Due to personal circumstances my seat on Ryanair was left vacant last night, so I have no idea how it went. And I won't be there tonight either.
Never mind my bollocks, here's a four star review from the Daily Telegraph
So it was all the more striking that, despite the songs inevitable dating, the performance itself never felt like an exercise in nostalgia. In recent interviews Geldof has asserted that he is as angry now as the day he stepped off the ferry from Dublin in 1976 and that chip-on-shoulder chutzpah blazed all evening. After all he has been through and achieved, Geldofs ability to tap the inchoate rage of his youth was remarkable.
They played a familiar set list, with no surprises..
- Eva Braun
- Like Clockwork
- Neon Heart
- She's Gonna Do You In
- Someone's Looking
- Joey's On The Street Again
- Banana Republic
- Having My Picture Taken
- She's So Modern
- I Don't Like Mondays
- Close As You'll Ever Be
- When The Night Comes
- Me & Howard Hughes
- Mary of the Fourth Form
- Looking After Number One
- Rat Trap
- Elephant's Graveyard
- Diamond Smiles
- The Boomtown Rats
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/live-music-reviews/10375805/The-Boomtown-Rats-Vicar-Street-Dublin-review.html
Bob Geldof is no gracefully aging rock star. On the first night of the Boomtown Rats’ comeback tour, the 62-year-old singer-turned-secular saint looked creviced and careworn.
But beneath the craggy exterior were unmistakable glimpses of the foul-mouthed firebrand of old. In a “mega” snake-skin suit, silver mullet flapping impressively, the Peter Pan of post punk flung himself into the show in the manner of an enraged stick insect, a blur of jerking limbs and fervent lip-curls.
In their original incarnation the Rats articulated contemporary fears and furies better than almost any of their new wave peers. In their native Ireland they plugged into the stifled angst of a country which, though placidly Catholic on the outside, churned under the surface with unresolved tensions and traumas.
Relocating to London in pursuit of major label glory, they foreshadowed the ideological battles of the 80s with zeitgeist-y anthems Rat Trap and Lookin’ After No 1. Such was their blend of last gang in town cock sureness and doe-eyed naivety they were even able to write a zippy ditty about a school shooting, the tear jerking I Don’t Like Monday, without seeming crass and opportunistic.
However, the Rats’ frantic immediacy has had the ironic effect of lassoing their songs to a specific place and period. If the strength of Geldof’s lyrics was that they might have been ripped from that morning’s opinion pages it’s their undoing now. Listening to his ferociously eloquent rants about the wickedness of capitalism (Me And Howard Hughes) and institutionalized corruption in the old country (Banana Republic) was like watching a Newsnight clip from 1984 – novel for 30 seconds, then drearily redundant.
Flourishing in a hothouse of perpetual recession and asphyxiating religiosity, Irish new wave was vividly distinct from its equivalents in the UK and America and this is reflected in the Rats’ music. A nutty swirl of keyboards, saxophone and soft-rock guitar, Rat Trap resembled three wildly different tunes held together with glue and sticky tape; Geldof’s scatted croon on She’s So Modern and (I Never Loved) Eva Braun inhabited a halfway house between Bryan Ferry and The Ramones.
Throughout, the sense of entering a musical time capsule was overwhelming. Trotted out mid-set, I Don’t Like Mondays, in particular, was a thrilling waxwork - note perfect yet strangely dead eyed, while the bluesy breakdown at the end of Mary of the 4th Form plumbed the depths of pub rock turgidness. It didn’t help that, in contrast to the dapper vocalist, the rest of the six piece line-up were thoroughly low key, exuding a rumpled competence that failed to set the heart racing.
So it was all the more striking that, despite the songs’ inevitable dating, the performance itself never felt like an exercise in nostalgia. In recent interviews Geldof has asserted that he is as angry now as the day he stepped off the ferry from Dublin in 1976 and that chip-on-shoulder chutzpah blazed all evening. After all he has been through and achieved, Geldof’s ability to tap the inchoate rage of his youth was remarkable.
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