Outside it’s cold, wet and windy; inside it’s warm, quiet and empty.
I’m expecting a long haul for tonight’s showcase at The Roadhouse. There are four bands to see and by the way the line-up is written my main priority, THE NEEDLES, will be the last ones to take the stage.
I’m therefore taken aback when at around 8.45pm four luminous orange T-shirts numbered 1 to 4 and emblazoned with the words ‘Needles’ arrive on stage. They are met with deafening silence.
Unperturbed, diminutive and bespectacled front man Dave Dixon - sporting a hairstyle that Vic and Bob once termed a ‘Riddle of The Tombs’ cut - greets the small audience like they’re fan club members. As a vote of confidence in this desultory Manchester crowd it’s an ambitious show of faith.
With a passing comment on the weather The Needles dive straight into ‘Panic On Easy Street’ and set out their stall to great effect.
This is old-fashioned, no nonsense power pop of the new-wave kind and The Needles play it with real determination and aplomb. As a unit they’re tight, direct and weight-conscious, offering no excess of fat on any song. There are only 9 tunes on the roster tonight and the band race through them as if their life depended on it.
Dave Dixon is possessed, focussed and in your face – even at 20 feet away. There’s a wide open space between him and the nearest punter but The Needles are about giving a performance, regardless of the apathy, and their heart and attitude is big enough to fill a space 10 times the size.
By way of additional compensation, Dave occasionally clears the barriers and whips up a storm with a blast of guitar solo amidst the humdrum audience. He’s not afraid to strike a pose either, positioning his guitar high on hip like a machine-gun and rat-tat-tatting at imaginary targets. There’s a strong hint of early Costello (circa ‘..Chelsea’) in his delivery, minus the overt sarcasm that Costello used at the time like a sharp knife.
That’s not to say he’s going let this crowd get off lightly for their lack of response to the band’s efforts. He manages to ruffle a few local feathers by empathising that it’s not surprising Manchester bands end up as drug addicts and write miserable songs given the state of the weather outside. Just to add salt on the wound the band play one of their best and brightest tunes, ‘A Girl I Used To Know’.
By this stage I’m struggling to make out the song titles as Dave’s between song motor-mouth is going faster and faster and his Aberdonian burr is getting stronger and stronger. The new single ‘Diane’(?), ironically, conjures up The Buzzcocks at their most spiky pop and, as Dave thanks the audience (or as he likes to call us “The People”), it segues into the last song - which may or may not be called ‘Teenage’ something or other. (It's "Teenage Bomb" - Scots Ed.)
Finally, as the crowd numbers suddenly treble, The Needles have gone with Dave leaving us one last morsel to chew upon:
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“Remember, The Needles fan is a wise man”.
We decide to stay for The Alphabeats and very quickly regret our decision. It's apparent that most of the crowd have come to see them and I’m amazed that they should care.
The Alphabeats plod along with sub-Oasis, sub-Roses, sub-melodic rock. The guitarist is winding me up with his over-use of wah-wah and the lead singer is irritating me with his grinning and gurning at the people he knows in the audience. It’s like they’ve won some inter-school rock band contest with first prize being to bring your band and 20 of your best mates down to a popular city centre venue.
Thankfully, The Alphabeats provide relief by telling us it’s their last song. The mates in the crowd shout for “more”. The best mates shout for “3 more”. The bass player jokingly informs us that in order to oblige they’d have to play “the same song 3 times”.
Funny, but I thought they’d been doing that for the last half hour…and I counted 8 times.
We’re fretting now and can’t decide whether to stay or go, feeling that with each passing minute of the mediocrity onstage we’ll taint out glowing thoughts of The Needles.
With deep breath, we brave the next outfit, Pacific, and realise our mistake at around the fifth chord. I’m not in the mood for Bon Jovi and when, on the second song, the front-man sings something about walking the streets of New York City, I badly need to walk the cold, wet and windy streets of Manchester and get back to my car.
As an aside and beyond the fabulous noise they make, I also like The Needles because they believe in themselves. While the other bands played, Dave handed out flyers for their current tour and was getting people to put down contact details for The Needles mailing list. Now there’s commitment.
On the drive back we discussed the 25th Anniversary release of ‘London Calling’ and I made a comment about buying it first time around in a record shop off Princess Street in Edinburgh. My compadre (who is also 25 years of age) asked if it seemed a long time ago to me; I responded, “Not when you see bands like The Needles play.”
Go check ‘em out. They’re good.
Visit www.the-needles.com for the rest of the September/October tour dates and locations.
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