Don’t Forget to Dance

 

 

 

We visit The Half Moon, tucked away in the Herne Hill district of Brixton, London Town, walk inside to the usual selection of British pub draught beers, doff caps at regulars sipping pints on bar-stools. The price of an organic bottled cider makes my heart palpitate like an earthquake, before we’re ushered into the gig by the bar tender, an evil gleam in his eye corresponding with a tear in mine.

 

Tonight at The Half Moon Norwich’s The Kabeedies are perhaps meant to be the fodder thrown to the hungry hometown masses who’ve come to worship at the alter of Television Personalities’ cult cockney leader Dan Treacy, but one shimmy of singer Katie’s shoulders is enough to say that‘s not on the cards.

 

The Kabeedies play like they’re wired to the possibilities of music. Evan’s looping, concise guitar lines, Fab’s wonderful staccato drum rhythms, Roary’s sultry, wobbly bass grooves and Katie’s unhinged singing and dancing make for primal thrills. ‘Come On’ is like Life Without Buildings doing The Ramones, and after that conventional comparisons bite the dust.

 

Katie spins and twirls like a Rumi dervish  through indiepop songs that bang and Pop with reckless grace. ’Palindromes’ has the dancing shimmer and unaffected joy in cleverness of a children’s drawing. And the legend Treacy’s call of “get your tits out” amidst it all is taken lightly as a blast from an ageing man who’s just too inebriated to dance.

 

After this you think that the TVPs have something to live up to - then you remember that Dan Treacy hasn’t tried to live up to anything in his life. He takes to the stage, mumbles, mumbles some more, then plays a set that doesn’t stop for airs and graces. Treacy starts and his band follow - accustomed to reading his mind like musical mystics. Of course TVPs piece together their musical treasure chest in a shambling, ramshackle fashion, and it’s brilliant.

 

‘14th Floor’ has the fresh buzz of bedroom Pop from the tower block, and ‘Magnificent Dreams’ has a beautiful sentiment. The band are not alone on stage for long, joined at first by a teenage fan for ‘Silly Girl’. She stays to help Treacy out for the rest of the gig, and more of the audience chip in as the set goes along. Treacy takes no time out in between to acknowledge clapping, it doesn’t come into his head for a moment, instead we get song after song, or part of song after part of song, in the order that they come into his head.

 

Treacy, the charming enigma, shrinks from a photographer’s flashes, chastens him for his audacity, orders him to pack his camera away. He jokes with a dancing black man, questions in jest whether he was here tonight expecting to see P Diddy, and demands that he names some TVPs songs to prove he knows where he is. But in both cases there’s no malice in his actions or words, just a genuine shyness and provocative nous.

The crowd plead for ‘Part Time Punks‘, the band’s best-known song, a shimmering-shambling track that denounces the trad punk ethos of Treacy’s youth. For a moment Treacy assents, playing the first few chords. But he’s interrupted, and with a shudder of self-disgust, realises what he was about to do and changes his mind, alarmed by himself for even contemplating such crowd pleasing.

 

The magic comes in spurts fewer and farer between as the set goes on, veering from easy, profound brilliance to garbage. We get the impression that Treacy and his band are going to ramble on like this until he gets carried off and tucked into bed by a good Samaritan, but the last train is due, and, alas, we don’t have time to hang around.

 

Tonight youth danced in the legend’s shadow, and vice versa. TVPs and The Kabeedies are a good match. It was Pop as a primal expression, or as close to that as you get in fussy indie modernity. Rebellion, if you like, that doesn’t forget to dance. But - on second thoughts - nothing so pretentious.