Xi @ New Roscoe
By Sam Saunders
The New Roscoe was filling up with a great B-movie collection of outsiders, drifters and weird characters. Pierced lips, split catsuits, men with plaits, pudgy kids with office haircuts, granddads in new denim, greasy guys with Motorhead t-shirts, vodka girls with black frocks and shaky hands. Marvellous misfits, and a big warm crowd for a Thursday night.
Xi burst in with a cracker of a set. Six songs played with enthusiasm, honesty and loads of skill. The bass and drums were nimble heavyweights charging through the repertoire like monozygotic rhinos. On a couple of crescendos the well-sustained double time kick drum and terrific bass lines made the foundations shake. I liked the new song "Headspace" and the older ones were played with a fierce and delighted commitment. Great value. Duncan and the sound system were spot on.
Daz was respectful of the bands to follow, and maybe a bit apprehensive of standing on the edge of something much bigger. He sang his heart out and did what a good support should do.
At a personal level I'm not so happy about Million and Saxon. There's something very weird going on when thirty year old experiments in R&B (usually misnamed "rock and roll") get shrink wrapped for re-use by competent and (maybe) piss-taking musicians a generation later. No chances are taken, no discoveries are made. No deep traditions are honoured. It's easy, shallow music with predictable drama, played to a formula, wearing costume-hire versions of Spinal Tap. I went home very early and thought about the thirty years of new music that Million had chosen to ignore. I thought about the scary flashback I'd had when some greying Timotei longhair from Saxon emerged from the concert room when I first arrived.
No thanks pal, I thought, I already had one of those in 1970 something.
Let's hope that Xi do the Quadrophenia thing and kick what's left of their respect for the Monsters of Rock over the cliff. Be your own Monsters!
