WILD WEAZEL / BURN Denbigh Town Hall
(by neil crud)
The song Let’s Do The Time Warp is really fitting for this evening, Myself, Fairziff & Wayne The Bastard were thrown back to the early 80’s for this bizarre event. Having dispatched Steve Sync off to Depeche Mode in Brum & only finding out about the Snowdonia Benefit show in Llangollen at the last minute, we drew 3 short straws & ended up in Denbigh.
The Town Hall makes an excellent venue, like a mini-Manchester Apollo, but with a spongey floor. The set up was very professional & Dodgy PA’s Inc got the sound for Burn spot-on; an excellent throbbing bass sound & a superb kit. Pity about the band; we turned up tonight for the entertainment value of Burn. Having pissed our pants laughing at them in the Denbigh Festival a couple of months earlier, we thought we’d get a few more laughs tonight; but the joke soon wore thin. Freddie Mercury was exhumed for the evening for one final buggering as Steve Herpes On A Bitch Jones went through the motions, evidently disappointed at the lack of enthusiasm from the small crowd. Francis Flynn on the lead guitar was excellent at what Francis Flynn does best; playing other people’s riffs, & the lone nutter from the Joe Bear Academy of Headbangers worshipped the guitarist’s every cock-rock lick.
Remember those youth club discos? The ones in the early 80’s when Rainbow, AC/DC, Motorhead, Saxon etc were played? This was one of those; the bizarre thing was that the majority of tonight’s crowd attended those same discos almost 20 years ago.
My colleagues & I before hand were going to give Wild Weazel 4 songs before we jumped ship; their name brought up a horror book of nightmares to the forefront of our imaginations but…we were in for surprise. The filling hall silenced, the lights went down, the dry ice oozed from the stage & a faint bass rumble got louder & louder, followed by a slow tribal drum beat. Fairziff commented that this sounded quite progressive & the 4 songs we had given them might actually be their whole 90 minute set.
Then, over the rhythmic sound came – a la Queen, the chant – ‘Weazel, Weazel rock you.’ And we fell about laughing. The band really look the part, 3 well built guitarists in white vests & jeans with slick Happy Days haircuts, & the tall frontman in combat gear, very confident with himself & the crowd. Dodgy PA’s Inc finally lived up to their name by having the sound all over the place for the opening number & forgetting to mike up the cymbals.
Wild Weazel get 10 out of 10 for appearance, another 10 for showmanship, full marks for effort, and no points for content. In fact I’d go so far as to say that their songs are fucking awful, appalling, shite, pap, bland wank cock rock toss. How can a band who have it all as far as image & self motivation are concerned let themselves down so heavily when it comes to songwriting? I mean these guys are seriously good musicians. I’ll tell you why; it’s because they’re into heavy rock, a music that died a horrible death once Angus Young shit his own short pants through old age & incontinence. Someone forgot to tell them that HEAVY ROCK IS DEAD & only fat ugly women in tight jeans & sad old gits reminiscing still like it. Wild Weazel will never escape the clutches of local hero status unless they close the shop, call in the interior designers & re-open under a different name selling a new product. Let’s face it – these guys HAVE got what it takes to be a top class band if only they put their heads together & realised the potential they’ve got to actually escape from Denbigh for ever.
The 4th song finished & we looked at each other, the band soon made our minds up for us, they played their 1st cover version of the evening; Sweet Caroline by Status Quo. We made our way to the door as Wild Weazel proved they will always be the best band in Denbigh
