokey the notorious American 1970's S & M glam rockers sleazy and a little greasy.
They then did a song about being Transgender that had obvious nods to Jayne County without quite pulling it off. Bedtime Stories sadly wasn't a Demolition 23 cover but a sleazy junk shop glam song where Mark managed to keep missing his microphone as he was singing so while the band might have been a bit sloppy he was all over the place and not in a good way.
After another slightly off intro they did I'm Killing myself and everyone else is Helping Me which is a cool tune about getting fucked up on drugs and outré sex and how everyone wants to give you more drugs and more deviancy which if he's managed to keep all the vocals in the Richard Butler style register of his voice could have been great but it veered off like a junkie in the middle of a month long binge.
After a semi decent sales pitch it was time for the title track of the debut album Bring Back Rock & Roll From the dead well on the strength of this performance it will remain on life support as this was more like they tried to give Rock and Roll a good jolt of electricity but forgot to plug the defibrillator in.
From Hero To Zero had some decent lyrics buried in the vocals that again were a bit messier than was good for the song but the band were gelling like a good updating of David Kubinec's Rats. Do It Again or whatever the next song was sort of passed me by a little bit as by this point it was kind of obvious that Neon Animal were no-where near as good as Healthy Junkies had been.
They closed with Gimme More that should be the perfect song to get an audience begging for more and while it sounded like another Jayne County rip-off it didn't get me going wild for an encore and as the band didn't leave the stage and worked the audience enough to just about justify one more song that they dragged most of Healthy Junkies up for a run through Vive Le Rock the old Adam & the Ants favourite that was certainly a good fun way to finish an ok set.
For me at the moment Neon Animal sound far better on record than they do live and I doubt if they have what it takes to Bring Back Rock & Roll From The Dead unless the band's singer and frontman Mark Thorne can manage a far more focussed vocal performance than this one.
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