Although they’ve spent more than a decade being about as fashionable as a Sinclair C5, THE LEVELLERS’ live reputation precedes to say the least. Indeed, so often have they been referred to as “the ultimate festival band” that these days they even stage their own annual festival, Beautiful Days, giving similarly ignored-by-the-NME types a chance to impress on their own terms. Men of the people to the last.
So, not surprisingly, the Levs first full-length DVD is an all-the-stops-pulled-out in-concert affair, though instead of a triumphant Beautiful Days appearance it’s been filmed live in the relatively cavernous surroundings of Reading Hexagon in front of an equally partisan crowd during the band’s UK jaunt in March this year.
Although the liner notes speak of a 15 camera production, your reviewer spotted precious little in the way of trickery, just no-nonsense live footage of a great live band doing what they do best. And when presented with a heavy-on-the-hits, 23-song set like this, really what’s NOT to like, even for the relatively uninitiated? Because that’s the thing with The Levellers: they’ve been around for the best part of two decades now, but it’s only when you pay attention to something like this that you realise what a great singles band they are and just how many of these rousing singalongs you know, even if you didn’t really consider yourself a fan.
Age clearly hasn’t blunted them, that’s for sure. Indeed, as soon as Jon Sevink’s eerie fiddle kickstarts an incendiary ‘England My Home’, it’s blatantly obvious we’re in for a treat, and so it proves as they thunder through a brace of committed, fiery anthems such as ’15 Years’ and the tanked-up, militant intent of ‘Last Man Alive.’ What I confess I’d forgotten, though, is that The Levellers are such a great unit and each member of the team plays his part with passion to spare. Inevitably, vocalist Mark Chadwick is the focal point, but Simon Friend is a versatile guitar and vocal foil, dreadlocked bassist Jez Cunningham cuts a curiously iconic figure with his Gibson Thunderbird slung perma-low and Charlie Heather is the solid and dependable punk-folk Charlie Watts, keeping it ultra-steady from the back. They all jump to Sevink’s fiddle, though, and this tall, gangling figure is surely a modern day Pied Piper if ever there was.
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The set itself is pretty much a case of one corker after another. At times, they display a lighter, semi-acoustic swagger a la Waterboys on tunes like the ridiculously immediate ‘For Us All’ or the all-together-now ‘The Road’ and there’s the occasional bout of respite like Simon Friend’s solo acoustic spot for ‘Elation’, but mostly they’re simply the embodiment of their punk-folk Clash tag, tearing through surging anthems like ’61 Minutes Of Pleading’, a seething ‘Belarus’ and the inevitable ‘Beautiful Day.’ I’m still a little uneasy about the wisdom of wheeling out day-glo crusty Stephen Boakes and his darned didgeridoo during the encore, but then it’s a family affair with The Levellers, so I guess we can forgive them the indulgence, bearing in mind the quality of much of what has gone before.
Talking of which, DVD2 with its’ oodles of additional footage will probably sort the curious from the hardcore. On this occasion, I’m probably veering towards the former, not least when Billy Bragg joins them for a spirited, but wobbly Joe Strummer tribute consisting of three hit-and-hope Clash covers from Beautiful Days 2005. Still, you’re with ‘em all in principle, if nothing else. Meanwhile, as you’d imagine, the lengthy band interview footage suggests the lads are all thoroughly good, approachable geezers with a good sense of humour and a propensity for a pint of shandy or 13. Which is pretty much what you’d expect, really.
Anyhow, most of us don’t buy DVDS purely for the extras and in the main ‘Chaos Theory’ is one of those storming, what-it-says-on-the-tin affairs that even the hard-hearted would struggle to argue with. As they approach (dare we say it) veteran status, The Levellers have caught their second wind. Again. Here’s to their rude health for the next couple of decades.
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