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Pink Grease, Coventry Colosseum

Gigs // Steve // 11th November 2004

Not that long ago, we'd see a band at the grotty little robbing shithole that is the Academy 2, and before the main event we'd spill our million-pound piss-ridden pints gawking at a bunch of sweaty maniacs with guitars, too much hair, and a unfeasibly large looking machine that looked like it had been nicked off the set of Doctor Who. And we'd say "what the fuck is this?", 'cos they sounded like nothing else, careering around the stage to a stuttering glam-disco-punk racket, screeching along in falsettos.

Still from one of the earlier videos...

Fast forward a couple of years, and Pink Grease have been signed to (my favourite label) Mute for almost all of that time, and have put out a mini-album ("All Over U") and a more rock proper album ("This Is For Real") and we're stood in the proudly new toiletted-up Colosseum watching them bounce off the (rather low) ceiling with excitement, despite this being towards the end of their tour.

You know that 80% of this is about attitude and energy, and they've almost completely got the rock star performance down. Rory now convinces as a mental lead singer type (more feeling the front row up! more disrobing! no more fucking laughing at the others!) where before he seemed disconnected. The rest are totally into as ever, gurning bassist Stuart Faulkner singing along and pulling stupid faces as ever, and guitarist SantaCruz - the one with the guitar shaped like a gun, right? - is twitching and shaking, and otherwise looking too damn cool. Electro-wizard Nick Collier with his oversized strap-on Stylophone looks slightly lost and confused as usual, but no-one seems to mind that.

Nick's machine. Can also control
an airliner, if necessary.

And they would be off the scale with hyper-goodness if the music even slightly lived up to their sleazed-up electro-glam-rock manifesto and their performance. But it's all gone a bit bollocks, a bit standard issue rock (with additional gurning). They regain their fucked-up from another planet oddness momentarily by screeching out the world's-about-to-end sleaze of "Shake", but then it's back to the usual. Come back the old Grease.

Links

Pink Grease official website

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