Sunday 07/10/07 The Rezillos, Dark Water, The Dead Class @ Carling Aacdemy, Liverpool

The evening was full of promise and punk. The spectre of Nancy Spungen loomed subconsciously. She was going to be ****ed off by the end of the night. Amused but ultimately ****ed off.
 
The Dead Class rioted through material from their debut album ‘Boo’ and threw in some new tracks to boot. The crowd was small but enthusiastic as Villy and co went from the manic mayhem of ‘My Machine’ to the deceptively bordering on romantic ‘All For You’. Watching the three of them in action is like watching a boy racer in the ASDA car park pulling hand break turns. You wonder how much faster it can all get before something gives out. Definitely a must see.
 
Dark Water had a hard act to follow. Although they all showed talent and couldn’t be faulted after the short snappy delivery of the previous act their songs seemed to almost drag. This wasn’t helped by the female vocals sounding a touch Evanescence. Which isn’t a bad thing if that’s your bag, but rather than getting the adrenaline going it just sent some of the audience, including myself to the nearby pub. Dark Water came across as staid perhaps as a victim of the set list. Putting them on before The Dead Class may have shed a more favourable light on them. And the guilt for leaving as they ploughed through their third song was assuaged by the cheaper double vodka to be found elsewhere.

Comebacks seem to be the key word of the day recently but The Rezillos weren’t jumping on the bandwagon. They weren’t jumping at all., more like trying to hold on to something sired in Edinburgh during 1976.
 
Some clichés are fun in spite of themselves and The Rezillos achieved this in spades. Wearing sunglasses indoors is a hard look to pull off but Johnny Terminator can be forgiven due to his stoic bass playing. The set included some cracking covers including Lou Reed’s ‘White Heat’ and it was odd but great to see Siouxsie Sioux types dancing to ‘River Deep Mountain High‘. They launched through most of their back catalogue with aplomb much to the delight of the fans at the front.
 
When Fay Fife said, “Thank you for being a great bijou audience” you felt she really meant it. And although they sounded more Rocky Horror than punk in parts everything was delivered with sincerity and a sense of mischief. Fife shared her vocal duties with Reynolds with great effect and the moments of pure old skool like ‘Destination Venus’ shone.
 
The nod to Human League ’s ‘Don’t You Want Me’ was both energetic and apt as Callis played syth with the band and co wrote the Eightees anthem. It was in keeping with the feeling of nostalgia. And as the evening drew to a close it just seemed like a group of old friends opening a box of faded photographs and burning them and looking forward to the future together. Or perhaps finding a way to fund their personal pension plans through a best of compilation?
 
Either way it was far more enjoyable than watching Sunday night television . Nancy Spungen might be cursing somewhere in the cosmos but a lot of people went home smiling. And she always came across as a bit of an arsehole anyway.