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The Mad
Caddies @ London
The evening began well for the Mad Caddies, due to an
overwhelming interest in the show the venue was upgraded from The Meanfiddler to its bigger brother The Astoria next door.
Although claiming they would rather play 3nights at the garage I’m sure they
were secretly grateful for the extra support. Judging by the number of street
traders selling rip-off merchandise and the fact that even the monks had shown
up to earn a bit of extra pocket money the show looked set to be a blast.
First to the stage were Farse, not much
can be said except that they lived up to their name and, although I did see a
few heads bobbing their hard rock sound wasn’t really suited to this audience.
However I have seen worse supporting acts play at the
Next up were Lightyear and, at the risk
of sounding cheesy, they were light-years ahead of Farse.
Their Ska-Punk sound was much more in tune with the crowd who were, after all,
there to see the ‘Caddies. Their fusion of brass and metal instruments worked
up the crowd a treat and not least their Drum stick melee which definitely
caught the crowds imagination and put them in the mood for the arrival of the
headliners to the stage.
From the moment front-man and lead singer Chuck Robinson crashed
on to the stage it was clear that the majority of these fans knew the Mad
Caddies and knew them well. Some of the biggest cheers of the night came from
songs off their debut album Quality Softcore which has a more reggae feel about
it than their later work. The set was extremely varied and contained choice
cuts from each of their four releases, highlights included Road Rash, B-side,
Preppy Girl and Cup O’ Tea, even comedy songs such as the pirate-core classic
Weird Beard worked the crowd into a frenzy.
A break from the skanking came when the band paused for a while
to allow a male and female guest on stage to show off their vocal talents. This
went down well until chuck’s calls for a real-life hermaphrodite to come on stage where
answered by some drunk twat who jumped from the balcony, clambered on to the
stage and tried to take photos of the band. He was soon booed off.
After a lengthy encore the skanking was finally over and a crowd
of some 2 thousand could at last rest their legs and reminisce about a fine
night in the world of Ska-Punk. Excellent. 5/5
Skata Kev