The Coup/Common Market

The Nightlight Lounge, Bellingham, WA

August 3rd 2006

Pics and review by Phil Rose esq

This is the first gig I’ve been to in bloody years, mate. Seems I can’t really work up the interest for it. Politics, photography, fatherhood and being an old fart (fartyhood?) seem to have taken over my ability to get out of the house. But having hectored Hector at Epitaph records for a photo pass I figured I’d better go.

This was also my very first hip-hop/rap gig (unless Dub War count or the Beastie Boys at Reading Festival) and I was interested to find that I don’t understand the mores. I know that at punk gigs it’s every man for himself, wade to the front but the theme for the evening from the MCs or singers or rappers or whatever it is that the young people call these chappies seemed to be ‘respect’, ‘unity’, ‘love’ and ‘fuck the man’. ‘Fuck the man’, certainly. Always ‘fuck the man’. So I felt like hulking my 6’4” body in front of those shorter than I to get the shot and hearing or thinking I heard a tut from those about me suggested that perhaps I was dissin’ someone or some such. Awkward. One doesn’t want to step on the toes of da kids or anything rum like that. Most interesting anthropologically or sociologically, don’t you know. Margaret Mead would have been most thrilled.

Anyway, the bands. Were there bands? Oh yes, so there were.

RA Scion of Common Market. No bent bananas please.

Common Market are a most blandly named band (from a European perspective) from Seattle. Bland by name, kick-ass by nature. RA Scion humps up and down the stage shouting, engaging, looking like a good natured Malcolm X with ridiculous sideburns. I guess the tracks of Common Market are a bit too unity/love/respect/cliché driven for my taste but nonetheless they’re funky as hell.

Boots Reilly preaching revolution to the faithful.

The Coup, when they finally come on (at 12.30, if you please. I mean really, don’t these people have homes to go to or jobs to get up for?) are worth the wait. In the studio they are a two piece, Boots Reilly and Pam the Funkstress but on stage they become a five piece ‘real’ band with a shadowy hunk of a drummer, weedy dreadlocked guitarist, bar-stool reclining bass guitarist, wild and flailing dancer/vocalist Silke and the sexy as hell, funky as shit Boots. He stalks the stage like a tiger with an outrageous afro. He struts and exudes confidence without seeming like a wanker. He avoids all the stock hip hop moves, he’s funky and sexy as all git out and best of all he tells us 5 million ways to kill a CEO.

Socialism is a rare and precious commodity in this country. Socialism mixed with funkiness, rappiness, hippety hoppetyness and collaboration with Jello Biafra occurs only and I mean ONLY in The Coup. Get it while it’s evil.

God I stink at writing reviews. The Coup are fucking great, you should buy all their albums and pay me for prints of Boots Reilly and Silke for your wall. My pics ain’t great ‘cos the buggers wouldn’t let me use a flash and the lighting was shitty. Bastards.

Not to Rosey: If this review is too short include the fact that a picture is worth a thousand words and suddenly I wrote 2,550 words

Phil Rose esq