Skip to main content

The Go! Team

ABC, Glasgow
4 stars
There’s a school disco feel to The Go! Team’s headlining show on the back of their just released second album, Proof Of Youth. The ABC’s muddy gym hall acoustic is part of it, as is its 14s and over clientele who irrepressible front-woman Ninja, sporting vest, shorts and knee bandage, welcomes as “Young mature adults.” Mainly, though, it’s the sheer exuberance of the hyper-active Brighton sextet dreamt up in guitarist Ian Parton’s mum’s kitchen, and only made flesh after he’d already recorded the cut and paste masterpiece, Thunder, Lightning, Strike.

Three years on, and The Go! Team are a force of nature, whose mixing and matching of kindergarten hip-hop, sampled horn wig-outs and Sesame Street grooving by numbers taps into a low-attention-span nostalgia for an unspecified pan-generational past somewhere between 1971 and 1981. Illustrated by a splice and dice video back-drop, such legitimised infantilism may sound like some Stuart Maconie spacehopper fantasy. In actual fact, its amps-to-the-max infectiousness is an unadulterated joy.

The rafter-bending bounce-along on Bottle Rocket is as unforced as the banjo that’s brought out for Everyone’s A V.I.P. To Someone, while Parton’s harmonica wails out all his fantasy-wish-fulfilments come true. At times as punk as Iggy Pop, like The Harlem Globetrotters, the basketball legends who make an onscreen appearance during a triumphal Doing It Right, The Go! Team put on such an entertaining show you forget what great players they are.

With their three boy/three-girl split, The Go! Team are the breathless epitome of multi-cultural Britain now, a confident, sassy melting pot of absorbed hand-me-down influences perfectly in tune with where they’re coming from. More importantly, The Go! Team know exactly where they’re at. What a way for term to start.

The Herald, Septermber 17th 2007

ends

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) ...

Myra Mcfadyen - An Obituary

Myra McFadyen – Actress   Born January 12th 1956; died October 18th 2024   Myra McFadyen, who has died aged 68, was an actress who brought a mercurial mix of lightness and depth to her work on stage and screen. Playwright and artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, David Greig, called McFadyen “an utterly transformative, shamanic actor who could change a room and command an audience with a blink”. Citizens’ Theatre artistic director Dominic Hill described McFadyen’s portrayal of Puck in his 2019 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London as “funny, mischievous and ultimately heartbreaking.”   For many, McFadyen will be most recognisable from Mamma Mia!, the smash hit musical based around ABBA songs. McFadyen spent two years on the West End in Phyllida Lloyd’s original 1999 stage production, and was in both film offshoots. Other big screen turns included Rob Roy (1995) and Our Ladies (2019), both directed by Mi...

Big Gold Dreams – A Story of Scottish Independent Music 1977-1989

Disc 1 1. THE REZILLOS (My Baby Does) Good Sculptures (12/77)  2. THE EXILE Hooked On You (8/77) 3. DRIVE Jerkin’ (8/77) 4. VALVES Robot Love (9/77) 5. P.V.C. 2 Put You In The Picture (10/77) 6. JOHNNY & THE SELF ABUSERS Dead Vandals (11/77) 7. BEE BEE CEE You Gotta Know Girl (11/77) 8. SUBS Gimme Your Heart (2/78) 9. SKIDS Reasons (No Bad NB 1, 4/78) 10. FINGERPRINTZ Dancing With Myself (1/79)  11. THE ZIPS Take Me Down (4/79) 12. ANOTHER PRETTY FACE All The Boys Love Carrie (5/79)  13. VISITORS Electric Heat (5/79) 14. JOLT See Saw (6/79) 15. SIMPLE MINDS Chelsea Girl (6/79) 16. SHAKE Culture Shock (7/79) 17. HEADBOYS The Shape Of Things To Come (7/79) 18. FIRE EXIT Time Wall (8/79) 19. FREEZE Paranoia (9/79) 20. FAKES Sylvia Clarke (9/79) 21. TPI She’s Too Clever For Me (10/79) 22. FUN 4 Singing In The Showers (11/79) 23. FLOWERS Confessions (12/79) 24. TV21 Playing With Fire (4/80) 25. ALEX FERGUSSON Stay With Me Tonight (1980) ...