LOGO RECORDS
Birmingham's BLAZER BLAZER (and they'll live to regret that) are probably every mirror star's idea of a dream band.
*Strut, pose, and flash; hit low, hard (very hard) and don't stop trying till they're up an' dancing. They breathe more fire and thunder than a pack of basilisks, but tap the hulk of the beast
and the hollow clang can be heard a mile off.
Whizzz! Screeech! Ka-ching! A guitar solo. Blazing fretboards rarely entertain, and Derek O'Neil's is no exception. Wham! Blam! Kerthump! A bass solo. Steve Barnacle is a beefy chap,
so rudeness on the part of the reviewer could prove fatal. Simon Fox (whose last gig was with Be Bop Deluxe, fax fanz) refrains from a complete solo. Almost but not quite; perhaps drum
solos are officially passe at long last. The omission is gratefully noted.
"Here's sum rock an' roll," says Jeb Million, a vocalist in the clenched-throat Sammy Hagar tradition, and announces 'Six O'clock In The Morning'. Sounds nothing like rock and roll to me,
but then songs classified thus rarely do.
"We're gonna slow things down a bit right now," he says, as predictably as a British Leyland assembly worker, and the song is 'Stage Door Johnny'. Jeb adds some keyboard texture, the
song is restrained, a tastefully handled ballad with delicate lyrics, and for the first (and last time I can take my fingers out of my ears.
They soon go back, resistance to extreme volume not being one of their strong points. 'Call Me A Doctor', 'Danger Zone', 'Ladies And Gents' da, da, da, da: humdrum-hard-rock hum-bug.
Time to go home? Not quite. The encore take's ten seconds to materialise, and reveals itself as nothing more than 'Johnny B. Goode'. Was it a 'rousing version of the old standard'?
Several people danced; presumably they were 'roused'.
I walked quickly home and tried to stop my ears ringing.
*(Stephen Gordon, Sounds, 13/01/79)
TRACKS:
01. Cecil B. Devine
02. Warsaw
03. Six O'clock In The Morning
DOWNLOAD(RS)
MIRROR(RS)
password in comments
