Gossip Live In Liverpool (Columbia)/Rocket From The Crypt RIP (Vagrant)

by planbmag on Wed, 2008/11/26 - 7:40pm Post to Twitter

Some of you, of a certain age, just need to read the words “Julia Carling on Top Of The Pops” and you’ll know what that’s about. A greater, more…contemporary number can get a clue via “Guardian agony column” or “pro-fat Heat front cover”, or another choice moment which signalled that Gossip were no one’s exclusive property.

A decade and a bit earlier, Rocket From The Crypt came from somewhere similarly American and underground, within similarly touching distance of garage fidelity, to become a pretty big band for a while, and perform their biggest hit ‘On A Rope’ on dinnertime TV introduced by the England rugby skipper’s wife. The British media still donning Marigolds to touch alternative rock at that time, none of the band ever proffered advice in a UK broadsheet, although that might have been worth a read. Rocket rocked by their own rules, until their number was up, and bowed out with this show in San Diego on Halloween 2005.

Gossip, meanwhile, have a decade on Rocket, a still-rising profile, and these 13 tracks, recorded on their last UK tour. It says right here that this is the band’s “first ever live album”, which I was kinda scared to type, as it necessitated putting down the CD I was holding – their Undead In NYC album, which Dim Mak released in 2003, and which I feared might vanish back into the evidently bizarro world where it exists. The crowd on Live In Liverpool sound about 15 years younger than their equivalents on RIP (it’s up to you if you wish to view that as a zing at the expense of either band). “DITTO! DITTO! DITTO!” they screech as ‘Jealous Girls’ comes to a halt; you can imagine what it’s like when ‘Standing In The Way Of Control’ kicks in.

There’s a decent wedge of pre-breakout material, for a band that really only have one well-known album. “I can’t believe you knew the words to that! It’s so weird,” Beth enthuses as ‘Coal To Diamonds’ winds down. They do ‘pop’ covers now, too: Aaliyah, a great, breathless ‘Are You That Somebody?’ that’s imbued with a remarkable death-rattle feel, and George Michael’s ‘Careless Whisper’, which they’d have been better off not bothering with. It’s a success overall, by virtue of not sounding like contemptuous doormen and three-quid-plus pints, the dominant ‘vibe’ in the sort of venues Gossip play these days.

“ROCKET! ROCKET! ROCKET!” roars a doubtless oiled San Diego by way of introducing RFTC’s opus, as a funeral march plays and someone with a slightly effete Mexican accent insists that, “Music will never be the same again”. RIP’s recording is solid, but weird: the between-song crowd noise has been cranked up to a degree that seems out of sync with the clarity of the actual music. That part of the equation, all 20 songs of it, is beyond reproach: the four-song stretch near this album’s core (‘Light Me’, ‘A+ In Arson Class’, ‘Middle’ and ‘Born In ‘69’) is just unfuckwithable.

“We did this song back in 1993. We invented this type of music. It’s called rock’n’roll, ladies and gentlemen.” We don’t have Speedo, the singer from Rocket From The Crypt, anymore. Meaning we don’t have many people prepared to say things like that onstage, meaning a void of sorts still lurks.