Get Out More...............................Gig Review

ONLY ONES/JOHN COOPER CLARKE (Wulfrun Hall, Sunday)

28-08-2007

After more than a quarter of a century apart legendary New Wavers reform on the back of a mobile phone ad - but would the Only Ones be any more than a freakshow nostalgia act? And has Johnny Clarke got any new poems yet?

Happily the answers for the 700 or so curious punters at the Wulfrun, the answers were "yes" and "yes".

Cooper Clarke is one if Britain’s great poets - the Alexander Pope of punk - whose more or less regular rhythms conceal some wonderfully dextrous wordplay.

Happily, after years in which his late 70’s standards overshadowed pretty much everything else he did, he’s also getting together a decent set list of new work.

Now, instead of complaining that "You Never Get A Nipple in the Daily Express" he jokes thatRichard Desmond’s Diana-obsessed rag would approve of his verse.

There’s a riotous rant about teenage thugs, an all-too close to the bone lament to ageing ("Worse") and the wonderful "Guys Like Pies" - a pukkah treat.

Oh, and always with Johnny C, some great gags.

"What are the three best things about getting Alzheimer’s? One - You can hide your own Easter eggs. Two - You get to meet new people every day. Three - You can hide your own Easter eggs."

Cooper Clarke is a veteran of the punk timewarp scene, but until Vodafone spotted the potential of "Another Girl Another Planet" (officially the greatest single never to have been a Top 10 hit) they were just a collector’s item.

Now though, they’re back touring with their original line up, improbably fronted by Peter Perret, the ultimate glam/gaunt granddad, a man of heroic substance abuse whose mere survival in 2007 is a cause for the rewriting of several medical books.

This is a man who knows more about rehab than Amy Winehouse; Pete Doherty does a few lines, but Perret wrote the book. If there was a Drugs Olympics, he'd be up there on the podium with Keef and Lou Reed.

None of this would be relevant but for the fact that addiction seeps into every line of his lyrics, love and the love of narcotics blurring into each other

Doomed romanticism is his thing - Richard Ashcroft MUST have been an Only Ones fan - and although the voice at times veers towards a camp croak these days, there’s always John Perry’s piercing Tom Verlaine solos and some thunderous bass and drums to combat the maudlin.

Wisely, barring a couple of numbers, they stuck mostly to the old stuff, with set closer "The Beast", "Program" and of course "Another Girl" all standing up well.

It wasn'tquite an overwhelming triumph - the sound deteriorated markedly through the set, and some of Mike Kellie’s drumming seemed under-rehearsed - but this was good enough to make you glad that this uniquely melancholic powerpop is back for another run.

(See also Paul Samuels preview of the original June gig which was subsequently postponed until Sunday link here )