Live Review: Black Diamond Heavies

The Live Music Review has gotta rank as the lamest, most unaccomplished form of writing in the history of Western literature. I'm more likely to win a Pulitzer writing the blurbs on the back of cereal packets than I am churning out this sorta thing. Seriously. When's the last time you read a live music review that was really worth anything to anybody? D'you even remember ever having standards for this typa thing? D'you ever think, "Gee, I'd really enjoy reading a record of gig attendance which actually stands up as a valuable, entertaining, envelope pushing piece of writing, rather than something that essentially boils down to an advert for some band's myspace, only with the inconvenience of havin' to read 'bout how the chump guy writing the damn thing got drunk or fell over or did something "gonzo" etc before I get to the bit that says "go to yaddayaddayadda/myspace.com" or whatever?

I'd like to be all like "aw, well, Lester Bangs wrote that legendary live Stooges review that time, that was good, ain't nobody laying it down like Lester no more that's for sure, those cats at Creem back in 71, 72, they were really nailing it every time, that's the benchmark, and don't even talk to me about the NME", but I don't give a fug 'bout none of that, the I Know My Rock History weasels ripping off old Lester riffs are just as bad as the know-nothin' bozos at the NME too busy bandwagon jumping to ever learn How To Write. As a genre, the Live Music Review is bunk. Nobody has ever written a good live music review.

A Live Music Review

The Black Diamond Heavies played at a venue called The Junction last night in the Ancient Cathedral City of York. They are an American two-piece, comprised of a drummer, and a lead vocalist who plays over-amped, heavily distorted Fender Rhodes electric piano. They basically make a sound which is like all the best bits from any good Detroit garage / RnB / southern soul band with an organ, with all the shit non-organ bits taken out and replaced by nothing but organ & drum breaks for an hour, and the organ is cranked up 100 times louder and uglier than any sound you've ever heard, and the drums are thunderously loud and funky, and you wonder after about 5 minutes of watching them why anybody would ever bother having any other instruments in a band, especially an electrified guitar, which the screaming Fender Rhodes does a fair impression of at times anyway, only better. The lead vocalist / keys player sings in the Louie Armstrong / Howlin Wolf / Beefheart gravelpit style, and plays simple bass lines on the lower end of his piano like The Doors used to do, thus erasing the need for bass players. When they hammer away at max. tempo, they sound like The Stooges, with the Ashton brothers replaced by a really really loud Fender Rhodes piano. When they slow it down and groove, they sound like a broken down Booker T & The MGs / the theme from 'Taxi' being run-over by a taxi. They are, in parts, genuinely funky, and as jazz as a rock concert gets these days. They swing. I preferred them when they were on this low-slung groovin' tip, but whether they were careering wildly through a crazed punk-blues or lazily loping through a Al Greenish soul number, they were pretty much better than anything else I've heard this year. If Black Diamond Heavies play anywhere near you, go see 'em, unless you've got something else on, in which case they'll understand and the gig will probably go ahead anyway. I mean, you can't get to everything right, people lead busy lives and there's the credit crunch to contend with, shit, I almost couldn't be bothered to go to this gig myself just 'cos it had got to 9.15 in the PM or whatever and I was watching 'Men In Black' on video (Tommy Lee Jones' character 'K' is a White Album fan, and there's a good Elvis gag too, what, like I'm menna be watching 'The Trip' or 'Apocolypse Now' or 'The Last Waltz' or some shit just 'cos I'm a Hip Rock Journalist?) but 'cos I'd promised the local support band (98 Pages: early 70s Sabbath / Hawkwind proto-metal, v, good) I'd go see 'em I dragged my sorry ass out the house for a couple of hours. All in all, Black Diamond Heavies are the best band in the entire history of last night in York, they've got a myspace or you can probably Google them or whatever.

Paul Fuzz