King Prawn @ Joseph's Well
By Vince MinceMr. Shiraz have everything you could possibly want in a band: a very well polished horn section, a mean looking drummer, hyper-singers (including an all singing all dancing version of Bez on acid) walking bass and funky guitar. These musical menaces have offended the public in the following ways: Chris with his trombone, Ash armed with a trumpet, Clare wields a saxamaphone, Tori molests the bass, Kris, well, he er jumps and wiggles and injects a positive vibe into the performance with his funky-ass dancing. Wait there's more; Mikey sorts the vocals and stage humour (this performance graced us with some beautiful light hearted joking about "spunky breath" and general tom-foolery, these guys, they kill me!). Still more, Rob thwacks the drums and Fonts (Times New Roman to his friends) with guitar and vocals. There are eight of the nutters, which only goes to show how ska they actually are.
The 'performance' starts with a fantastic heavy metal 'Tony The Tiger' impression from Chris 'Raaaaaarrrrrggghhhh', then straight into some groovy punk-ska that really gets the crowd skankin. There's something here for all the family: for junior you've got the recognisable covers played in true ska tradition, ranging from the loveable 'Lost in Space' theme to something sounding like Grange Hill to metal. It's like seeing Steps but without the crap music, just beautiful people reaching out to the audience, encouraging participation, it makes you want to cry, sing then dance. It ended all too soon, but with the crowd chanting along with the band "give us some metal Chris" as he trades his trombone for a guitar, and metal is what we get. Traditional cock-rock lead with some scary roaring, girly long hair (except for the unfortunate balding patch) with knobs on. There was not a bad thing about the whole performance, other than the unfortunate loss of Mikey's voice at the beginning, but hey, they can't be blamed for nature taking its course.
Fun to watch, great to listen to, I want them to play at my wedding.
Whitmore's equipment was plagued by the infamous musical gremlin that resides within all bands, waiting until they support someone like King Prawn so it can ruin their lives and bring them to tears. They had a very bad night for technical faults. Their sound (when it was present) was pretty similar to a lot of bands in Leeds (that there is by no means a shortage of). It may have been their unfortunate technical difficulties that impaired their sound but I didn't see anything I haven't seen before in many other nu-metal, skate-punk rock, shouty-shouty type bands.
On the up side, when asking the audience if "there's a technician in the house tonight" Barbar Luck of King Prawn did come on stage and fix their bass for them, which was a huge conversation piece for seconds after.
King Prawn are a five-piece ska-punk, rap, metal, hip hop hybrid from London with an unintended nihilistic energy. They are in their own sense a new breed of savage hippy (don't go thinking they look like hippies though, you'll die of shock). They want to express the need for freedom and positive thinking but do it through a sound that can't help but make you get your groove on in a very physical way. Barbar Luck (bass) is the voice of the bands subconscious, christening every other song with words of wisdom, he opens their set with optimism "now is the time to express yourselves people, you could be walking home tonight and get hit by a bus" and I will have stolen that bus and packed it with explosives." The man's a preaching lunatic; powerful words of fighting suppression and living life for the moment are contrasted with his raw energy he exerts through his glaring eyes. I still dream about those eyes, waking up in a cold sweat.
While he eyeballs the crowd Al Farabi Rumjen raps out the lyrics whilst juggling between microphones. His style of singing has more than a little in common with the sounds of Asian Dub Foundation. But the band as a whole take this sound, remove a few knots and add to it a ska edge with Dr. Nelly's horn and Devil Hands' (christened with this name by Father Satan Fingers) guitar. However, the drum machine's still there; it's just human and goes by the name of Slugboy.
Al Farabi describes their musical content as "hip hop, rap, metal, punk and ska, there's a bit of everything there". It's not just sounds that influence the band though "a lot of people don't notice, but we are heavily influenced by films, especially comedy, there's some Monty Python in there somewhere." Wherever the band take their influences from it works and the finished product is amazing. I had to buy their first album 'Fried in London' but it's just not the same as the live experience. My tip of the week, go see 'em if you ever get the chance and if you didn't see them this time admit your failure as a human being.
