In the week before this sold-out show at The Garage three artists that I saw at The Garage sadly died, so I will dedicate this review to the memory of Mike Delanian from Gallon Drunk, David Johansen of The Harry Smiths and of course New York Dolls and Johnny Green who gave a reading while opening for Chuck Prophet & The Spanish Bombs in July 2011. The DJ for this evening's show was DJ Scratchy who used to DJ for The Clash back in the day and who made a touching speech about Johnny between the two bands sets.
Our Man In The Field were already on by the time I got into The Garage having said hello to half the people in the queue outside.
Our Man In The Field are a 7 piece country rock band with a Cellist and interesting percussion, the first song I heard all of was Come On that was extremely well played, very tasteful, just a touch bland to my ears. Feel Good is a sentiment and emotion we can all do with more of currently, it had a good central Tom Pettyish guitar solo.
Doing Alright seemed to go down well but sort of passed me by a little bit, then they finished with the monumental, 4 minutes too long, I Am The Man or whatever it was called, it was so tight and well-constructed, they showed they have the potential to be the next Noah & The Whale, being just bland enough to possibly go huge, just not for me.
Soon enough it was time for Chuck Prophet & His Cumbia Shoes to perform a set unlike any Chuck has played, in the last 30 years that he has been playing shows at The Garage, firstly the band all had matching suits looking very dapper, his current 6 piece band who feature two members of the Mission Express with 3 members of ?Qiensave? Chuck's Californian Tex-Mex band, they opened the show with a cover of Eddie Cochran's C'mon Everybody that showed this was going to have a different feel to previous shows at the Garage, it was scintillating with that Cumbia/Mariachi twist.
The first song they played from the bands current Wake The Dead album was Same Old Crime that has some interesting percussion, they got a groove going in time to Wake The Dead, Chuck threatened to make us all walk the plank while James De Prato's guitar was going all Duane Eddy on us.
Wish Me Luck was the first of the older songs they played, this had a cool melodica solo and seemed elevated being re-worked in this way. Chuck then announced the first Cumbia dance interlude, the band went into the super funky Dance Pajaritos with some call and response from the band as this got groovy.
Jesus Was A Social Drinker came to life in unexpected ways, with the additional twanging interaction Chuck had between his guitar and James guitar, that sounded so different to previous versions, it was great to hear this recent classic given extra life.
Betty's Song from the new album took a serious message and wrapped it up in a cool twisting dance groove, First Came The Thunder had the band bringing it's best live storm of effects and rumbling thunder percussion.
Give The Boy A Kiss has a dubbed out for all eternity twist or three, Chuck stretched himself musically and brought us all along for the ride. Chuck made some pertinent points about the insanity of being able to walk into a shop and just buy a gun, like you can in the USA, as part of the intro to Killing Machine his plea for sanity and more gun control to stop all the madness of spree killings.
Sally Was a Cop is the chilling song Chuck wrote with Alesandro Escovedo about a woman who went from Cop to Soldier to being part of a massacre this is a chilling song about the dark side of the war on drugs.
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Chuck then introduced a new song they had written on tour, within one run through of the main lyric the entire Garage joined in on Elon Musk Is A Wanker and would have carried on chanting it all night, had the band not gone into In The Shadows (For Elon) that wonders why he wants to split the world apart so badly, sadly this will be the first of many songs asking similar questions of Elon.
One Lie For Me, One Lie For You dips into the current trouble we all have of sorting out truth from the lies we are constantly told, they twist it around with some colossal percussion and a thumping bassline. West Memphis Moon made clear they are a long way from home, Chuck sings about another terrible miscarriage of justice and the West Memphis 3.
Chuck then tapped into his personal aquifer to turn Sugar Into Water while I tried to knock the phone the bloke next to me was watching the football on out of his hand, I really should have started a mosh pit to do the job properly when The Garage went mad at the start of Ford Econoline Van that was a great sing along version with some great twists.
They kept the party atmosphere going in a brilliant version of You Did (Bomp Shooby Dooby Doo) a song that has become a huge great call and response classic, the Cumbia Shoes elevated it another level or two this was magnificent as a set closer.
That they would play an encore was never in doubt, but the surprise was that for the first time I can remember in over 30 years of Chuck Prophet solo shows he played a Green On Red song, one of the ones I would have heard 40 years ago when I first saw Chuck playing in Green On Red, he started singing Time Ain't Nothing solo with James and the rest of the band slowly joining in and bringing out the zydeco edge while most of the audience sang long with big grins on our faces.
What could follow that, well a brilliant dark and decadent crowd-pleasing Wooly Bully a song that just seems to scream party time for everyone to dance along with them. Then by way of thanking us all for showing up for another great Chuck Prophet show and after the band intros they closed the night with It's A Good Day To Be Alive a great life affirming song that no matter how dark and disastrous the world around us might be if we can find some great music to listen too we can still be grateful and happy to be alive.
I left this show with the feeling that I had just seen one of the greatest shows Chuck has played in London over the last 40 years I have been seeing him play live, which is quite some achievement, that seems to be reflected in many long time fans reaction to Chuck And His Cumbia Shoes, here's hoping they come back soon.
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