Meu Deus! How faux eighties does something have to get before it leaps and bounds over its ball park of pastiche and swings its lateral thighs around the proverbial pitch of taking the pi-ass? Aesthetically (yes let’s get all fashion core on your bad selves) Bonde do Rolê are the first filthy nail in the CSS coffin; a shrewd litter of grossly misplaced rich kids taking a sabbatical from college to get down with their bad selves on the international part-tay circuit! And milking the ‘funk carioca’ movement for all its mildewed worth by morphing it into something nicer, and easier for us repressed British folk to digest (yes, that’s right; we are pretty repressed in spite of the nation’s secret alcoholism). Despite the terribly filth spurned hollers, narrating rimming amongst other very unsavoury, very un-British activities, BdR aren’t such a sexually charged nympho threesome that their sets end in bloodshed (which is something we cannot promise you on the streets of Rio innit). Nah, these folk are bringing the best bit’a funk this side of the equator to your local indie fleapit. That’d be the Scala then…
Y’see they’re like titchy enfant terribles assuming the mantel left unoccupied by badly coiffed eighties metal idols, doing bad ass things like collaborating with Run DMC or stealing VW logos and stringing them round their necks à la the latest chav-ccesory! Or, taking crap eighties throwback apparel to the next level, equipped with bum bags and LA gear trainers. Only they’re not doing any of this. 'Coz they is like dead modern. This is a band that pillages samples from The Darkness and Alice in Chains (bad eighties sounding metal if our split ears ever heard it). Should tonight’s performance be any measure of their obsessive residual re-imagining of the eighties (oh, it was so glamorous if you weren’t there, nay high to a goats whatbies), there’s also sampling courtesy of Europe’s ‘Final Countdown’. Thing is, the eighties has been suitably hot for a while now; from bad mullet hair through to Borrell’s bird shit drainpipes. It’s pretty inescapable. Tonight, with their faux eighties metal sampling, they are the scene, the party; the force to be reckoned with; the tour de force.
‘Solta o Frango’ (yes, free them damn frangos!) exhibits disco Jock-hey Rodrigo donning a chicken hat and dancing to his own tune. Marina Ribatski’s crotch thrusts are entertaining, ‘specially since leggings that tight leave little to the imagination. The Run DMCesque drop the beat-ness of ‘Office Boy’ erupts throughout the venue; their eighties hip ho’ is sunken somewhere alongside the Neneh Cherry’s posturing since vilified by Santogold and MIA; hollers to Hip Hop veteran Afrika Bambaataa on ‘Marina Gasolina’ nod to the undisputed assumption that the Party peoplaaaalll are in da hoooooose! The electronic reverberations crash into the lucid intro of Daft Punk’s ‘Robot Rock’; Brazilian street slang rapped n raved over the OTT of it all.
Their entire set could be sound tracked by Salt n Pepper’s ‘Push It’ scratched through Run DMC’s turntables. Cameo lap dancing comes as couture, an essential extra – exactly how many wannabe American Apparel models can be fitted onto the stage, grooving themselves salaciously against the nether regions of BdR’s collective male counterparts? Yes, we think the boys quite enjoy that! You’d think it contrived, should ickle Marina not have cast an abhorrent glare among her compatriots. Thunder thrust from beneath her spandex covered thighs? We think so.
There is something so spontaneous and willing about their set; the energy, the tone, the simplicity of fun-ness that grabs at your balls (or lack thereof). It makes other gigs look, well, boring. They plunder back on stage for an encore. The crowd love it. Sex starved lap dancers return to the limelight and everyone around congregates on stage like this is one big party! Feel naked without your ‘I heart the eighties tee’? Uh-huh. Us too! Thing is, some place across the continent people are shot (nay, really) for nights like these. And we get all of this for none o’ that! You wanna lap dance-off? Nah, we got a date with the night, ta.
