Ain’t wishful thinking a powerful thing? When I saw ‘The Saints’ in the gig listings I managed to convince myself that this might be a reunion of The ‘very mighty’ Saints, i.e. Chris Bailey and Ed Kuepper together again, up there on the same stage ripping through many favourites from their three classic albums. Perhaps we’d even get a brass section, the cream on a very sweet and delicious cake. Hindsight, however, keeps ribbing me, pointing out just how foolish I’ve been.
So what we get is Chris Bailey and his current version of THE SAINTS: a very accomplished but not very special garage rock band. And that is incredibly hard to accept because The Saints were, at one time, very special indeed.
Things did start well enough, the band looking fired up, tearing into a song that I didn’t know but sounding great and quickly followed by the wonderful ‘(I’m) Stranded’. At this point, and through no fault of the band I hasten to add, things took a decidedly unfortunate turn. A bonehead, who seemed to believe he had a God-given right to the vocalist’s job, very suddenly and aggressively whipped the mic out of Chris Bailey’s hands. This happened several times over the next couple of songs, the band getting clearly pissed off but Bailey coping through the use of sharp and witty put downs (“This is for the intellectual faction of the crowd” introducing a song called ‘Waiting For Godot’). For at least half of the set the atmosphere was unpleasant, loaded with the potential for violence until the culprit, after looking, for a moment or two, like he was about to take on everybody there, decided he’d had enough and walked out. Phew!!
Throughout all this we were treated to fairly standard rock fare, punctuated by occasional blasts of golden nostalgia – ‘No Time’, ‘Wild About You’, ‘Know Your Product’, ‘This Perfect Day’, ‘River Deep Mountain High’. The most noticeable feature however, was the fact that at some point through the years Chris Bailey had decided to actually sing rather than employ the magnificent bored, drawl and sneer for which he had previously been so admired (perhaps this was Mr. Bonehead’s gripe and if so, I do have to admit to a trace of sympathy).
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Of all the older songs played tonight, the one that I was most looking forward to, ‘Nights In Venice’, sadly, was the one that most failed to work. This was the song that brought their magnificent debut album to a close and which, in its recorded form, comprises 5 minutes and 49 seconds of the most exciting, full-on, punk rock ever committed to vinyl. Tonight it loses all it’s musical threat and intensity together with its vocal snarl, becoming instead an almost 12-bar shuffle. Gone too is the mid-point breakdown in which the song’s structure is turned inside out, ripped apart, kicked about and then brought back together for one final assault, led by one of the most spine-tinglingly great “yeeeaaah!”s ever recorded.
By the end of the set my hopes for something special are hanging on the encores but in vain. First, Bailey returns to the stage alone with acoustic guitar to play a few mellow tunes. This definitely doesn’t work, highlighted by an excruciatingly bad version of Ring Of Fire – honestly I’ve heard better walking down Liverpool's Bold Street! After which anything the band can offer is a blessed relief but definitely not ‘special’.
All in all, I was glad to have been there but if they play again I think I will give it a miss. Shame.
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