“The Spaghetti Incident”. I was always going to mention it, so we might as well get it over with at the start. The album, in more ways than one is why I am here tonight. It was not just my window into the Dead Boys but punk as a whole. The danger, the music and the ethos.
But first, Thee Acid Tongue. They are the local support this evening and they do a mighty fine job. Singer Tracey Skarzynska joined the band last year when they released the “Kinky Liquorice” EP and they are something of a local supergroup. Certainly, that shows in songs like “Bullet” and “Lake Of Tears” and if ever there was a local support band made for this show, it’s these right here. Punk lifers, the set a mixture of old and new material, is perfectly pitched for the audience here.
London’s Desperate Measures haven’t played the second city for a couple of years. When they did, opening for the professionals I wrote: “Desperate Measures are just loving being back onstage.” And even here tonight that is still the overriding feeling you get from watching the band. Eugene Butcher and the boys simply love playing these songs. And they are fine tracks too. “Pocket” and the even better “Rich-tual” dedicated to those who are rich and want to keep us down have all the ingredients that a modern punk song should have. “Lost Angels” is more melodic, while their latest single “Sublime Destruction” suggests that their new record, due soon, could be a little bit special with its extra bass groove. As ever, “Seven Sisters” is a highlight, infused as it is with a little bit of London smog, and guitarist Gaff, once of MV faves The Glitterati can still knock out a riff with the best of them. Butcher has been fronting this band in one form and another for 30 years, starting in his native New Zealand but the sound always belonged in the capital. That said, when they end with The Stooges “I Wanna Be Your Dog” they prove that punk rock is essentially a universal language. With a new album and loads more tour dates due, Desperate Measures have much to look forward to this year, and this 40-minute set shows they are more than up to the challenge.
But back to 1993. I was in the grip of a severe Guns N Roses spell they were due to release a covers album. The first single from it, was a track called “Ain’t It Fun” so I began to investigate. I found tales of violence and debauchery, this band surely could not be real?
Fast forward 31 years. and The Dead Boys are standing right in front of us here. With just one original member, Cheetah Chrome (who is 69 today) but still armed with 15 of the filthiest, nastiest songs you can imagine.
They bookend the set with classics. Opening with “Sonic Reducer” – the very first track on their first album from 1977. The title of which resonates now: “Young Loud and Snotty”. Let’s be honest, they are only two of those things these days. But watching singer Jake Hoult here, as he stands in the crowd and on the shoulders of some to sing it they have retained all the danger you would want.
And that remains the case for the rest of it, too. When they play “What Love Is” your feeling is that you probably don’t want to find out – especially given that they follow it up with “Caught With The Meat In Your Mouth”……
They were always musically adept, and they slow things down with “Not Anymore” which only serves to make “Ain’t Nothing to Do” sound even more powerful as Hoult spits it out.
And the frontman, who makes a big point of mentioning the spirit of Stiv Bators (which of course hangs over the 65 minute set) is energetic as they come, performing “High Tension Wire” swinging upside down from the ceiling beam, something akin to Michael Monroe.
They end the set with “Down In Flames” – which features a brilliant piece of lo-slung guitar from Chrome, but return for an encore, which includes “Calling On You” and, of course the one I’d heard in the last millennium and which got me liking punk rock. It has lost none of its power and its barely concealed fury.
However, there is the hook line, and Bators may have tragically been taken too young, but Chrome is here and the music is here, the spirit is too, and it can still shock. Fact that Hoult notes: “No one understood what punk rock was” he spat during the course of the set. “But let me tell you what we are. We are the fucking future of the human race”.
On one hand that might be a scary thought, but actually, maybe we’d be better off. If punk rock was supposed to die, it is ironic that nobody bothered to tell Dead Boys. Because, on this evidence and almost 50 years on, they are still as good as it gets.
