Gig review: UK Subs

Published on Sunday 5 July 2009 22:12

*** IVORY BLACKS, GLASGOW

"THERE aren't going to be any blues tonight, I'm afraid," commiserated the UK Subs' lead singer, fulcrum and one-time R&B performer, Charlie Harper. "So we'll just carry on playing some punk rock, if that's all right with you."

It certainly was; this was a proper punk gig in a proper punk venue – a sea of PVC, piercings, chains and Mohawks colliding in the centre of a dark and noisy black box.

It was also, perversely, an out-and-out nostalgia show. With even the youngest of those involved in punk's first UK wave due to turn 50 over the next year or three – the tattooed, bleached-blond Harper is 63 – the most revered bands of that era still play largely to their constituent audience. Harper's group (a revolving-door entourage ever since 1976) play with testosterone-fuelled vigour and their mostly male audience respond in kind, which stands as a more visceral testament to the benefits of staying young at heart than the generation before them perhaps enjoyed.

For all the aggressive trappings, though, Harper presides over a series of guitar-pop songs in the traditional sense, albeit all turned up to eleven. We heard the Guns 'n' Roses-covered Down on the Farm, slices of late Seventies kitchen sink drama in C.I.D. and Limo Life, fan favourites Stranglehold and Keep on Runnin, and fearful Cold War soundtrack Warhead. Most of all, a cover of the Ramones' California Sun emphasised that the Subs, like most punks, were just a pop group with louder amps and a bigger sneer.