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Go West young gun — where tonight it's far from badland-clubland and more like the home of unproductive, undergraduate, unrest. A cash not chaos night — for our most courageous men and women — serves as a preliminary to the Labour (Party Party!) Jobs For Youth tour.
First to put their collective weight behind the cause were The Men They Couldn't Hang. Unfortunately having the right motives is no estimate of musical worth. I don't want to persecute some hapless indie band as if they're the cause of Third World famine, I just found TMTCH painfully grating. Maybe they should have hung the soundman.
Next, battered and bruised but NEVER beaten were the Striking Miners' South Wales Choir. I only wish my nan, a battling miner's wife, had been well enough to see this — it was a truly sublime moment. All it needed was The Beast Of Bolsover to introduce them as they sang shoulder to shoulder, taking us from W.M.C. style solo "Solitaire" to "Comrades-In-Arms" with real stout-hearted vision.
"Follow that," someone challenged the man jarringly lodged between Bowie and James Brown in my record box — young William Steven Bragg. Neither Washington nor Moscow but international Barking (woof, woof). Some say he's a prole for the trendies, a horrendous Right-On Sid mutant; others say he's nothing more than an entertaining diversion. I stick by him.
With that nose, if he was on hard drugs he'd inhale the whole of Peru. But he can sniff out rich Top-Ten hits like "New England"; the wishful Top-Ten hit "Between The Wars" (whatsay a Trace Ullman cover?) or "Times Like These." Trumpeter Dave "Hot Lips" Woodhead invited up for "Like Soldiers Do," melted magically. A hectic heckler yelled, "Bring On Neil Kinnock." Bragg's cocky retort: "Neil Kinnock doesn't play the trumpet — it keeps falling off the fence!" Choice!
Elvis Costello appears to have been over-indulging himself, clock that triple chin. What next? Elvis wearing an unintentionally skin-tight yashmac (like his namesake). The old Joe 90 lookalike's set was a strange rag-bag, which suffered from the glaringly absent Afrodiziak and TKO horn backing.
Don't know about you, blue, but for me the more pacey pieces jangled and jolted in a discordant row — but his glorious crowning attractions were with the mellow, moody "Alison," the aptly poignant "Why Do You Throw Dirt In My Face" and, as a third journey back to the stage, a vitriolic, vibrato version of "Shipbuilding" — so emotive, it nearly broke your heart. The miners deserved something THAT special.
Later on, as I went East, nearing home, I ignored The Sun van unloading today's "news" (tomorrow's chip-wrappers); I ignored the planners' dreams gone wrong; I walked proud... knowing I'd seen more dignity than a Daimler full of bishops.
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