Lots of middle-aged people with scruffy jeans, black tee-shirts, Dr Martins and thinning hair. Not much to look at, but a whole catalogue of failings can be excused if you’re listening to the right music.
Lots of middle-aged people with scruffy jeans, black tee-shirts, Dr Martins and thinning hair. Not much to look at, but a whole catalogue of failings can be excused if you’re listening to the right music.
Well, where do I start? Probably at the beginning.
On Friday 5th November we charged home from work, threw some dinner down in a mad rush and headed for The Patronaat in Haarlem to see NoMeansNo. After the train journey and a 15 minute walk through drizzling rain, the queue of waiting youngsters doesn’t look or feel quite right. Then as we enter the hall itself I notice a spattering of skinheads. Hmm! This ain’t the normal NoMeansNo crowd. Fortunately one of us has our head screwed on. Nick noticed a poster announcing the NoMeansNo gig on the following day. Still sorely lagging behind I tell him that we can’t go both nights as we have a birthday party to attend. Persevering with me as if I’m a small and stupid child he points out that they are not playing two nights running, but that the gig is actually on the next day. Class!! So we head back out feeling horribly embarrassed and have to rescue our torn up tickets back out of a huge bucket full of stubs for the concert which was actually on that night – The Toasters, who judging by the crowd are probably a ska band. (I thought they were garage… Does anyone know? Ed) Ahem!
Okay, the beginning part II. Saturday 6th November finds us here once again at the Patronaat in Haarlem, and this time the crowd looks more promising. Lots of middle-aged people with scruffy jeans, black tee-shirts, Dr Martins and thinning hair. Not much to look at, but a whole catalogue of failings can be excused if you’re listening to the right music.
The back-up band – well actually one bloke and a guitar (bizarrely named Ford Pier – the bloke not the guitar) starts with probably the most bone-achingly discordant number, which crashes and banks in a most unnerving manner using a whole three chords, and leaves the audience feeling extremely edgy. A very brave song to start with and enough to force some of the bemused crowd to retreat as far away from the stage as possible.
Having got the first (undoubtedly the worst) song over with, things start to improve, not that he suddenly bursts into bubbling melody, but at least for the rest of the set there is evidence that the world is not over and that melody might still exist as a concept.
This crazy guy definitely scores full marks for enthusiasm and there’s no denying he has a great voice. He could perhaps be described to waver dangerously between Bohemian Rhapsody style Queen, Primus and the Hoodoo Gurus. Or maybe Faith No More meets Violent Femmes meets red-neck folk band – either way a strangely unpalatable mixture – rather like banana pizza or the frikandel of the music world. To be honest I quite enjoyed it, but the bizarre switching between styles together with the high drama only surpassed by such as the drama queen herself, Kate Bush, is proving a bit much for the majority of the crowd who looked at best confused and at worst terrified.
Three or four songs in and only one broken string however, he is mercifully joined by an unknown bassist (unknown to me anyway) and the drummer from NoMeansNo, John Wright. This lifts the tempo up a beat or two and helps to frame Ford’s music a little better. Instead of wandering off on two musical tangents a second his unique style is roped in giving it a slightly broader appeal. Alternatively, maybe the crowd forced to the bar by the opening song are now pissed and would cheerfully cheer on a hamster playing the kazoo. Don’t worry Ford – someone out there is sure to appreciate your own particular brand of genius.
At this point I will hand over to Nick, the resident NoMeansNo expert, to tell it how it is!
Thank you, Dre. And in the packed stadium tonight (well, at least as full as I’ve ever seen the Patronaat), in these quiet moments before the game, I find myself reflecting like a good concert reviewer should, on why exactly it is that I like NoMeansNo so much.
For starters, of course, it’s their music. What is their music? In a word: dark, punk-funk poetry. Bass and drum driven funk underpinning a hard edge punk guitar mixed with strange and unnerving lyrics. Then a sudden switch, as the guitar goes off on a little free-form excursion and the bass and drums fall into place with a pounding metal beat. They are masters of their instruments and of their song arrangements. With a NoMeansNo song you can never be sure where its going next – yet their music is never so disjointed that you get lost. Kings of the musical signature, they digress but always come back again to that infectious little note sequence or catchy turn of phrase. And with all three voices raised up in song they make a glorious noise.
It’s the same noise they’ve been making for over 20 years. Basically, this is because they got their sound right first time round. Listen to the reissue of Mama with its additional videos. Watch when it was just the two brothers, Rob & John, alone on stage with bass and keyboards. The barren majesty of 1981’s Forget your Life: "Now if you feel/ Like nothing/ Nothing and no one/ And if you see/ Nothing/ Nothing and no one/ Forget your life/ It’s nothing".They sound as good then as they do now. They found their groove and stuck to it and they still retain their edge.
On the subject of sticking, I also like the fact that NoMeansNo stayed faithful to their record label, Alternative Tentacles, for so long. Over 12 years and 8 albums they only left to go their own way 5 years ago. This may not be indicative of anything but to me it speaks of Intergrity. On both parts.
NoMeansNo have obstinately remained a small time, cult band. And you know something? That feels real good. They played in a small venue (The Barrel Organ, Birmingham) 15 years ago when a mate of mine, Blox, first came back frothing about this band he’d just seen. It was in another small venue, (Edwards no.7, Birmingham), where I first saw them 13 years ago. They played the small zaal in the Melkweg 5 months ago, as they had done the previous year when memorably their support band had their equipment nicked so they played for a heavenly 2 hours & 20 minutes. And tonight it’s the Patronaat. My only witnessed exception to this small gig rule was an electrifying performance at Lowlands in 2000.
(Even in Canada they seem to be decidedly low key. I make a point of asking every Canadian I meet whether they’ve heard of them. I’ve met a lot of Canadians and so far only had about six affirmative answers. Maybe Canadians just don’t get out much, although there is evidence that this state of affairs is not to the bands liking, as an excerpt from the NoMeansNo page on the Southern Records website reads:
"…so we see the next 25 years continuing to be much the same. Thus, for the foreseeable[sic] future, we will remain a brilliant, shining star in a cesspool of excrement. Perhaps that is overstating it a little bit but as we look back we can’t help but feel…obscure. A dark shadow on a dark wall in a dark room creeping past the blind begging for nickels in a city of gold comes to mind.")
Coming on stage the band look like your dad’s three brothers, jolly and avuncular. The first time I saw them I was shocked at how old they looked to be making such music. Yet when they hit their instruments and open their mouths its clear that your three uncles were removed at birth and brought up in The Maple Leaf Home For Criminally Deranged Boys. They are crazed – staring, shouting and occasionally dribbling. Yet like the best city park preachers their vision of the world makes sense. Theirs may be dark, brooding, aggressive tales of survival and apocalypse, twisted realities where the dead walk and your lover’s corpse lies at the bottom of the sea – but you want to go there with them. Oh, and they’re funny. They truly have a sense of humour and an idea of their own ridiculousness. No puffed up egos here, no dark Goths taking themselves too seriously. And I was serious about the dribbling…
As for the gig tonight…Well, I know it was their second to last of an 8 month stint on the road and they were on good form, clearly enjoying themselves and playing the songs they wanted to play. This led to a darker selection from the NoMeansNo jukebox than you might normally expect. I also know that during the last song of the encore, Two Lips, Two Lungs and One Tongue, when the song structure breaks down and they typically fool around for a few bars, this time the guitarist, Tom Holliston, launched into an impromptu (judging by the surprised looks on the faces of the two brothers) three minute rendition of AC/DC’s Shot Down In Flames, before picking up the original tune and taking it to it’s conclusion – the instruments dropping out one by one until three voices are left singing the closing line: "Only so many songs can be sung with two lips, two lungs and one tongue."
As for the rest…I don’t remember. I was dancing too much. We all were.
Words: Drenick Spongkerr