China Crisis, South Devon Arts Centre, Totnes, Friday 28 November 2014
Two gigs in two weeks? Terrifying, with Christmas around the corner. Still, at least I am building some tolerance.
China Crisis. My first time. Memories of 1982 – “Christian” on the radio, all hell at primary school. Over it now. But the song remains as a source of great comfort. In 1989, in the early period of my buying of music, I reached China Crisis. Had already picked (pocket-monied) my way through some earlier memories: Depeche Mode, Human League, Ultravox, OMD, all that eighties magic. And so I started with the album “Christian” came from – the first one. By the summer I reached “Flaunt the Imperfection” (their third) whose sleeve (silver on dark blue) always gave me a headache to look at. By autumn I started college and “What Price Paradise” (their fourth) made sense after a couple of false starts over that drought-ridden summer. Doing Physics homework, staring across town at the building where my new object of desire would be tomorrow and was today. Sharing her space without overlapping.
Later the 5th album, released that year, then nothing until 1994, something of a whimper (but check out the sleeve of the French version), then nothing. But they stayed together, gigging and that. And they are still here – new album “Autumn in the Neighbourhood” may not reach us until Spring but when you have waited 20 years …
Totnes. Where I did a year and a half of night shift work, even while doing a full-time job elsewhere. Insanity. Hadn’t been back since that all finished, summer 2010.
The combination was of course irresistible.
The same ritual I had then, except a few hours earlier. “The Pleasures of Electricity” and (Arab Strap’s) “The Red Thread” for the walk and the train then the walk around the town before I was due at work. Did the same route, saw the same Christmas decorations as 2009, felt the same feelings, made more mental notes for some project I started way back then. All good. Politely arriving a fraction after opening time, the place already quite full, not long before Shadow Factory, an unexpected support. Live bass for a pedal to loop then guitar, sax and a Florian Schneider look-alike on drums. Reggae, ska, and other genres I don’t understand but still get somehow. Ones to watch. Especially in their top hats strung with red lights.
I didn’t really know what to expect from the Chinas themselves, apart from the tunes of course. They seemed to shape shift their way across my 1989, some parts Steely Dan (like I knew that at the time!), some parts gorgeous atmospheric instrumentals, some parts new wave, some parts bonkers pop songs, other parts lyrics hard to decipher, all the time fascinating. Very strange album titles. But I hadn’t seen a video, hadn’t seen them in motion.
Gary Daly – singing – very chatty, stories old and new, something of Bryan Ferry about him, self-deprecating and playfully joking at the audience (from a “posh town”) who “are not f*cking Martin Scorsese, not f*cking David Bailey, so please don’t film this and post it on Youtube, it’ll look f*cking sh*t”. All said in the nicest possible way. Eddie Lundon on guitars and a bit of singing and plenty of smiling. Brian McNeil on keyboards/programming/whatever. Just the trio tonight – after what I heard I am intensely keen to hear the full band. Next year?
Two sets (“sponsored by Saga Tours who insist we have a twenty minute rest”) – album tracks, then hits. “Tragedy and Mystery” was the only one I really missed. Personal favourites “Arizona Sky”, “Seven Sports For All”, “Here Come a Raincloud”, “Best Kept Secret”. A couple from the new record, including the title track, sounding really quite fine.
Why aren’t this band (still) massive? Who knows – but at least we have them. I was as guilty as anyone of forgetting them, almost writing them off to the nostalgia circuit. Now I have seen they were and are too good for that. I think they realise too – hence the new album.
Left with an hour to kill I stayed on for the eighties disco that followed, standing not dancing of course. At work I would get the train home at dawn, but this time I was able to make the last train or could you call it the first train, the sleeper train, sat silent, in the travelling dorm of the insomniac and bedless, no views of the estuary, no rising sun. But still there. Four years on, or is it twenty five? Or thirty five?
http://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/chinacrisis 
