“We’ll have to wait until Pinkpop to officially crown them the Kaisers of Britain (Oi! We fought one major war to avoid that! – Ed). ”
“We’ll have to wait until Pinkpop to officially crown them the Kaisers of Britain (Oi! We fought one major war to avoid that! – Ed). “
“God save the Queen”
Working my way through the orange covered crowd I finally ended up at the Paradiso, my hair wet from a number of splashed beers and my feet tired from walking with the speed of three steps a minute. Yes, that’s what Queens day is all about!
When I got in to the venue, the first band had already started in the small hall upstairs. Help She Can’t Swim made a heavy start with their anarchistic, noisy, punky rock’n’roll but couldn’t really catch me; the angry attitude was a bit too heavy for starters, especially with this hangover I had. Time for my first beer.
The next band, Tunng combined an obscure Dark Ages sound with modern electronics, such as beat samples and soundflakes (can they be found in the cereal section? – Ed) with some folky voices thrown in. I suppose it could do well at a gallery opening in Alabama, but it was a bit misplaced here. Their songs had a real soporific effect and would probably sound nice in your living room on a rainy Sunday.
The 23 year old Tom Vek and his band showed us some musical skills in the first, minimalistic part of the set but during the last couple of songs he started rocking out.
British rebels The Others played some real dirty rock’n’roll with a neurotic lead singer making some scarily suggestive spastic movements. The rest of the band contented themselves with simply diving into the crowd. None of their songs though really stood out in their wall of noise, so after buying some ear-plugs and jumping around a bit I considered the show done and went outside for a minute, where I found a whole team of band members and hangers-on playing football with British tourists.
Totally dehydrated, we waited for the big shot, the largest name on the flyer and the last NME’s band of the year (how many bands of the year do they bloody need? – Ed); Kaiser Chiefs. They showed up half an hour later than expected, but didn’t seem to suffer under the big expectations the (particularly English) crowd had. Lead singer Ricky Wilson who looks like a mix between Alex Kapranos and Damon Albarn had the crowd in the palm of his hand from the start. He did a tandem crowd surf with a girl who had climbed on stage (“Hi, my name is Anne-Marie”) and even went into the audience for some real heavy dancin’.
Though we could say it’s easy to score with a perfect mix between Blur’s poppy tunes (who said saying “lalalala” and “woohooo” is old hat?), and Supergrass’ catchy sound, somehow you get the feeling that this is a show they play every night, so we’ll have to wait until Pinkpop to officially crown them the Kaisers of Britain (Oi! We fought one major war to avoid that! – Ed).
Unfortunately they played their biggest ‘hits’ in the first half of the show, so after hearing ‘Oh my God,’ ‘I Predict a Riot’ and ‘Everyday I Love You Less and Less’ the Kaisers’ party faded out a bit, but nevertheless it was good stuff.
Words: Elze Struijk