The Vandals At The London Astoria, 11.30.2002
Posted by Phil McCann on 01.24.2003
Still goofing?
Welcome back to England, as it seems the gap between my little pieces of perfection (ha) seems to becoming less and less. This review is brought to you by Sainsburys Chocolate Brownies, for without them I wouldn’t have survived writing this up along with an English assignment; yes I do have the pressures of work too.
I don’t really know if I need to provide background on The Vandals, but here it is anyway- they’ve been around for a long time, well comparatively speaking. Their style of punk is comedic, but brilliantly comedic. Not in the same vein of Strung Out who have a very serious riff based offensive, The Vandals prefer to let their lyrics do the work, which is surprising, as the band know they can’t sing. This way with words that the band seems to possess is best shown by the band’s album ‘Hitler Bad, Vandals Good’ where the tracks ‘My Girlfriend’s Dead’, ‘I’ve Got An Ape Drape’ and ‘The People That Are Going To Hell’ provide laughs out loud all round.
This gig was part of a Kung Fu records tour (the first ever in the U.K) and was supported by Audio Karate and Tsunami Bomb, actually not in that order. These two bands were good enough for what they were- inoffensive, mildly mediocre punk. I can’t say that neither band is going anywhere because Audio Karate have the look to be something successful, but I’m not sure where their song writing will leave them. Tsunami Bomb, with a female lead singer, has a cool underground vibe, but again I can’t say how far they’re going. I hope both succeed on the punk scene and whatever happens happens, but on that night the case was plain and simple- they weren’t The Vandals.
Obviously enough- The Vandals were The Vandals. They were brash, cool, funny, and older men acting our age…gotta love that in punk. Not being familiar with all of their songs some of the night for me was of discovery, which pretty much ruled and prompted me to like the band more.
The previously mentioned tracks all got great receptions as well as ‘Café 405’, one of my personal favourites. The band also played a few tracks from their new album, and dug deep into he back catalogue to enlighten the crowd, which succeeded on all levels.
The crowd was energetic for the whole evening, and never once booed a band or song, as well as giving rousing receptions to almost everything that happened, probably the best punk crowd I’ve been in, just because of the inexplicable happiness shown.
‘My Girlfriend’s Dead’ got an amazing reaction with the whole crowd singing, as well as the brilliant comedy songs ‘The Unseen Tears of the Albacore’ and ‘Live Fast Diarrhoea’, which are as stupidly funny as they sound…if they sound stupidly funny.
During the band’s usual last song comedy routine instead of stripping down to…absolutely nothing, the guitarist Warren brought on the entire, and amazingly good looking, female contingent (or those willing anyway) on stage to perform ‘I’ve Got a Date’ and pretty much anything else he asked them to do. At one point his warning “Those under eighteen should really leave the stage now’ gives you a clue to how happy the guy was to be up there.
And that ended the evening, and everyone that I saw or talked to left happy, which rules because the band thoroughly deserved the great reception they got. After seeing them live for a second time I can unmistakeably say that The Vandals should never change, and never evolve their style- they’re doing everything just right as they are.
The 411: Amazing live, amazing on CD, I think one word describes the gig- great!
