Toot toot! It’s all aboard the Nostalgia Express! In tandem with a 40th anniversary (can it be so?!?) re-release of 80s favourites Haircut 100’s debut album, Pelican West.
But before we get to that, let’s talk support: Barbara. That’s right. There is a band called Barbara. (They’re quite hard to Google – we recommend you adding ‘the Band’ after their name to find out more.) In the grand tradition of a lot of bands, Barbara are the brain child of a couple of brothers – Henry and John Tydeman – but there the similarity to your Kinks, your Everleys, and your Oases largely ends.
Barbara are at what you might call the more theatrical end of the pop spectrum – think Divine Comedy by way of the Lemon Twigs. Live, it’s all very pleasant, if a little like watching a young Richard Madeley front a literate Dodgy who prefer to sing about reading hardback books rather than smoke weed.
Haircut 100, though. I’m not ashamed to say that, to this day, I think ‘Fantastic Day’, ‘Nobody’s Fool’, ‘Blue Hat for a Blue Day’ and ‘Boy Meets Girl’ are all fine pop tunes. Nothing wrong with a good pop song.
Obviously a long time has passed since the above graced the charts and frontman Nick Heyward has done his best to try and cut a path for himself as a solo act (his 90s album, Tangled, remains the high watermark of what he did outside of Haircut 100). At some point, though, he’s thought – either I call it a day or I bite the bullet, resurrect the band I’m famous for and actually play live to people again. And that’s what he’s done.
Joined by original members Les Nemes and Graham Jones (fourth member Blair Cunningham is out for the count due to illness), a brass section (of course), a drummer and a percussionist, Haircut 100 fill the stage at the Ritz and, you know what, they play as if they are having the time of their lives. A fair bit of the time, if you squint, you could be watching A Certain Ratio. They dash out all the hits (of course), engage in a bit of banter with all of the people who are ever so pleased to see them and even have the good manners to trot out a couple of new songs (which sound enough like the old songs to pass without any getting too grumbly).
Yes, it’s fair to say that time hasn’t been kind to a few of the tunes (I’d be happy to wait another 40 years before I listen to either ‘Lemon Firebrigade’ or ‘Love’s Got Me in Triangles’ again) but it would be churlish to go on about it (it would be like asking an old Sarah 7” if it fancied a fight). They encore with a cover of Harry Styles’ ‘As It Was’ and as Nick sings, “You know it’s not the same as it was” you think, no, it’s not – but we wish you all the best, all the same.
Words by Pete Wild
Picky Bastards 