1-Nov: The Saints (Chris Bailey) at the Church of Boston
Looking back on the emergence of punk, one of my favorite groups was the Saints from Brisbane, Australia. The Saints had a bit more of a “rock” sound, but the themes were the same as the UK punks. A couple of themes in particular: Boredom and being an outsider:
On the left on the right it’s all the same
people everywhere are still playing the same old game
for a dime they put you down lay you in your grave
put you down when you are not around
drives you insane
That’s why I gotta get some changes made. (”One Way Street”)
The Saints released three amazing albums in those early years, and they are radically different. The first sounds like a lot of other punk albums, but with better lyrics and better playing, and of course it has the interesting setting (almost 600 miles north of Sydney). The second album featured horns, which was unheard of for punk of that era. The third one kept the horns and got even more blues.
After those first three albums the guitarist Ed Kuepper left, and Chris Bailey went ahead with various lineups. In the mid- to late-80s, he had a resurgence on college rock radio, with some good tunes like “Big Hits (on the underground).”
So it has always been a treat to keep up with Bailey and see what he’s doing with the Saints.
Last night I caught the Saints in their current incarnation at the Church of Boston club (same building that was the hallowed Linwood). There were a couple of openers, the Mess Me Ups and the Konks. The Konks were awesome as always, perhaps especially on their own theme song (”We’re the Konks, and we don’t care!”). A good bit was that the Konks burned out a monitor and it started to emit smoke. Nice job!
So. The Saints. Well that Church of Boston is maybe the most antiseptic club I’ve ever been in. After taking over the Linwood, the owners re-worked the club from top to bottom. Everything is clean, and the black floor is . . . well, it’s shiny. Strange. The sound is extraordinarily bright: There’s nothing to soak up the sound. Kind of a neighborhood crowd, too . . . no one there who would have taken notice of my fine new Xuberx t-shirt.
Chris Bailey came out, and he was almost unrecognizable from his 70s and 80s era, when he tended to bloat. He was really quite thin. Not gaunt, but just thin. Strange. Makes me wonder if he’s sick or getting treatment of some kind. He played some of the great old songs such as “I’m Stranded.” He didn’t move much, and at first I was wondering if he was even listening to what he was playing (it happens that he didn’t have a monitor because of the Konks blow-out). But as I watched his guitar-playing, it did seem that he was getting the vibe from the bass and the drums, if not leading them. His voice is a bit stripped. In his low register he has this very buzzy growl, same as on songs such as “I’m Stranded.” But at the high range, he sounds amazingly like Ray Davies, and that fit a lot of the new lyrical content, too (such as on the new one “Other Side of the World”). A nice cover was a bit of T. Rex’s “Bang a Gong.”
The audience was tiny. Maybe 50 or 60 people. I did see a small few of the usual suspects in the audience, but no RRR (rock and roll royalty) save maybe a guy from the Everyday Visuals. The audience also seemed quite bewildered. People who remember the Saints from the 70s think of a visceral punk band. Those who remember then from the 80s know a solid rock/pop band. But the overall effect of the show was a melange of rock, folk, and punk. Nicely done.
So . . . great show . . . under-appreciated and under-attended. He did some dates in Ohio and a couple in the NYC area, including Maxwell’s in Hoboken. But it seems that he’s hit quite a low in his over-all arc, at least outside of Australia . . . I noticed that one of his Ohio gigs was at Bernie’s, which is a basement deli in Columbus, Ohio. I shouted out at one point: “How was Bernie’s?” Bailey was surprised that anyone in Boston would know of the place . . . but he described it pretty accurately: “Fucking pathetic!” I hope on his next tour he can play some better venues. The Abbey would have loved him.
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