The Propellerheads
Warwick University Students Union
After being rescheduled after dubious circumstances, (they said Will had a broken wrist, we at RetroActive know full damn well they were playing in Paris that night) the eagerly anticipated Propellerheads gig is going to go ahead. Through their association with a certain someone shaken, but not stirred, their audience is noticeably different from their appearances last summer at Athletico or V97. Understandably their fan base has widened and is more mainstream than a year ago, a small percentage are here crammed into the ironically titled ‘Cooler’ venue. After an outstanding warm-up DJ, the band emerge to great cheers and immediately break into ‘Take California’. Like a Greatest Hits compilation, all the favorites are included from ‘Spybreak’ to ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ and from ‘Bang On’ to ‘Velvet Pants’. The set plays like their debut CD on shuffle. Sure enough they jump just as energetically as a year ago from bass guitar to Hammonds, from drum kit to decks. The only problem is it’s boring. Basking in their glory they’re doing exactly the same thing as they were doing a year ago. Fans that have supported them since their early days on Wall of Sound are left cheated. Where as before Propellerheads were very much part of club culture, this is instead a concert very much in the Genesis sense of the word. For fucks sake, the crowd at the front are moshing and pogoing. Longstanding fans didn’t know whether to cry or wave their cigarette lighters in the air. Even the supposedly improvised ‘Props Skills’ in which Alex and Will Propellerhead demonstrate their technical skills scratching and beatboxing is staid, polished and over rehearsed.
From the outside this gig review may look like the ramblings of a small child forced to share his sweets or the cries of a wife that has just found her husband in bed with another woman. Alternatively it may read as the bitter preaching of a music elitist failing to come to terms with the success of ‘his’ band. Granted. One things for sure though, until Propellerheads release themselves from the chains of their DATs, they will never recapture the excitement so fondly remembered from their early performances.
