You know the Chriiiiiiiiiistmaaaaaaaaaas countdown has begun when someone like Noddy Holder holds the front page of Big Issue, topper of hat and chipper of chops. It’s precisely 50 Top Of The Pops-popping years since Noddy’s hollering drove Slade’s ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ to the once-coveted Chrimbo number one spot (yes, we’re looking at you, sausage rolling boy), and the yelling Yuletide spirit lives on in ‘Now!’ compilations seasonal streamings and TV adverts. Can we really type the words “God bless” and “Girls Aloud” here? We think we can.
If Noddy now freely admits he had no idea everyone would still be harking on and on about the anthem half a century later (and, lest we forget, raking in half a million every year for the writers) then one wonders what the mutton-chopped singer would make of the throwback action occurring on a chilly Tuesday evening at the 100 Club in that there West End. There are some exquisite female tribute band names out there – the all-girl combo playing ‘Girls On Film’ and ‘Notorious’ under the name Joanne, Joanne is to be heartily admired for one – but you’d have to go some to find a band as perfect as four ladies playing a set of Slade songs and calling themselves SLADY.
The line-up then: Gem Lea, Davina Hill, and Donna Powell, while the singer is called Gobby Holder. Hers is not any toy town version of Noddy, either – from the chequered trews to the fearsome grasp on the Holder rasp it’s an incredibly credible and lovable take on the original’s cheeky glam rock. Her colleagues are up to the titan platform-stomping task as well, with even veteran glam-rocking fans in the crowd noting the musical precision as well as the sartorial accuracy. Added fair play to support act SCAM 69, who perform a lengthy set of chunkily superior covers of The Jam, The Clash and The Undertones and manage to avoid playing one song by yer actual Sham 69. This is the 100 Club, goddammit – someone in here must be feeling cheated.
So far, so many spangly top hats and waistcoats. But word on the streets of Southend-on-Sea is that Slady’s birth was – in part, at least – inspired by fellow sea-siding muso ROSALIE CUNNINGHAM. In the normal scheme of things this would matter little, but this is the Diary of a Pandaman’s scheme of things, and that is never normal, and so not but two days after Slady slay the 100 Club by some utterly cosmic coincidence we are ruminating over Rosalie in Ramsgate Music Hall.
Those same salty Seasiders may remember Rosalie as the person behind Purson a few musical lifetimes ago, following her stint in the impeccably lipsticked Ipso Facto. Her current artistic persona delves even further into the past, to a pre-glam era when velvet was crushed and flares were definitively flared. It’s fragrant and muscular and definitively, almost defiantly prog – Kate Bush getting radiant with Deep Purple is certainly one way of peering through her looking glass. It’s a rammed Ramsgate crowd who lap up the odd folkie detour – there is even a blatant flute solo – but we make it out alive and slightly pickled by the spirit of 1971.
From 50 seasons of Christmas merriness to The First Fifty, we stroll: the first curtain raiser of the 2024 alternative festival scenery sees Brighton’s The Great Escape take over East London for one night to display their springtime wares. With Big Special playing over there and Gia Ford over there, the choices are plentiful and perturbed, but The Victoria in Dalston Village is the venue of choice for many, with another sold out crowd welcoming CARDINALS. They’ve popped over from Cork and rumour has it they are “a bit like Fontaines DC, but more Irish”. Gigging history lovebags may care to recall that Fontaines’ breakthrough show was in this very Hackney venue in 2018, and fittingly Cardinals come with a broody, poetic intensity and a bonus accordion for that homespun touch.
They’re also in the process of supporting hot Scouse newbies PICTURE PARLOUR. If their ‘Norwegian Wood’s debut (not to be confused with…) offered a strident indie glossiness the live set is more of a rock shock to the senses, rawer but less poorer for it thanks in no small part to singer Katherine’s delivery, which is huskier than a husky dog pawing a box of Farley’s rusks. The dancing is strong, the vibes are excitable and the fleeting thought occurs that Picture Parlour could actually make cheerily raucous live partners for Slady, which is not something something which springs to mind with most hipster bands.
Even THE VIEW are getting into the party act, which are nine words we never thought we’d ever have to type again. Over at Norwich Waterfront in the company of boisterous local support panda boys BAG OF CANS – think Blur playing Twister with Dingus Khan – The View are glancing over their shoulder, back to 2007 when their ‘Hats Off To The Buskers’ album barged into the post-Libertines party and pissed in the whisky. If the intervening years have seemingly been fuelled by surliness and a penchant for onstage punch-ups then East Anglia sees the Dundee rakes in charming, effervescent form – even with a sobriety-inducing 8.30pm kick off time to appease the local indie clubbers. Even new album ‘Exorcism Of Youth’ holds up in the midst of the guitar-rattling mayhem: “If you’re allergic to mornings, wake up in the afternoon,” they advise, “Wake up with with a brand new point of view…”
A not entirely useless count of 29 acts for November whisks the Pandaman’s 2023 total to 347. If we want to hit 365 performances for the year we’re going to have to see 18 more live turns, and we’re going to have to try to see those 18 live turns in the middle of the Christmas carnage where the gig bookings low right bloody down as the party season hits its mad bloody drunken peak. I blame Noddy Holder. Someone has to.
