Published in Record Mirror, 14th January 1978
Rich Kids | Gig Review | Glasgow 1978 | At the Satellite Club. ON REFLECTION a fine enough opening to a tour that’s going to be very interesting by the time it winds up in the capital at the end of the month . . But first thoughts first.
Notion / contention: Rich Kids played the worst concert for a great / incredibly promising / potential – laden new band that it was possible to play. Poor little Rich Kids. But (again): not entirely true.
Class and enthusiasm won through. By the end they were more than going through the motions of battling against the heavily – stacked odds.
Winning with the power of the songs, something like 30 remaining watts . . . and virtually no bass. You guessed it. The bugs were back in town.
Up 12 flights of stairs, opening night gremlins, new speakers . . . and they started on time. But with a load of equipment left in the truck and Glenn Matlock‘s new gear packing up it weren’t — and I think this is the useful expression to be employed — a ‘perfect sound’.
No matter; it’s the music that counts; it did. The audience aren’t watching the band with (breath) an ex-Sex Pistol. Or (perhaps more surprisingly in Glasgow at least) the band with an ex-Slik, in the highly personable form of Midge Ure.
Rich Kids | Gig Review | Glasgow 1978
Just taking it as they find it, and hearing what they can. Steve New, Matlock, Midge and Rusty cranking up on new wave pop. Just working up to an hour
of material with a couple of oldies.
Young, fast and efficient — and a formula for success. More? The combination of Matlock and Ure (and their, ahem, musical backgrounds) seems even at this early stage to work perfectly.
They exchange lead vocal duties half and half and walk away with armfuls of awards for neat, tight chorusing. This means the songs tend to stick immediately — plus point that no amount of bad ‘sound’ can remove. So to ‘Here Comes The Night’.
Matlock plays with red gloves (until “it got too hot”) with the three front men leaping and bounding around the tiny stage. Want Steve New’s guitar to be up more, for the bass to come through more, for . . .
Don’t ask. Get. Slade’s ‘Shape Of Things To Come’, ‘Empty Words’, a slightly bizarre (and Matlock claims totally effective) rendition of Matlock’s ‘Pretty Vacant’, a song “about our favourite subject” ‘Young Girls’, many more and the new single (this reviewer claims the totally effective) ‘Rich Kids’.
And stop. No encore. All the appeal of songsmiths on speed allied to the instant surge of Sweet. New wave out the jukebox dusted with saccharin. We like it like that. And we will, you too.
A lot achieved therefore . . . and a way to go. The way tours improve, yet to pack 1200 into a Glasgow club on a Sunday night and send them away happy, yeah, it’s got to be a good start. Take it as red (that’s what the ads say as well). (John Shearlaw)
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