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June 19, 2002

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Oct. 16, 2000

Review - NME
November 1999

Driveshaft: Live at the Rocket, University of North London

The Guardian - June 19, 2002

by Vyvyan Young
 

So, lately, I've been thinking that I'm going to be fired. And this might be in my best interest. Last week, I was sent to report on the Train show in Hull. This time, it's Driveshaft at the Rocket. (Legal note: of course, the Rocket is a lovely venue--nice, friendly bouncers there, all--in no way correlative to the depravity of Hull. There.) Either these assignments are an attempt to let me down easy, or the implicit concept is that I will give up and quit of my own volition. As evidenced by my willingness to attend these concerts, clearly, a sick, sorry masochism compels me to push forward.

Torture is our game then? Play on.

Shall we start where Driveshaft started? That would be late. Unprecedented lateness. In fact, had they been scheduled for the following day, their start time would have been more, well, timely. When drummer Patrick Gleason stumbled on to the stage at 12:03 a.m. brandishing a bottle of Stoli in a manner that convinced me he was going to use the bottle as some sort of percussion implement, I knew the concert had already peaked. Circa 8:42, it had peaked, to be exact, whilst I was still enjoying a nice spicy curry around the corner. Anyway, we have one drummer plus one half-empty bottle. Normally, I'd say: no, half-full! In this equation, it's half-empty, optimistically so, and the maths results register somewhere in the negative numbers, despite me setting that up as addition. Are you confused yet? Not nearly half as confused as singer Liam Pace when he arrived on stage. I'd say he was decidedly more than half-full.

Propped up by the microphone, Liam rasped out an incalculable stream of Driveshaft songs (numerous aborted tunes included), backed by bandmates Gleason, Adam "Sinjin" St. John on guitar and brother Charlie Pace on bass, whose shaky fingers stuttered over the wrong strings so many times I suspected he meant to attempt freeform jazz riffs instead of filling out the standard power chords. At one point, Sinjin invented a brand new way of playing guitar, which we shall call the incorrect way: hand over neck, rather than under. Showing off never offered so little to show. It's best left to the imagination.

Inebriation that could make even a Scotsman cringe did not deter the Driveshaft boys from posturing and posing. Pouting lips and pumped fists intimated at a cocky swagger well past its prime: by about one entire year. Last year topping the singles charts, this year toppling over. One feels sorry for a one hit wonder when they hit that hard. Indeed, the incredible shrinking audience appeared reborn when Driveshaft finally caved and gave us their big (well, their only) chart-topper, "(You All) Everybody." Grating? Quite. Overripe? Sure. Yet the band fed off the crowd's resurgence enough to harmonize somewhat symbiotically for the first time during their train wreck of a set. But, as the audience cheered for the first time that night without being spurred on by pity, Liam Pace berated them all. I recall the terms "pop whores" and "fair-weather rock-suckers," though I may be off by a slurred syllable or two. (My notes got a bit smudged from all that shrewish sputum Mr. L. Pace spat.) Next, we were literally ordered to shut our “tart-traps” and "listen good" to the next song, a newer number off their second release, Oil Change, apparently indicative of their "more mature rock-and-bloody-roll.” This, he punctuated with a belch that sounded like a repetition of the word "mature," just to nail the point home.

Ah, home. Before long, many in attendance crawled off to return to theirs, or someplace similarly more comfortable than here. The proposed example of maturation, “Last Call,” became ruefully prophetic. As the crowd diminished, so did Driveshaft’s vinegarish vigor. Never the less, I fretted that they would never leave. So I decided I would. Perhaps then they'd take the hint. Perhaps I was encouraging them too much, being the only person in attendance not slumped over the bar. My cue came as Liam Pace swung his mic around, accidentally (one must assume) hitting himself in the back of the head without a flinch or fidget. He kept on truckin’, and I motored away.

For all I know, Driveshaft are still playing there now. More likely, however, they’ve all knocked themselves out by one means or another, least likely being the microphone lasso of flavours-of-the-month turned fools.