Review:'GINGER WILDHEART AND FRIENDS' 'THE FLEECE, Bristol, Tuesday 13 December 2011-12-1'
- Genre: 'Rock'
Our Rating:
GINGER is another of those ferociously independent and famously unstable musicians whose audiences are all in the room because they love who he is and love what he is capable of doing. Celebrity, fad, novelty, marketing, notoriety, currency … all to nought. The fans saw him ages ago, loved him, bought his records and carry on doing so. He relates to them, he tells them what's on his mind and he plays them his infectious rock and roll songs with everything he's got. They know he isn't going to pretend.
The set in Bristol ran for nearly two hours – and he had brought along two fearsomely good support bands just because he liked them. So value for money was immense and loving the music was clearly the only motive.
It wasn't THE WILDHEARTS on this tour, but a sort of trusty pick-up band of wild-hearted touring people and friends who shared and displayed the same 100% approach as the man himself. He told us that this tour would be the last for a while and that a rethink about taking this band to a new level was on his mind.
Former Wildheart "Random" Jon Poole was prominent in every sense, leading from bass at Stage Centre and camping it up like a circus barker. Victoria Liedtke was eye-candy to balance the general ugliness of the rest of the band and her singing and dancing were full-on terrific. Belting it out. Rich Jones and Chris Catalyst played crashing guitar and Denzel was the power-drummer. Everybody sang, and the harmonies were grand.
They tore through a first set of eleven massive tunes from the full Wildhearts' catalogue, with declarations of love and rants of frustration from the man himself. "You look beautiful tonight, I love you Bristol!" and "Why don't you fucking well clap? I'll paid money for you to just leave if you don't want to be here!" He doesn’t do holding back. He isn't Chris Martin. He hates "Vanilla Radio" (and we all sing along) or anything that's bland or ordinary. He's scary and wonderful and he writes shout-along tunes of immense energy. He has Newcastle in his blood and he loves to sing a good drinking song with a big crowd to join in.
Songs included Inglorious, The Hard Way, Suckerpunch, Splattermania, Mazel Tof Cocktail, Slaughtered Authors, The Revolution Will Be Televised, Vanilla Radio, Inner City Overture (a dark and subtle song), Can't Do Right For Doing Wrong, Cheers (the cover), Vernix, I Wanna Go Where the People Go, and 29 X The Pain.
After a longish break and a change of t-shirt (Exit_International for Hawk Eyes) Ginger was back on, rattling on with four encores. I snuck off to catch the bus home at the unlisted fifth and missed out on a minor ruck with an excited fellow who tried to clamber on stage to get a mic. With six musicians already up there, things were bound to go wrong with a seventh. And they did. Stage left road crew got bashed and bloody trying to rescue the mic and enough got unplugged to stop the show. Ginger had a profane rant at the miscreant and left, the crowd mustered one more round of applause and everyone went home. Rock and roll, eh?
Newport/Cardiff's Exit_International had opened the night with a scorching speed metal kind of a thing that featured two bass guitarist and a drummer. Screamo vocals and amazing delicacy in some of the playing were just startling. It shouldn’t work – but it damn well did. I saw them in 2010 at Leeds Festival, and was half impressed. A year on, a proper rock and roll stage with a packed house and I'm fully enrolled. There will be plenty of Festival slots in the summer for them, so the chances are you will get a chance to see them.
Hawk Eyes were the dizzying riffmeisters we already know about. More songs. More singing, more range –but still the sensationalist drumming and astonishing guitars 'n' bass slicing that makes the eyes water and the offals shake. They have a new EP right now, so if you didn't catch every note they played (or didn't believe it) there's chance to check it at leisure.
