Live Blood Ceremony’s Alia O’Brien: bloody brilliant.


it’, and lead the band offstage after a few bows. While the crowd howled them back, a


second drum kit was set up next to Martin Chambers (The Pretenders’ drummer who was great all night). Hunter reappeared, leading a white-haired but familiar-looking figure to the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Terrence Dale Griffin!”. It was Buffin, who’s not been so well in recent years but has lived for this moment so, by sheer determination, fought his way through ‘Roll Away The Stone’, ‘All The Young Dudes’ and a barnstorming ‘Keep A Knockin’’. It was impossibly moving but, with Martin keeping time on his hi-hat, Buff led the band he loves through one of the crowning moments of their career. Mott returned to close with ‘Saturday Gigs’,


the single released just before they split which turned into their swansong. The “goodbye” coda was picked up by the audience, taking the band off stage and the crowd into the night, bathed in a mixture of joy and tears. Mott pulled their comeback off in the


warmest, most beautiful way imaginable. A quieter riot, most going on in the emotions department. Kris Needs


BLOOD CEREMONY La Scala, London, 7th September


La Scala is drowning in lank hair and mottled denim as doom metal fans crawl out of the darkness to infest the capital. Electric Wizard are headlining but we’re more interested in support act Blood Ceremony who pepper their brand of sludge with elegant flashes of synth and flute. More revolutionary still, they do away with the usual Neolithic male on vocals, and fill the position with a foxy Canadian Sataniste with a thing for pentagram accessories and headbanging in a curiously jerky fashion. Green light bathes the stage and the band


look suitably sullen and creepy as you would expect. The darkish lyrical imagery they conjure up may come from the same school as Ozzy’s cartoon graveyard, but the power and drive the band put into the material ensure they totally transcend their influences. At the front of house a crowd of initiates form, clearly won over by a combination of great songs, committed performance and funereal cool. The sound is massive and the stage show


has clearly been groomed to perfection; the intimate surroundings suiting the band to a tee. Given the wealth of talent and promise they possess, one wonders whether they will stay with the independent label that released their first album, Rise Above Records, if some major offered them megabucks to sell out and appear on kid’s lunchboxes the world over. For now, just thank Lucifer they’re ours (or HIS, depending on how you look at it). Austin Matthews


MOTT THE HOOPLE Hammersmith Odeon, London, 1st October


On a personal level, this was maybe the most significant event I’ve attended in the last 35 years. I first saw Mott in late 1969, they kind of ‘adopted’ me and from then on I followed them relentlessly, ran their fan club and stuck with them until the split at the end of ’74, enjoying many adventures and great gigs in between. In this age of pointless, cash-in reunions,


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Mott’s is more of a dream come true for the many who’ve been praying so long they’d all but given up. Ian Hunter’s solo career has been going so well that he, for one, had no need to get back with a group that didn’t split on the best of terms. The seeds were sewn for the reunion when original organist Verden Allen kept showing up at Hunter’s gigs, badgering him into a one-off. After he was joined by guitarist Mick Ralphs and the trio had played together at a couple of Hunter’s gigs, it was only a matter of time. The next step was convincing drummer


Buffin and bassist Overend Watts. The former was more than happy, despite not having touched a drum kit for around 20 years, while Watts decided to give it a go when asked if Mott were reforming in a pub quiz. A couple of nights were set up for Hammersmith Odeon. Those sold out instantly so, eventually, five nights were set. Mott The Hoople were coming back, 35 years after playing their last UK gig at the Palace Lido in Douglas, Isle Of Man. The atmosphere was electric by the time


the lights went down and the familiar strains of ‘Jupiter’ from the Planets Suite rang out, sending shivers down many spines as it was always Mott’s intro music from ’72 onwards. Surprisingly and effectively, they didn’t come


on with all guns blazing, instead starting with the grandiose reflection of ‘Hymn For The Dudes’ from ’73’s Mott album before tearing into ‘Rock ’n’ Roll Queen’, their first single from ’69. Hunter strutted and swaggered in white shirt and black jacket, back to being one of the most recognisable true rock ’n’ roll stars in the world after years of solo gigs, performing with the energy and attitude of someone half his age. While Verden “Phally” Allen wrenched the kind of floor-shaking sonic roughage which only a Hammond can muster, Overend Watts stomped around with his Gibson Firebird bass, striking his juggernaut bass goliath poses and swapping grins with the front rows. Apart from the shorter hair he looked exactly the same too. The rockers continued with Lou Reed’s


‘Sweet Jane’, ‘One Of The Boys’ and the behemoth ‘Moon Upstairs’. Stools were then brought on along with


acoustic guitars as Hunter announced how Mott were also capable of the odd ballad. Amidst banter and more smiles, they broke into ‘The Original Mixed Up Kid’ from Wildlife then ‘I Wish I Was Your Mother’ from Mott, like it was in the front room. This was maybe the best example of this matured version of Mott The Hoople, playing on their strengths and emphasising the chemistry between them which seems to have been effortlessly reawoken by the reunion. It was wonderful. After Ralpher’s guitar showcase on ‘Ready


For Love’, Overend got his turn with a barnstorming ‘Born Late ’58’. In ’69-70, he was the member of the group who took the trouble to listen to this ball of teenage confusion and gibbering Mott-worship. The set’s watershed came with ‘The Ballad


Of Mott The Hoople’, the Mott album ballad where Hunter chronicled the band’s story up until their split in March ’72. Poignant, heartfelt and intensely moving, the lines, “Buffin lost his childlike dreams and Mick lost his guitar, Verden greyed a line or two, and Overend’s still a rock ’n’ roll star” provoking cheers, tears and a ovation which would have been standing if the crowd weren’t already on their feet before the band came on. Proceedings then headed steadily up


through the emotional barometer as Mott delivered a double-header of ‘Angeline’ and ‘Walking With A Mountain’, two favourite rockers from the ‘71 period. Mott weren’t clambering around the amps and knocking things over now, although there were plenty of palm-slapping, stage-front crowd walks. Hunter then sat down at the electric piano and


burst into an impromptu ‘Like A Rolling Stone’, which he announced as the song he played at his audition. Before easing into the opening chords of cataclysmic ballad ‘The Journey’. Hunter remained at his piano for the ensuing Hits, which sounded good as ever, the band now joined by backing singers, including Hunter’s daughter Tracie and legendary former tour manager Stan Tippins, Mott’s original singer. They thundered through ’The Golden Age Of Rock And Roll’, ’Honaloochie Boogie’ and ’All The Way From Memphis’ before Hunter announced, ’and that’s


SUPER FURRY ANIMALS Somerset House, London, 18th July


Vsssssst. Whoosh. Squoooge. Can you hear that noise? Is it a plane? A spaceship? The sky falling in? No, it’s five psychedelic Welshmen onstage in a Victorian courtyard. The common (misguided) belief is that


bands’ juices stop flowing after a decade or so doesn’t apply to the Furries. Their transition from Johnny-come-lately Britpoppers into fully- fledged mind-expanders now complete, they join Hawkwind, Gong, Copey and the Ozrics in the echelons of festival favourites with suitable beardage to match, recent album Dark Days, Light Years ranking among their best. Hence, seven tracks – ‘Wolfpack Eyes’,


‘Mt’, ‘Pric’, ‘Inaugural Trams’ (which sees Gruff touting a cardboard cutout of Nick McCarthy from Franz Ferdinand, responsible for its on- record Kraftwerkian schpiel), ‘The Very Best Of Neil Diamond’, the CSNY-ish ‘White Socks/Flip Flops’ (with Bunf assuming confident frontman duties) and the deafening Sabbath-meets- Prince groove of ‘Crazy Naked Girls’ – are aired, and no-one complains. The joy of Furry-watching is not knowing


what’s up next: opener ‘Slow Life’ is as much of a surprise as doom-laden newie ‘Earth’, on which they exhort us to leave said planet with them by waving our fingers above our heads like aliens and intoning its title. Their “indie” days are behind them, but that


only adds resonance to ‘If You Don’t Want Me To Destroy You’, ‘Demons’ and ‘The International Language Of Screaming’, their harmonies drenched in bleeping squalls that complement the mellifluous pink lights and reverberate at increasing volume through the stone ramparts. Gruff holds aloft theatre-style cue cards reading “woah” or “applause”, but this crowd don’t need written instructions. ‘Keep The Cosmic Trigger Happy’ seems


an odd closer, until the inevitable ‘The Man Don’t Give A Fuck’, its one-time 15-minute electro outro now replaced by throbbing guitar noise, explodes brain cells, with everyone from the turntablists to the girls in full hippy clobber united in agreement. Darius Drewe


Photo by Oran Tarjan


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