Fischerspooner - London Royal Festival Hall - 21/6/02
3/5
By: Toby L
Set-List: 'Invisible', 'The 15th', 'Turn On', 'Mega Colon', 'Sweetness',
'Tone Poem', 'Horizon', 'Emerge', ENCORE, 'LA Song', 'Emerge' (Reprise).
The anticipation is over. Casey Spooner enters on to the stage. He prepares himself to speak.
'Are you guys ready to f**king rock?!'
Oh yeah, here it is - New York's latest sensation: the 80s-influenced, pop-electronica electroclash ensemble themselves, Fischerspooner. By now, you should have heard their soon-to-be legendary dance-floor smash, the undeniable essential groove of 'Emerge', and observed at least five reviews in the music-press which declare them to be the finest thing since 'electricity'.
Sure, the duo's debut-LP, the rather short and sexy '#1', is a thrilling start to any act's career, but viewing Fischerspooner live is a bizarre experience to say the least. Recent shows in their native US-region were rumoured to have cost around £250,000 to stage, and tonight's so-called 'gig' - their last British performance 'for a long time', apparently - is deemed to be a scaled-down version - though this is not saying much...
Scaled down - surely, no other show is able to incorporate the utmost of exquisite technological features and still be deemed 'scaled down'? Well, want to know what the fuss (and exceeding quantities of money invested) is all about? OK, then - take for instance just what forms the Fischer-live extravaganza: namely, a giant spinning-turntable, upon which ringleader of the festivities, Casey Spooner, will perform a not particularly seductive strip-tease at one point in the set; a huge electric-fan, in front of which Spooner shall don some light fabrics and lean in towards its powerful wind, his garments flowing behind him in a Superman-flying-through-the-sky stylee; a plethora of strobe-lights; dance-routines; glitter and paper-explosions; oh, and indoor pyrotechnics. Obviously, an indie-rock show this is not.
But what's left after this? Actually, there's not that much. Although the evening makes for an utterly overwhelming and witty encounter, the differences between choosing to see Fischerspooner playing 'live' or electing to watch a circus are few and far between. Backing up this sentiment, costume-wise, the characters onstage, predominantly a fleet of dancing girls of all shapes and sizes, resemble mime-artists or pantomime-characters, Casey himself alike a clown, what with his colourful, baggy and hardly figure-hugging body-coverings.
Forgive us for not mentioning the music until now, because it certainly seems to be just one small aspect of the overall occasion. As reported previously by the media, lip-synching is the order of the day, and, effectively, all you're hearing is exactly as what you'd expect from the album. Virtually nothing more, nothing less - and nothing else. Except, you get nice and pleasant things to occupy your vision throughout. Oh, that's OK then...
Let's not get too sceptical, though - the crowd are loving every minute of it. Indeed, when not dancing with all the foxiness of people half-bewildered at the state of London's grand Royal Festival Hall turning into the equivalent of a rave in a countryside barn, they may find themselves merely half-exhausted at the amount of laughter to be omitted when witnessing Casey leap across the stage like a man that's just received a groin-operation.
Elsewhere, additional humour-points are rewarded to the team's leader when he crowd-surfs during the chilling sassiness of 'The 15th' and, on returning to the stage, wrenches out an audience-member and begins to, ahem, spank him. In addition, his response to sandwiches being flung onstage is somewhat smile-inducing, Spooner dismissively proclaiming to the audience and his dancers, 'Maybe they just thought I was hungry,' the moment where you hear his inanely chirpy voice demand to have his photo taken with a front-row placed Boy George being simply priceless, meanwhile.
The final highlights exist within encore-opener, 'LA Song' - as performed within one of the RFH's balconies for all to see above - and, predictably, the bona-fide classic, 'Emerge', as performed twice, triggering the most excited and deafening response of the entire evening.
A spectacle, yes. Big and clever, yes. Yet, Fischerspooner live is not a concert. It's an incredibly-arranged and amusing, unfilmed television-programme: a self-celebratory case of style over substance. Heck - even Casey admits this fact, providing the defining line of the evening, 'If I had more talent, I wouldn't have to do so many costume-changes,' cunningly answering his critics before they've had a chance to deliver cynicism, whilst also exorcising the fact that it's all about cheeky fun rather than pulling heart-strings. And they can't be condemned for that.
Artists in this article: Fischerspooner
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