Thursday 1 November 2012

Mindless Self Indulgence at Forum - 28 October 2012


Mindless Self Indulgence


It’s been a tempestuous day. It’s raining cats and dogs and I’ve just come from the ill-tempered Armageddon that was the Chelsea v Man Utd match. I’m damp and seething.

I find comfort in the dark shroud of a half full Forum. Arriving in time to catch about two minutes of the Dead Betas, it’s hard to form an impression. However, their Bandcamp is here.

Taking Haley are up next and are pretty much the dream support act. Everything they do seems designed to warm up an audience for someone else.

The crowd are encouraged to wave, clap and sing along, which they are happy to do. The band are enthusiastic, glad to be here and come across a bit like a lightweight version of Ash, but without any immediately killer tunes. They know their audience and they do a respectable job.

And then...arriving full pelt and not letting up for so much as a second, Mindless Self Indulgence are among us.

The crowd effectively implodes into a mass of moshing guys and screaming girls. It’s a tsunami of hormones and testosterone which suddenly occupies about the half space as previously as the kids pile forward. There is then a great wash of humanity as lighter and more sensitive souls are expelled from the seething mass.

A band like this is only as good as their front man and James Euringer, aka Jimmy Urine is the best of the bunch. This man never rests for even the merest second, a non-stop blur of flailing limbs, spiky hair and obscene gestures.

He is joined by Steve Righ? sporting a bandana and beard, and clearly enjoying himself by rather camping it up, even though he looks like a grizzled biker. Bassist Lyn-Z is relatively restrained in comparison, only occasionally getting the limelight when Urine passes her the microphone to scream into. Drums are thumped by Kitty, tonight dolled up like a member of Sigue Sigue Sputnik.

But it’s all about Jimmy Urine. He dashes around the stage, teetering on a series of podiums hidden between the other musicians. He keeps up a non-stop monologue of insult, off colour humour and audience-baiting. The ruder he is about them, the more they love it. Which is part of the joke.

Songs pass by in a blur and I must admit that the actual musical content rather passes me by – I’m too busy watching the singer’s antics to care about what he’s actually singing.  

An indication of the highbrow nature of tonight’s proceedings can be appreciated when, after announcing that the band will be playing in Paris the following evening, Urine gets the crowd to chant along “Fuck The French!”. At another point, he balances awkwardly on a podium the better to repeatedly moon us with his skinny white ass.

After an hour or so, the law of diminishing returns starts to set in. The band are as full on and outrageous as previously, but the crowd seem exhausted by it all.

The second encore is rather bizarre. The band leaves the stage apart from Steve, who invites various members of the crowd up on stage to play his guitar. They can’t. Steve starts to sing “Born Free”. There is some confusion and it becomes clear that this is indeed the end, and the others aren’t coming back.

Mindless Self Indulgence live up to their name in a good way. It’s great to let off steam, be a little silly and just make some noise.

And I’m sure that somewhere that Urine and co are getting some French kids to chant “Fuck L’Anglais!”










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