there was no bloody excuse for this.
none. at all. my brittle fingers shake like angry winter twigs while
i type, as bruce banner would do pre-monstrous expansion. never before
have i been so abjectly disappointed by a band, by a collection of ugly
thuggish miscreants so apparently loathing of their audience, of
themselves and of the music they’ve created.
in what can only be described as a
grotesque mockery of the paying public who had travelled miles and
crammed uncomfortably into a tiny glasgow venue (the thirteenth note?)
to hear this seminal garage band play their classic songs, the bucky
rage willingly and unanimously pissed, shat and vomited in the face of
their fans and their distinguished legacy.
a band who none other than greil marcus
once described as the missing link between duane eddy twang and the
cramps stomp have descended so wantonly into farcical prog asides and
jazz fusion jaunts that i felt at some points on friday night that i
myself had also descended, into the ninth circle of aural hell.
case in point. the swaggering stomp of ditchdigger has been discarded in favour of what i can only describe as mars volta-style be-bop.
of the new material, the eighteen
minute excursion “into the nu-unknown” (to quote handsome al) that was
‘gods translucent spanner’ exemplifies everything that has gone wrong
with the band. i was immediately unsettled by the appearance of a
bassoon on stage, but this grim portent paled in comparison to the flat
cacophony that greeted the punters. what followed was a bizarre
melange of light jazz, scat vocals, santana-style guitar meanderings
and the aforementioned hideous bassoon (which consumed approximately
half the eighteen minutes with an interminable free solo).
to say the audience were shocked would
be an understatement. to say confused, befuddled and bewildered would
be equally undemonstrative of the total confusion swamping the crowd.
one girl, clearly high on goofballs danced a strange dance all on her
own as if the drugs had somehow found a beat among this godawful
nonsenserry.
watching these glasgow legends fall
apart so spectacularly was both maddening and saddening. some blame
the appearance of a new bass player, following the collapse in
relations with steadfast, rocksteady beat-meister lammy. the
accusations of pretentious experimentation however surfaced long before
this. a source close to the band revealed to me that there was talk of
a concept album last summer based around evolution and alien life
forms. handsome al, a staunch catholic initially rejected this as
blasphemous and tensions rose within the camp. the idea of a concept
album stuck however even if the theme changed - the role of god in a
godless world.
even the old songs have been bloodily
butchered. which has somehow led to the acappella rap and gospel choir
vocalisations now miserably scattered like dung pellets throughout ramona.
sanatogen versus tonic: the bucky rage
story, the four disc retrospective anthology released to acclaim last
year, marked their 40th year in the business. you’d be advised to
track this down and remember them as they were before the lurch into
personal and musical disaster, drug abuse, drunken brawls and creative
differences ruined them.
more accurate observations from the ghost that never lies.......