Classics of Love (Jesse Michaels) / Mike Park / King Blues / Sharks at Camden Barfly
I went to an amazing gig last Sunday night. Jesse Michaels, from Operation Ivy, has started a new band called Classics of Love and was touring with Mike Park, the man behind Asian Man Records. The gig promised “plus special guests”, but I failed to think about this until I actually got to the gig.
It turned out that the special guests were in fact the King Blues, who are close friends of Park. I don’t know why I was so surprised about this, considering that they seem to be at pretty much every gig that I go to, whether they’re playing or not. Can’t complain though - they’re excellent… and horrifyingly big at the moment, getting Radio 1 airplay and all sorts.
Anyway, just as I was going in I saw a couple of french tourists buying tickets. They clearly didn’t know what they were getting into - they asked the people at the desk if they knew who the musicians were, and then when inside proceeded to sit on the fire escape sets at the back of the room. I wonder if they enjoyed their introduction to the UK punk scene?
The gig started with the local support band “Sharks”. They were alright, though forgettable given the rest of the evening.
The second act on the bill was Mike Park - the main motivating factor in my buying tickets, and he was superb. It’s just him and an acoustic guitar, which might reflect negatively on my alpha-male credentials, but he’s really good - there’s not a more sincere, uplifting musician alive. Half way through the set he decided to go “unplugged”, and stepped down off of the stage and just played in the audience.
Third on were the King Blues, who I’ve seen play live billions of times. I imagine this sort of small gig is quite unusual for them now that they’ve sold out. They played a slower-tempo set than usual, and as a result it sounded different to the studio recordings. Mercifully, they stuck to the old and mostly political stuff, rather than second album “please play this song on the radio” type songs like “I got love”. Itch finished the set by performing a couple of poems. The first was a new one he’d written about domestic violence being bad (clearly he’s never experienced the joy of punching a woman), followed by “What if punk rock never happened”, complete with musical accompaniment similar to what’s on the album. For King Blues completists: during this performance he substituted the reference to Against Me in the poem to Mike Park.
The final band on stage were Classics of Love - I wasn’t familiar with any of their work. All I knew is that the singer was the guy who was in Operation Ivy, one of the most important bands on the ska/punk scene. And they were phenomenal.
He managed to be so energetic on stage despite being, like, 40, and the songs were incredibly powerful and catchy stuff, and I would not hestitate in recommending their EP. The best bit was right at the end when he got Mike Park up on stage to play guitar on the old Operation Ivy song, “The Crowd”.
It was an awesome gig.
