Massive Wagons
London The Dome
The aim is true for New Wave Of Classic
Rock spearheads.
Momentum is a funny thing. Ten years in to
a career that’s fizzled along without showing
much sign of truly detonating, Massive Wagons
suddenly have it.
Last year’s Full Nelson was a giant leap for the
band, and now a packed Dome suggests the
disciples are growing in number. It’s a performance
that fizzes along with uncommon energy, from the
opening blast To k y o to the closing notes of Fee Fi Fo
Fum. Livewire frontman Baz Mills leaps and bounds
and shakes hands and flips his bowler hat gracefully
into the wings, while guitarist Adam Thistlethwaite
is one of those rare guitarists who can play fast and
furious without ever losing form.
Best of all is Northern Boy, which shows the
Wagons’ sincere talent for pop. Take away the guitars
and the rattling drums and the melody is pure boy
band, and this really isn’t a criticism. In an age when
so many new bands allow the riffs to do all the heavy
lifting, neglecting the parts that actually matter,
Massive Wagons are a band capable of writing
choruses built to stick around.
Like The Wildhearts – who Baz pays tribute to
onstage – they understand that beyond all the
volume and the bluster and the effervescent stage
presence, it’s the songs that really, truly matter. And
that’s why you know they’ll be okay.
Fraser LewryDaddy Long Legs
London 229
The spirit of the blues is smashed
through a punk prism.
For those lamenting the hijacking of the blues
by cruise ship sailing technicians, the return of
Brooklyn trio Daddy Long Legs for their biggest ever
London headline date comes as welcome relief. Not for
them tasteful presentation and measured tones when
there’s hell to be raised via an onslaught of sustained
hollerin’, stompin’ and testifyin’.
Tracing a lineage that embraces both Sonny Boy
Williamson and The Cramps, Daddy Long Legs’
elemental approach is as gloriously absurd as it is
thrilling. Josh Styles’ cymbal-less kit is reduced to just
a bass drum, floor tom and snare, and augmented by
maracas instead of sticks in his right hand. Guitarist
Murat Akturk doesn’t so much slide his guitar as drag
it through dust and dirt, while frontman Brian Hurd
blows a mean and distorted harp in between bouts
of crazed singing.
The call-and-response at the heart of the feral
Long John’s Jump achieves the feat of the band
simultaneously playing against and with each other,
and it isn’t too long before static bodies heed the
threesome’s call. Newer cuts Winners’ Circle and Bad
Neighbourhood display a growth in songwriting and
presentation that allow for space and dynamics, while
never losing sight of aiming the music at the neck
down. As the coruscating Motorcycle Madness zooms
by last, the gyrating crowd is theirs once more.
Julian MarszalekDamo Suzuki
Laugharne Festival, Wales
The man from Japan shows he still Can.
“This is my support act. Great, eh?” says Keith
Allen, who’s following the former Can singer
this evening – much later this evening, with a talent
contest at this ever-diverse music and literary
festival. It would be wrong, very wrong to call Damo
Suzuki the Ken Dodd of Krautrock, but in the sets he
performs on the global “never ending tour”, he has
undertaken since war broke out in Iraq, he does run
to length. Not that that’s any bad thing, least of all
tonight. It’s Suzuki’s long-held custom to arrive in
town and play with local musicians, creating on-the-
spot improvisations after the briefest of
consultations and soundcheck. Tonight, that means
New Order’s Steve Morris on drums, various
ex-members of Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci and, late on,
Nik Turner, formerly of Hawkwind.
This is improv, but not free improv, more like jams
created from scratch. The collective hit a cyclical
groove, Morris pumping out the back beat as guitars
and keyboards converse in repetitive phrases, as
Suzuki vocalises over the top in non-glish, hissing,
growling Louis Armstrong-like, a much thicker, more
weathered voice than the airier one he had with Can.
On invisible cues the music shifts direction, changes
tack and colour, but overall the impression of an infinite
groove is maintained with extraordinary coherence
and tonal invention. Next stop for Suzuki: Mexico City.
No end till the war’s end.
David StubbsIt takes Joe Bonamassa 70 minutes to bid so
much as a “good evening”. In lesser hands
that might be the mark of an aloof performer. In
Bonamassa’s, he’s simply getting on with things.
Oh, and we’re not even halfway there.
When he does chat it’s to tell a frankly implausible
tale of sweary seventysomethings and to remember
a 2009 Albert Hall show: “I’m ten years older, I’m ten
pounds heavier but I’m just as tall.” Then he gets on
with things again, for another 80 minutes, with none
of that interval nonsense.
Bonamassa is a fabulous guitarist, of course, but
backed by a watertight band including drumming
legend Anton Fig and Double Trouble keyboard player
Reese Wynans, the non-showman makes good show,
whether cascading through Muddy Waters’s Tiger In
Your Tank or wrapping himself in Robert Cray-style
troubles on Just Cos You Can Don’t Mean You Should.
And, double torch-passing, he plays one of Alvin Lee’s
guitars and duets with a wizard 14-year-old called Toby
on Albert King’s I Get Evil.
The best comes at the very end, though, where the
windswept Mountain Time plateaus early and stays
there for the best part of 20 minutes as Bonamassa’s
power and intricacy merges with wailing backing
vocals, pounding keyboards and tootling brass, all
without sacrificing the song’s essential yearning.
He’s getting better and better.
John AizlewoodJoe Bonamassa
London Royal Albert Hall
It’s a marathon not a sprint.
‘A fabulou
s guitarist,
an^
d he’s getti
ng
better and
better.’Joe Bonamassa:
a man of music,
not words.CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 109REVIEWS
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