Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Life is a risk. That is the whole point, we cannot sit safely on a high chair being force fed the bland and beige through a sterile tube, occasionally deliberating a thought that might be considered controversial if we pursue it to its logical end, and then dismissing it if it should cause more than a ripple of offence. The trouble is that we all want to be liked, and we all want to live in a world that is friendly; a world where the dull, the routine, and the boring, are greeted as though they are the ministers and saints that hold court in the land of the righteous and the new moral guardians.
Of course, there is offence, and then there is confrontation delivered by the idea of rebellion, the two fingers up from The Blues, the spit of Punk, the spirit embodied in the snarl of Jazz, and the intent in the lifestyle attributed to Rock ‘N’ Roll; and yet in some quarters, as Liverpool’s The Bordellos quite rightly point out, Rock N Roll is Dead. The lungs may still hunt down the air of reckless behaviour, the mind may insist that the revolt and the often revolting, as the new Puritans would glibly suggest, but the heart can be seen as finally giving in to the inertia started by the golden age of post war anger, and reaching its zenith in recent times as the beige slowly took control.
It all depends on your point of view, there will be those that will grandly insist that Rock N Roll is thriving, that it has just shifted gear, and arguably they are right, you only have to look at way that some will behave when on tour; but the question is of how much of that is for the instant like, the thumbs up and the chance to appear rebellious without causing agitation, or having a well-meaning but ultimately religious family member denounce you as being possessed or in thrall to the Devil.
The four tracks that make up The Bordellos’ E.P., Fish Race, Fox Hunt Heart, The Dream of Cha Cha, and the E.P.’s title track Rock N Roll Is Dead, are that extraordinary mixture of insurgence that unleashes a progressive Punk mind, it is the sound of mutiny with demonstration in the voice, not for The Bordellos in this case a strong sense of calm, but the outpouring of disagreement which has been waging war; and what a war it is.
Brian Bordello says we no longer have the figures that made the genre brimming with opposition to the status quo, that not only bent the rules, but shattered them; we have no Bowie, no Orbison, no Lennon, Areatha has long since left the building, the beautiful and stately Ms. Tina Turner has bowed from the stage and watches from the side-lines, if rock and roll is dead, then it is perhaps time to resurrect the beast, by being confrontational, not rude, not insolent, or indeed obscene, and certainly not cruel, but by willing to create art that offends the meagre soul who wishes for all to be stereotypical and by default, beige.
Rock ‘N’ Roll, like life, is a risk, and whether it is poetry, in literature, in sculpture, in the remarkable passions of someone playing badly out of tune or catching the eye with an out of favour scene in a film, then that is Art; and it needs rescuing, and making whole again. The Bordellos’ certainly have captured the essence of this logical step for all to hear in Rock N Roll is Dead.
Ian D. Hall