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Nick Morgan and crew
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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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THE MYSTERY JETS, The Mean Fiddler, London,
March 9th 2006 |
| I
sometimes wonder about people in marketing, I really
do. I mean, I thought their job was to find the
right people for their product, and then persuade
them to buy it. Isn’t that right Serge? Well
in the case of the Mystery
Jets, whose first album Making Dens
was released last Monday, I can’t help thinking
that the marketing department at 679 Recordings
(an ‘indie’ offshoot of Warner Music)
were having a ‘Friday afternoon’, as
they used to say at Ford Motors in Dagenham. |
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| The
insight that they seem to be working on is that
music lovers like eccentrics and misfits (and God
knows Serge, that’s certainly true of us isn’t
it?). So what do they do? Well they seem to spend
all their time telling us, the press, anyone who
will listen, that that’s what the Mystery
Jets are. Big mistake guys! |
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We
don’t want to be told that in advertising,
and we might even get a bit fed up reading it in
interviews or reviews. What we really want to do
is find out for ourselves – or at least get
told by our best mates. If I didn’t know better
I’d look at the adverts and make a positive
decision not to buy – but then I guess I’m
not a ‘target consumer’ as they say.
I can also tell that from the beautifully produced
CD sleeve (the design and packaging work associated
with this band is fantastic – marketers reprieved!),
which nicely, instead of having lyrics, has a carefully
crafted picture to represent each song. But try
and read the typeface with my tired middle aged
eyes – wrong font, wrong colour background.
That’s it – moan over. |
| It’s
the Mean Fiddler, and I’m only here in the
middle of a domestic crisis involving a 14 year
old boy, football and fractured elbows (ouch!) because
it’s a big night for the Jets, and quite a
big one for my daughter who’s professionally
involved with the band (but not, as you might guess
from the above, on the marketing side – phew!).
So yes Serge, I declare ‘an interest’
here, as our Members of Parliament only occasionally
like to say. But let’s be clear, in keeping
with Whiskyfun principles I bought my own ticket
(yes, this is reviewing without the bungs and freebies
that occur in much music journalism – and
other categories I could think of too) and I even
declined a pass for the after show party. Where
was I? |
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| Yes
– it’s a big night because the album
is just released – something of a rite of
passage as singer Blaine Harrison picturesquely
explained to us, and they’re here celebrating
with longstanding fans, friends, mums and dads.
And blimey, one of the dads is even on stage –
guitarist, keyboard player and stylophone meister,
Henry Harrison. Who from what I can gather was in
the band when it started when the rest of the boys
were about nine. So it’s taken some years
of careful nurturing in their wonderful London hideaway
on Eel Pie Island (whose association with the birth
of rhythm and blues in the UK is knowingly acknowledged
on the CD cover) to get them to this stage. And
if only people can see beyond the unhelpful ‘eccentric’,
‘quirky’, ‘bonkers’ stereotyping
I suspect they have a long way to go yet, and probably
very quickly. |
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Left,
Blaine Harrison - right, Kai Fish and William
Rees |
| The
gig is fantastic. The opener is Zoo Time. Play the
‘who do they remind me of’ game and
you’ll quickly on one song get through Franz
Ferdinand, Pink Floyd, Barclay James Harvest, Moody
Blues, Teardrop Explodes and more. In fact in the
end you have to give up and simply agree that they
sound like the Mystery Jets. Full stop. In the engine
room are drummer Kapil Trivedi and the often Bruce
Foxtonesque bass-player Kai Fish – and combined
with the nicely fractured guitar playing of William
Rees they provide a formidable rock and roll outfit,
supported by Harrison (Henry, senior) and Harrison
(Blaine, junior), who (seated as a result of a longstanding
illness) sings, plays occasional guitar, and plays
as second drummer, famously bashing away at all
sorts of pots and pans (this, apparently, is one
of the things that makes them ‘eccentric’
– hmmmm). I should add that Blaine Harrison
has a great English rock and roll voice, and also
that I get a weird sense of déjà vu
every time I hear him sing. |
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| In
the course of a pretty high energy hour or so they
work through the entire album and give us ‘Lizzie’s
Lion’ as an encore. Highlights for me are,(in
addition to the really powerful opener ‘Zoo
time’), ‘The boy who ran away’,
‘Purple prose’ (nice guitar playing),
‘You can’t fool me Dennis’ (shades
of the sadly departed Boo Radleys), ‘Horse
drawn cart’, ‘Little bag of hair’,
and ‘Making dens’ (which has a satisfyingly
nice feel of what the Beachboys should have been
about it). The songs are well crafted – and
if you haven’t guessed it’s the sort
of good old English stuff that your Whiskyfun reviewer
adores - as the packaging emphasises it’s
all cricket bats, boys' comics, red telephone boxes
and model aeroplanes. Magic. |
| The
whole evening is totally engaging, with these charming
young men (well, except Harrison senior) sharing
their obvious pleasure in the moment with their
adoring fans – typical of the feel is when
bassist Fish climbs on the speaker stack in the
middle of a song to shake hands with friends and
admirers in the balcony. I can’t see him being
able to do that in twelve month’s time. In
fact they look so happy you can only imagine that
they must feel like they’ve got the best job
in the world. |
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Which reminds me of the only low point of the evening
– the man with the worst job in the world,
stuck in a corner of the squalid and stinking floor-flooded
men’s urinals, trying to persuade his would-be
clients to buy a soft towel or some aftershave.
Two last things. I’m reliably informed that
the band began life as ‘the misery jets’.
I can only congratulate whoever it was that threw
out the misery and put in the mystery – what
a great name. And secondly, just to keep a few old
Dads very happy, as Serge would say, “please
go and buy their music”. - Nick Morgan
(concert photographs by Nick's Nokia) |
Check
the index of all reviews:
Nick's Concert Reviews
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