I was a bit cross about Radio 1 coming to Liverpool and patronising the locals, as you can tell from my review of another show in this series, featuring Pete Wylie.
My slightly snarky comment about “simulated spontaneity” is interesting in retrospect. Although it was meant to be a criticism, I think now that it was actually the point. I’ve been reading the memoir by Dexy’s fiddle player Helen O’Hara and she paints a picture of Kevin Rowland as a perfectionist, rehearsals that left nothing to chance, and a band that took stagecraft extremely seriously.
DEXYS MIDNIGHT RUNNERS
Melody Maker, March 26, 1983
Royal Court Theatre (and Radio 1), Liverpool
SEARCHING for the young soul rebels? You'd have to search a lot further than a Radio 1 show to find anything like that. What sort of rebel queues up for Steve Wright's autograph?
Yet this is the sort of behaviour preceding the live music tonight - the whole evening an example of the incomprehensible followed by the unpalatable. This general patronising tone must have had a numbing effect on the brain because, for a while, Dexy's almost seemed like fun.
After a long wait, the first sight of Dexys Midnight Celtic Soul Conglomerate starring Kevin Rowland, or however they dub themselves these days, is a row of stomping ankles revealed by the rising curtain. The song is "Geno", the applause heartfelt, the atmosphere warm, and the group enormous. And amazing to look at, in clothes that could only kindly be described as shabby. Peasant chic doesn't even come into it - tramps would be nearer the mark.
At first the music's fast moving, and though Kevin Rowland's voice still grates, Dexys are very much a group and the musicians work together in energetic co-ordination that gives highly enjoyable results.
Sadly, this isn't for long. When the pace slows, interest drains away, and as the set persists there's a tendency to stretch each song for as long as possible. If the idea is to create some sort of tension it's not a success.
As a demonstration of control it has its place. The band play games with the songs and their front-man plays games with the audience. Every pause, every false ending, every musical and visual joke, is designed to tease the audience; Kevin's gymnastics are designed to impress; and as for Kevin's "raps", they're delivered with a casual intimacy that could almost be ad lib.
The whole is a masterpiece of simulated spontaneity, and like most of the songs, it goes on much too long. The final effect is as glib and sterile as the occasion.
More from Radio 1 at the Royal Court
This is my review of another gig in the Radio 1 series. It starts off: “So ‘Gissa A Job’ becomes just another Radio 1 catchphrase, as ‘National’ radio spends a week slumming it, with a metropolitan disregard for geography, in three mythical areas called Merseyside, Liverpool and Toxteth.”
I wasn’t happy with Radio 1. But I was happy with the music.