Bad Manners – Kings Arms

If you saw Douglas Trendle sitting and having a pint at the King’s Arms, you’d likely write him off at the nutter down the pub you’d rather avoid, the UKIP voter with a pitbull under a corner table and a half-looked-at copy of The Sun by his beer tankard.

But on stage, Trendle becomes Buster Bloodvessel, frontman and lead singer with Bad Manners. I was ready to dismiss the band as a novelty act from the dark recesses of my early-teenage memories back in the 1980s, one- or at best two-hit wonders. Last night’s show at the King’s Arms went some way — not all the way, but some of it — to changing my mind.

Arriving on stage at a quarter to eleven to chants of “You fat bastard,” Bad Manners hit the ground running. With no new record to promote since 2003’s Stupidity, they trotted through significantly more hits than I had realised were in their back catalogue. This Is Ska, from their 1989 release Return Of The Ugly, laid out the evening’s blueprint quite clearly — stabs from Aids Cox, Dave Welton and Colin Graham, forming a classic ska horn section, Tom Massey’s guitar chops, Lee Thompson’s rumbling bassline and Justin Dodsworth’s understated keyboard, the whole thing underpinned by killer drumwork by Matt Bane, perhaps the most accomplished musician on the very crowded King’s Arms stage last night.

The 90-minute show cleaved tightly to the blueprint for most of the twenty songs Bad Manners played. They’re talented players, but the band’s songwriting is a little repetitive — it’s not entirely unfair to suggest that they played the same two or three songs maybe five or six times each. But what the show lacked in variety, it made up for in energy. The band filled the small stage, Buster Bloodvessel and his horns barely having room for the standard two-to-the-left, two-to-the-right ska hop. Buster is, of course, the frontman, and one of the few constants in a band whose lineup has changed much more than its musical approach over the years, but he is, at best, a mediocre bar singer. You can’t help but feel that if he showed up at a pub karaoke night and tried singing a Bad Manners song, he’d get kicked off, and possibly kicked out. But his job is so much than to sing — just as well, perhaps, since he’s much more of a shouter, a yelper, a crowd-pleaser, than an actual singer. He has presence, of course, but in many ways he’s there to front the band, not to sing, a proto-Bez, if you will, a cypher. But the crowd loved him.

And what a crowd. In my mid-40s, I felt young. I also, my wardrobe not containing a single Fred Perry shirt or Doc boot, felt a little out of place. Bad Manners, it turned out — I’m perfectly happy to have been wrong here — were far from the one-hit wonders I’d waved them off as. Their setlist was filled with crowdpleasers, again a benefit of having no new material to plug, and it meant that every song had the audience bouncing and pogoing like their lives depended on it. The audience sang the chorus to Lorraine loudly enough to drown out Buster’s voice; My Girl Lollipop worked better than it should, a silly little song that dovetails nicely with Bad Manners’ style and attitude. Wooly Bully, similarly, could almost have been written with a two-tone cover version in mind. The same cannot be said of Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You, which, at least until the band kicked it back into full-on ska territory, was too long a bow for Buster to draw.

When a band from the 1980 tours today, there are likely to be few converts in the audience. Nobody in the King’s Arms stumbled into the show chance; the Arms was packed with middle-aged rude boys who wanted one last pogo to Lip Up Fatty. That was the audience that Bad Manners played to last night, and that audience went home happy.

Steve McCabe

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Bad Manners Set list

1. This Is Ska
2. My Girl Lollipop
3. Lorraine
4. Feel Like Jumping
5. Walking in The Sunshine
6. Sally Brown
7. Fatty Fatty
8. King Ska/Fa
9. Red River Ska
10. Can’t Take My Eyes Off You
11. Just A Feeling
12. Skinhead Girl
13. El Pussycat
14. Ne Ne Na Na Na Na Nu Nu
15. Skinhead Love Affair
16. Wooly Bully
17. Special Brew
18. Echo 4-2
19. Lip up Fatty
20. Can Can