After a prolonged wait and a somewhat .. worrying support act (I won’t trouble you with the details), it’s a massive relief when The Llama Farmers finally take to the stage looking like the coolest band in the world and launch straight into "Get the Keys and Go".
They’ve got the right hair, the right T-shirts, the right facial expressions, just the right amount of black tape on their guitars – they are cool. And as far as music goes, tonight they’re (to coin a phrase) shit hot.
Oddly, they don’t even try to sell us their new album "El Toppo", and instead make with the hits. In quick succession they blast out "Get the Keys and Go", "Always Echo’s", "Big Wheels", new single "Snow White", "Jessica", "The Picture" – and that’s your lot.
The songs work almost like clockwork – guitar.1 provides the catchy guitar hook, guitar.2 provides the BigNirvanaRiff ™ while the bass and drums provide a good rhythm and keep things going at a cracking pace – a 100% efficient rock n roll machine.
It’s utterly formulaic grunge-pop, but since when is that necessarily a bad thing?
They’re hardly going to transform the musical landscape but they inject the hackneyed grunge formula with enough new energy and basic coolness to temporarily make it sound like the most brilliant pop music on earth.
The almost complete lack of new material only a few weeks before the launch of their second album suggests the formula may finally have died on them, but tonight they rock. Their set is short and sweet, about twenty-five minutes of their best moments which leaves the audience howling for more – The Crocketts could learn a lot from them.
Ah, yes, “The Crocketts”. That name shall forever make me shudder. I came to this gig knowing nothing about them at all – I don’t remember ever hearing them on the radio or seeing them reviewed anywhere, so I’d like to make clear now that I had no real idea of what to expect.
I tried to like them, I really did. I tried to get into the spirit of things, but by the end of their performance I just wanted them to fuck off back to which ever Welsh hellhole they crawled from. The first thing to irritate me was the fact that the band appear to be made up of first year drama students whose “we’re so mad we are” antics (talking in squeaky voices, gibbering about cheese and arseholes between songs and making comedy “mad person” gestures) are amusing for ..ooh.. about three seconds before they become completely insufferable.
Never mind, I think optimistically, maybe they’ve got good songs to make up for it. Have they bollocks. On the evidence of tonights performance, The Crocketts music seems to be pitched somewhere between Toploader and Black Flag with a liberal sprinkling of unwelcome “rural charm”. Any decent tunes they may possess are buried under a pointless punk-metal thrash while the singer, “Davey Crockett” (oh my sides) shrieks and cavorts and generally makes an ass of himself.
More than anything else about the Crocketts, this guy is immensely irritating. He’s like what would happen if Eminem had been raised on cider in a remote Cornish village.
“But he’s mad!” say the fans “He’s a genuine lunatic hyped up on strange drugs!”
No, my poor fools, he’s just a hyper active tosser who desperately wants to be Iggy Pop.
Actually, his Iggy-aping antics are the only part of the show that comes close to being entertaining. Fair play to the lad, he repeatedly jumps into the moshpit kicking and head butting, swings from the ceiling, writhes around on the floor like a good `un, sticks his head inside the amps and generally tries to injure himself in an enjoyable manner.
All admirably rock n roll, but it doesn’t make him any less of a wanker, and it doesn’t make his music sound any better.
Adding to my already immense irritation is the fact that I’m the only member of the audience who seemingly doesn’t get it. Every other punter wears a Crocketts T-shirt and the applause is as loud as the music. This positive response allows the band to go on for what seems like hours, and when, during what I think was the second encore, the bass player takes the mike and starts doing what sound like Elvis impressions while the crowd chant “Jesus!Jesus!” for some ungodly reason, I decide to retreat to the bar.
“If you join their mailing list, then every few months you get a booklet of Davey’s poetry!” an enthusiastic fan infroms me. I dread to think what kind of poetry you get from a man whose signature tune begins “I was born in a stable in Galilee / I shagged my first sheep when I was only three”.
Basically, if that makes you laugh, you’ll probably like The Crocketts. I’ve honestly racked my brain trying to think of something positive to say about them, and the only redeeming feature I can come up with is that they used “They’re coming to take me away” by Napoleon XIII as their entrance music.
I’m sorry for sounding like such a miserable bastard, but The Crocketts aren’t big, aren’t clever and definitely aren’t funny. They show an almost complete lack of intelligence, dignity and taste which makes Blink 182 look like Mogwai.
And I’m not suggesting music should be deadly serious, but please kids, listen to Half-Man Half-Biscuit, listen to The Vandals, listen to fucking Chas & Dave if you must, but don’t listen to The Crocketts. Don’t encourage them, just ignore them and hopefully they’ll go away.
But then again, that’s just what I think.
The Llama Farmers get 4/5, but The Crocketts only deserve:
