Ikara Colt / The Parkinsons / The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster - Manchester Roadhouse - 7/3/02
3/5
By: Spencer McCloud
The indie version of the Vans Warped Tour? Three strong bands, perfectly complementing each other - the only difference being that instead of arenas, this tour takes place in your local - albeit packed - toilet-circuit venue. See you down the front.
Openers, The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster, look like a mess. In fact, they also sound like a mess. They are, however, a glorious, shambolic beauty of a mess. They don't do things by halves at least. Singer, Guy, looks like Richard Ashcroft, had he been dropped on his head at birth, and the two guitar-players model matching mohawks. Guy walks into the crowd, stares at people, punches himself in the head and performs press-ups for us. Why don't Oasis do this? It's a great spectacle, and you almost forget that you're listening to an act that was so clearly inspired by the manic-mess of Black Flag.
The Parkinsons arrive onstage next, claiming they are from 'London - via Portugal'. Rightio then... They certainly sound like they're from London, and to be more specific, London at the tail end of the 1970s. It's virtually all Clash chords, Clash vocals and Clash poses. I'm noticing a trend here. Whilst the bassist stands still, looking eerily alike Paul Simonon, the singer asks for the lights to be turned on the audience so he can see 'The beautiful people of Manchester', the guitarist content to spend the entire set winking at the girl stood next to me. And whilst this is happening, they happen to bash out some punk stylee choons. At the same time as crowd-surfing. They'll never change the world, but the audience tonight loves them, and since there is strength in numbers...
And finally, we come to the indie-tour's equivalent of NOFX, Ikara Colt. Not really any radio or video play, but everyone is here to check 'em out. And they're not going to leave disappointed.
Right from the start, it's chaos. Bodies fly, limbs are lost and the front rows crushed as song after song is carelessly disposed of, all of them being sub two minutes. As he wriggles around in his scarf and suit, frontman Paul Resende even looks like a member of The Strokes, well, had they attended a London grammar school.
The only drawback to Ikara Colt is that every single one of their songs sounds the same. Sure enough, you'll notice the machine-gun drums, pummeling bass and those shouty/talking vocals (obviously depending on whether it's the chorus or the verse). If however, like me and many others, you're in the pit, such trivial observations matter little. The Colts (as they will be known) seem to recognise this and the set lasts little more than twenty-five minutes, ending on a riotous 'Sink Venice' which sees Resende stage-diving into that mass of missing limbs, before wandering back through the crowd to the dressing-room.
A grotesquely fun, if slightly one-dimensional night, was had by all.
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