NIK/OFF: Litmus & Inner City Unit, The Standard, Walthamstow, 11/05/07

[Jonathan Jarrett]

	I realise this review is a bit late, but so is all my mail at 
the moment, and there haven't been any others. I stuck this up on a BBS 
I use, which is why it contains explanations BOC-L don't need. This is 
going to be another review where I hope Trev will forgive me; I thought 
he was badly let down by a band of which he was by a long way the best 
part. But this is what I wrote.

	"I had worries about this gig, because since I last saw them 
Litmus had shed their keyboardist and I didn't know what the new one 
would be like, and because Inner City Unit, the 80s punk band of 
ex-Hawkwind saxophonist Nik Turner, while brilliant at the time, have 
always been rather awful since they started sporadically reforming and 
would be playing with two original members max. But because I wanted to 
see what would happen with Litmus, and also buy their new album, and 
because [another user of the BBS]  was also going to make it, I happened
along.

        "Litmus has in fact not yet acquired a new keyboardist at all, 
which made them sound rather different. They had more space for guitar, 
whereas before the guitar had often been fighting against the actual 
tune; on the other hand, now on several tracks big parts of the actual 
tune were missing. The jams, of which there are usually lots, were more 
successful than before--both bass-player and guitarist separately told 
me that now they're carrying more of it by themselves they're generally 
concentrating more--but the setlist oddly restricted by what they could 
so as a four-piece. So there were only two tracks from the new album, 
two things from before the first one and a cover. The setlist was:

Destroy the Mothership! [which was awesome for the extra attack]
Tempest
Twinstar [with a long and brilliant jam]
Sonic Light [with a fluffed intro and half the tune missing, dull]
(Theta Wave) Inductor [which Martin said they only do because I moan if 
		they don't, well, it was good so I don't care]
White Light/White Heat [which was OK, and segued into a new number whose 
		title I don't know yet, which sounded like a lost 
		Hawkwind track from long ago--I mean even more than 
		their stuff usually does]
Ejection [Hawkwind cover, solid]
Evil [very old song which still needs to be part of something bigger I 
		think, but whose riff is still the absolute killer]

        "And that was it! Short and odd, but mostly well-played, and 
it's good that they are confident enough to do this kind of holding 
performance until the line-up can be healed, but, at the same time, this 
was sort of only part of a show.

        "Inner City Unit took the stage with two synth players, both 
scrounged from Nik's lacklustre Hawkwind nostalgia act Space Ritual, 
Judge Trev and Nik from ICU proper, the drummer from Nik's Cuban jazz 
outfit The Fantastic All-Stars, and Nazar Ali Khan who was sucked into 
ICU for the reformation having previously been the band's graphic 
designer. This was not an auspicious start, and they followed it up by 
doing one of the few gigs so bad that I've left early rather than listen 
to any more. I'll try and be brief.

        "Nazar cannot play bass live. There was a time when he was just
completely useless and I recognise that he has got a lot better. 
Unfortunately, he has got a lot better by practising soloes and licks in 
his bedroom, not by playing with a band. He ruined almost every number 
that had any kind of change in, simply because when he hit the change he 
would charge off at a different speed to the one he'd been using, 
oblivious to the rest of the band who then had to try and match up. This 
in turn made the drummer, whom I've seen be very good before, more or 
less useless because he kept being unfooted and so played everything 
safe.

	Trev, on guitar and possibly the only person in the band who
knew how the songs actually went (Nik's recall of this sort of detail 
often being a bit sketchy--though actually he only came in out of place 
twice that I spotted and then at least he was 4 bars out so that the 
band could cover it relatively easily, and though he did do one sax solo 
in the wrong key that was mostly because Nazar had already got out of 
key and Nik followed him  rather than Trev), slowly took more and more 
control over the course of the gig. He'd started too quiet, and too 
respectful of the other players, and by the time I gave up and left he 
at least had become impressively aggressive and shreddy, but since apart 
from Nik the rest of the band weren't picking up on it that didn't 
really save matters. And whenever there was some energy actually going,
the hapless swooshes and sputters of the synth players, of whom they 
*maybe* needed one, sucked it away by destroying and puncturing the 
rhythm and drowning the tune.

	In summary, Nik and Trev were good; but they'd have been 
incomparably better had they been busking outside by themselves. I 
couldn't stand seeing what had been good songs once so uselessly 
murdered and left well before the end. Sorry. I shall need considerable 
reassurance before I risk another ICU performance I'm afraid.

        "The setlist such as I saw was:

Watching the Grass Grow
Raj Neesh
Ghost Riders in the Sky
Cybernetic Love
Brand New Cadillac
(Remember) Margate Beach
Two Worlds
Virgin Love
Gas Money
Space Invaders
World of LSD
Cars Eat With Autoface
The Right Stuff (although Trev played the guitar part from `Ejection'
        throughout, which is more or less the point at which I decided 
	to leave)

        "All of these, I promise, are good songs and you can haul most 
off http://www.deadfred.co.uk and I bet you will enjoy them, more or 
less, but for gods' sake don't go and see them live. The end."

	How it seemed to me, at least, yours,
					      Jon

-- 
"When fortune wanes, of what assistance are quantities of elephants?"
	    (Juvaini, Afghan Muslim chronicler, c. 1206)
 Jon Jarrett, Fitzwilliam Museum, jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk