The Good, The Bad, and The Queen

The Good, The Bad, and The Queen

21 July, 2008
by: Paddy

A private jet circles above London. On board are the latest in super group technology, The Good, The Bad, and The Queen. Their pilot – Fagin – takes a characteristic plunge in the grey smog that envelopes our great city, a city mired in squalor, suffocating generations of innocents and urchins. 19th century London is a dark and dangerous place, ominous and overpowering. Rangy men in chimney stack hats stalk the streets, occasionally lashing out at enfeebled match sellers. Prostitutes in rags display as much of their wares as they dare; it is cold and dank. Life in this world is, as Thomas Hobbes put it many years earlier, 'nasty, brutish and short'.

Suitably inspired by their crooked guide's domain, they fly back to the 21st century and decide to forge an album that would evoke, through a hitherto unheard delicacy of musical brutishness, the hyper-sensual reality that only they have known. They would teach the aseptic, over sensitive world a thing or two about fear and oppression. It would be led by the self-proclaimed genius, king of fingers in pies, faux-East End scamp Mr D. Albarn. All would flock to hear him eulogise on the true nature of darkness; he is, after all, considered a minor deity to the flat cap toting, Barbour donning, know-a-thing-or-two-about-life-guvnor, Nu-Shoreditch fraternity.

Yet rather tragically, despite all the frippery, it is the arrogance of the enterprise and the front man himself that are the overwhelming sensations. It is only Simonon who carries the mystique, the power and the ability to implant the dark, quasi Dickensian concept in the audience. His bass is the rock on which the band was built; without him the inevitable collapse would result in enough shattered ego to rip a hole in the space-time continuum. Simon Tong plays well, but in a manner similar that you'd expect of Arnie's nemesis, the T2000. The album played from beginning to end makes for very interesting viewing, and indeed listening. It strikes one that only live does it, and can it, reach its true zenith; the effect is similar to watching theatre, something more highbrow than the pantomime japes of a teenage indie band.

The unforgivable sin of the performance, one for which they deserve a permanent holiday in an industrial tenement, was the cutting of their finest piece, 'The Good, The Bad, and The Queen'. For only a second did we experience what it means to hear music close to the genius Albarn et al have built themselves up to believe they possess. And then, rather like this review, it was all over... They exposed for the world to see what is clearly the agonising, gangrenous wound that has so often destroyed history's supergroups. Ego. No sooner had Albarn bashed his last ivory than Tony Allen was out of his seat, drum sticks flying, and off the stage, presumably to catch the 10 o'clock re-run of Eastenders. He was coaxed back, but the embarrassment ran thick and deep; their finale of teasers tunes, including some rapping so dire it made Madonna look talented (Damon obviously owes someone money), was of interest, but the magic was gone. If, as many are justified in disputing, it was ever there.

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Paddy