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Pretty Vacant – The Story of Punk & New Wave

Usher Hall, Edinburgh

Four stars

 

“Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” By rights, the then Johnny Rotten’s almost final words as a Sex Pistol at the end of a shambolic 1978 San Francisco show should have marked the death knell of punk. Now here we are almost half a century on, and the snot-nosed anti establishment rebellion is packing in those who keep the faith at the fanciest concert hall in town. The nostalgic night out that follows is as showbiz as any other rock and roll revival, and none the worse for it.

 

A three-piece house band set the tone as they plough through an authentic sounding Anarchy in the UK. The rapid-fire assault of now classic pop-punk hits that follow is introduced by a leather-jacketed Kevin Kennedy, aka Coronation Street’s Curly Watts. Kennedy’s musical roots in Manchester include a stint in teenage band Paris Valentinos with future Smiths Johnny Marr and Andy Rourke. This makes for a perfect CV to be the night’s MC and Narrator. 

 

Kennedy appears every few numbers, punctuating the musical ebullience with a dot-to-dot spoken word back pages of punk. Spawned out of the monochrome mid 1970s, the day-glo awakening Kennedy relates sees the new movement go from tabloid notoriety to subverting the mainstream within months. This is illustrated here by a series of energetic pop video style dance-based dramatic vignettes.

 

The effect in Ged Graham’s production of his own construction is of a fanzine-like cut-and-paste mash-up that is part Xerox tribute act writ large, part history lesson, and part vindication for the blank generation whose vision changed pop culture forever. Or maybe it was just some common or garden situationist prank that got out of hand? Either way, truth and myth collide joyfully in Graham’s text, and no-one seems to mind in this hugely entertaining primer, even if the timelines are slightly skew-whiff.

 

Beyond Kennedy’s Johnny the Baptist like evangelism, the band led by musical director Adam Evans probably play the forty-odd songs in show better than many of the original artists did. The dance routines, meanwhile, are arranged by choreographer Louisa Clark in a way that feels like an old-school Jack Good rock and roll spectacular. 

 

While the boys do The Clash, The Stranglers and even the Boomtown Rats, Clark struts her stuff alongside the punkily named Lazy Violet. The Glasgow sired artist formerly known as Alicia Corrales fronts a refreshingly new take on Sham 69’s If the Kids Are United before a quick change salvo of hits by Siouxsie and the Banshees, Blondie, The Pretenders and Lene Lovich.

 

In terms of shopping local for an Edinburgh audience, Top of the Pops by The Rezillos is in there, as is Into the Valley by The Skids. Keeping Kennedy happy are renditions of songs by Buzzcocks and Joy Division. The opening bars of Magazine’s Shot By Both Sides are played, though no-one is brave enough to tackle frontman Howard Devoto’s vocal inflections. Nor, sadly, do we get any kind of nod to The Fall, despite one of the cast sporting a Mark E Smith style diamond patterned sweater early on.

 

The second half sees Kennedy take the microphone himself on songs by Talking Heads, Ian Dury and the Sid Vicious styled cover of My Way. It is the band’s take on Buzzcocks’ Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve), however, that provokes some gentle pogoing in the aisles.

 

It’s notable that many homaged in this collaboration between Prestige Productions and Se7en Productions are still on the circuit in one form or another keeping small venues alive, so go see ‘em. No future, you say? After all these years, the songs may remain more or less the same in Pretty Vacant’s versions, but they still sound like the future. 


The Herald, January 30th 2024

 

ends

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