supported by
SONA FARIQ
Leeds Cockpit
April 19th 2000
"Get The Fuck Up!"
How many times have I heard that feeble implorement at a gig? Face facts, if a band has to beg the audience to move, it means that they can't get the job done themselves and they're forced to depend upon god manners. At that point, generally, you're pretty much screwed. This, however, is different.
"Get the fuck up" shrieks Dom Bouffard, sinewy vocalist of Sona Fariq, at the poor unfortunate who made the mistake of resting their feet with a nice sit-down during the support act. Normally, you'd get away with that. Normally the band will play to the happy front rows, then maybe toss the odd remark back to where you're sitting and tell you that you're possibly missing a nice time, a jolly old knees up if you'd only care to join the dance. However, normally, the vocalist hasn't left the stage, sprinted to the back of the venue, targeted you personally, pulled you out of your seat and spilled most of your pint in the process. Again, normally you'd sit back down or just hide behind security, but Sona Fariq are not a band with whom one should mess.
That's not to make them sound scary but just to be honest. If they're going to put on a bastard of a show, if they're going to sweat for you, you'd better bloody reciprocate. After all, everyone says that, as the audience, you're paying, so you don't have to do anything if you don't want. Yet no band ever got rich by playing support in pub gigs, so Sona Fariq may well feel that you owe them something and quite frankly if they demand that you have a good time, you shouldn't be such an ingrate.
Imagine Asian Dub Foundation: now imagine if they didn't sound so god-damned pious and po-faced. Replace the determined do-rightisms with a priapic swagger. Strip the Red Hot Chilli Peppers of their Stevie Wonder collection and ram Lee Perry on their cd player, you've got something close to Sona Fariq. Ok, so it's easy to talk about the fact that half of Sona Fariq are of an Asian background but let's look at the positives here: twenty years ago there was only one guy from a non-white ethnic background playing rock and that was Phil Lynott, who never got over feeling like an outsider. Now not only will the rock audience look beyond such simplistic divisions but they'll relish the possibilities and permutations that can be bought to bear. Greasy, nasty and slamming, Sona Fariq spin the audience from apathy to adulation in moments. Furious dance rhythms and a wall of roar approach to riffage will leave you thinking "wow, must other music is just apathetic bullshit". Plus quite frankly I wouldn't tell Dom his band were shit even if they were. If passion and fury made up for a lack of talent, he'd still be a superstar in the making, but add in the fact that he's got one of the most swaggeringly rock god voices since Chris Cornell first yelled "I wanna fuck you", then you've got to accept that he's already one of the biggest, most powerful performers in the world. The world just doesn't know it yet and one way or another, he's going to teach it the error of its ways.
By the time Groop Dogdrill take the stage, it's hard to say whether they've got a home field advantage or are in real trouble. Sona Fariq dwarf just about everybody, but then again just about everybody loves Groop Dogdrill: even us, back at our haven of malice and sardonicism in the mountains. Somehow Groop Dogdrill seem to have almost become the Mudge's house band, with three live reviews to date already. It's mainly because they've become the hardest working bastards in modern rock, quite happy to strap on the strings for any bugger who'll listen for a minute. In their own way, that's what makes them so special and so very rock and roll. Their big, brash, swinging three-piece punk, owing as much to Elvis as the Clash, seems equally at home in any venue from theatre to outside crapper, and so do they. Recently shorn vocalist Pete, grinning like a darned fool as per usual, fastidiously avoids throwing guitar shapes in favor of bending the air with big, bold, muscly rock. Meanwhile bassist Damo doesn't so much play his instrument as wield his implement, sauntering then slamming across the stage, while Hugh Kelly seems to be adding insult to injury by proving, every two-thirds of a second, that he really doesn't need amps on those drums.
After their latest album, Every Six Seconds, marked a move away from the psycho-billy groove of their debut Half-Nelson, Groop Dogdrill seemed to be having a difficult time adjusting to their new, more traditional big rock sound . Yet the recent tour supporting The Supersuckers seems to have allowed them to merge the two into a gestalt. Of course, it's a gestalt with a beer and brass knucks on the go, but they seem much happier now. It may be simple, old-fashioned grunt rock but, like GTOs and Ruddles County beer in the proper stumpy little bottles, there should always be a place for that. They remind me of nothing so much as my wasted and highly entertaining youth, hanging out in stinking, sweaty carcinogenic bars, catching some Nth rate boogie-woogie outfit slaughtering some Status Quo (even worse than it deserves). Yet just once in a while you'd be watching a and that you couldn't resist, who could even make the stage smoke a little less acrid and a little more rock and roll. Big, brawny, feedback bruisers, like Big Black with comedy stick-on side burns, who are there for a good time and just want you to come along because that would be much cooler for all concerned. The kind of outfit that you really wish were the house band. Well that's Groop Dogdrill. And bless 'em for it.
Groop Dogdrill have two albums, Every Six Seconds and Half Nelson, available on Beggars Banquet.
Sona Fariq's debut single, Love You Crazy, is available through WEA.
RMW