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Melody
Maker
Aug
10, 1991
Live!
On Golden Blonde: The Primitives
The
Primitives
A
tent in Scalloway
The
Primitives
Isleburgh
Middle School, The Shetlands
Love
Bites. No, not the Buzzcocks album, the strawberry blotches on the side
of the neck. It’s the first of the Maker’s two-day jaunt with the once
terrifically famous Primitives, see, and we’re in a tent right up on
the top of a hill several hundred miles to the left of nowhere, and
the young villagers are treating the band’s occasionally thrilling peroxide
bop with the snoggy teen respect it deserves. So they’re kissing and
cuddling and touching and groping (the kids, not the band) and all the
while there are hyper-gale force winds blowing outside and everybody's
pissed on snakebite and cheap canned lager, and Tracy, bless her, is
trying to keep up by doing ever such naughty coquettish things with
the mikestand. You should have been here. On second thoughts, you’d
probably just be standing and staring and spoiling all the fun. Yeah,
I’m glad you’re not here.
Your lip would definitely be curling on the second night of savage debauchery,
when The Primitives make the exceedingly un-dangerous and un-anarchic
decision to perform live in a school hall, of all safe, non-rock'n'roll
places. I’m not saying the crowd is young, but several glassy-eyed delinquents
have to be stretchered home with Tizer poisoning, and one fresh-faced
adolescent is caught trying to smuggle chocolate cigarettes past the
“bouncer”, a short fat lady wearing a mid-Seventies gingham dress. The
Primitives, oblivious to all this juvenile excess, blitz through a series
of hits (“Sick Of It”, “Way Behind Me”) and misses (the current flop
rehash of Lynyrd Skynyd's “Sweet Home Alabama” called “You Are The Way”)
with just enough Shangri La's-meets-Stooges blonde terrorist fury to
keep the vultures form their door (“Are you writing their obituary?”
sneers a gorgeous brunette passer-by, proving that irony is not the
delicious preserve of Londoners). Guitarist Paul is as revoltingly handsome
as ever, Tig bashes drums with aplomb and bassist Neil’s ugly tooth
decay would make Keith Richard turn a particularly verdant shade of
green. Tracy, though, is something/one else, and I’m not just saying
this because we got on famously all weekend (we didn’t: she ignored
me). She pouts (naturally), she preens (of course), she flutters her
'lashes (what else?). But I especially like the way you can never tell
whether she’s being serious, and the bit when, during the Spectoresque
“Hello Jesus”, she leans back, holds onto the mike and looks ceilingwards
with a look in her eyes that seems to say ”WORSHIP AND ADORE ME”. We
will, you know. One day Tracy Tracy, not Wendy James, will be a mega-popular
Hollywood star with a bucketload of Oscars and vodka problem (in-joke).
Right now, though, The Prims are rampaging through some ancient US Sixties
punk nuggets B-side, with wah-wah and effects pedals and everything,
and we’re on golden blonde again. Detroit ’69? Shetlands ‘91! Believe
it.
-Paul Lester
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