COCK SPARRER | LIVE REVIEW
The Globe, Cardiff, Fri 1 Sept
Tricky to put this delicately, but by all good sense a capacity crowd for Cock Sparrer ought to be lower in number than, say, one of those teen-favoured YouTube sensations who occasionally play at this venue. Befitting the appearance of one of Oi! and streetpunk’s most esteemed bands, The Globe is a sea of big, middle-aged skinhead bastards. Lots of them very drunk on what I imagine to be an increasingly rare night out, too.
The atmosphere, let it be clear, is nice as pie, Cock Sparrer’s first Welsh gig for 39 years (according to frontman Colin McFaull) cause for good cheer. Circa 1978, the subgenre they came to define didn’t exist, and they were a boisterous but ultimately unsuccessful pub-punk band. After a few years off, they returned in 1983 with the Shock Troops album, a brilliant combination of cockney knees-ups and working class fury, and have remained on that path ever since. That Cock Sparrer shows like these are rare – they generally play to much larger audiences at punk festivals – has served to increase their legend, and it’s impossible not to notice how much this band mean to some people.
It no doubt helps support act Barstool Preachers, who feature McFaull’s son Tom on vocals and play spirited workaday punk of the Clash/Rancid type, with occasional ska bits. They’re so amiable, you can’t help but warm to them even when the songs are a shade humdrum. Cock Sparrer, on the other hand, begin with Riot Squad, a nug of Shock Troops gold about a teenage miscreant who weasels his way into the police force, like a band who have a fist of equally bostin’ tunes in the locker. And guess what?
The band, mostly comprising original members, are a crack unit, glam rock solos and earworm-tuneful tones kicked out with impeccable sandpaper roughness. Watch Your Back (about not being co-opted by political movements, kinda sounds like a Pete Seeger song played by a punk band), Working (about fiddling your benefits), Running Riot (from 1984, resembles bovver rock from 1974), I Got Your Number (Cock Sparrer’s most Stiff Little Fingers-esque moment), Take Em All (one of the best fuck-the-music-industry songs ever written), Where Are They Now (about punk’s first flush, written before Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons not only revived their careers but became two of the worst people in British media)… cripes, and I’m just mentioning the old stuff here. Granted, they’ve never bettered Shock Troops, but the magic is still audible in songs like One By One and Because You’re Young.
They finish with their anthem of anthems, England Belongs To Me. “It’s not about racism,” McFaull says, “it’s about belonging”; like most non-racist Oi! bands, he’s understandably cautious on these matters, and although its lyrics don’t really make any sense and we’re not in England, everyone hollers along anyway. It was beautiful, man! Then we step outside and see eight cops and a riot van trying to pick the bones out of a massive fight.
words NOEL GARDNER