Horror Show

Managed to pop along to see The Horrors the other night, knowing full well that I'd be just about the oldest person there. Mind you, I think Peaches Geldof would have been sneered at for being too old. The mean age was probably about 16, I'd say; we knew this when we walked to the bar, and, upon asking for two beers, were politely informed that it was soft drinks only that night. The crowd, unusually in this day and age, had made something of an effort to dress up. There was a lot of peroxide in the air, and many punters had chosen to wear fishnet tights (and that was just the blokes--b'dum tssh, I thangew).

Actually, it was all a bit Rocky Horror Show, but the kids in the crowd absolutely lapped it up, clearly being too young to remember The Cramps, or Alice Cooper before them. The group played up the Grand Guignol for all it was worth; the keyboard player (who delights in the soubriquet Spider Webb) was wearing a cape, ferchrissakes, and twirled it round quite a lot. Faris Rotter, the singer and backcombed object of the crowd's veneration, leapt into the throng on more than one occasion, to the chagrin of the bouncers who kept trying to pull him back on stage. The girls in the audience (and possibly some of the boys) screamed, not in terror, but rather in excitement, like the crowd at the beginning of A Hard Day's Night. We (that's Malcolm and I) both remarked later that this was the first gig we'd ever been to where anyone actually screamed. There was a lot of strobe. It was over almost as soon as it had begun, within 27 minutes in fact, presumably so the kids could go and do their homework.

The sound? Well, go on then, if you insist. A liitle bit Cramps, a little bit Nuggets, a little bit Foetus. Slightly heavier and less garagey (is that even a word?) than on record. But I get the impression that the music is secondary in importance to the group's image for the kids in the audience. And just in case you think this is going to turn into a "style over substance" rant, I'm actually all in favour of their dressing up as The Addams Family. Christ knows we could do with some pop stars that know how to look and act like pop stars rather than Gap adverts. If I were a sixteen-year old kid faced with a musical diet of "ITV indie" like Keane, The Kooks, and The Killers, then I too would probably go nuts at the sight of The Horrors. They may not be offering anything new, but they're a damn sight more attractive than 98% of the charts right now.



You can see the Chris Cunningham-directed vid for Sheena Is A Parasite here:





Bonus:
See Foetus and Soft Cell covering Suicide's Ghost Rider!