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Rating: Monday, September 6, late evening. Bar-tobacconist-newsstand etc. near home: "Rumore" freshly printed, cover reads "Retropolis: The Pop Group"... What a drag. Just leave the "dead" alone, one thinks. But you can't help reading and... "They're reforming, two dates in Italy, September".
Inevitable the spike in my coronary arteries. It's in three days; I'm off work, I'm going. A couple of texts around: no one is coming; who gives a damn, as they say on the Arno. I book the ticket, I'm going. I missed them back then (there was no web, you needed luck to get the right tip on tours: usually, you'd find out from Rockerilla, but the month after), not this time, no way.
I go over, as one always does, the material: "Y" and "How much longer" are terrifying today as they were 30 years ago: bayonet assaults and "real" militant lyrics. All true. Like them. Who are coming back. Damn the Pop Group comma damn the Pop Group. Thursday 9, I leave, 200 km at full speed to arrive indecorously early: at 21:15 at Locomotiv there's not a soul; a 5minute5 line all included (remarkable, it must be said for completeness, the appearance of the two attendants), I go in. In the dark, a dozen figures (survivors of the era arriving in a hurry like me and mostly alone, like me: the Pop Group is a sort of very personal, intimate faith) then, gradually it fills up with the age gap widening to those whose parents, when the Bristol 5 were railing against policemen and bankers, perhaps hadn't even met.
I position myself under the stage, veterans and twenty-year-olds mixed around, I glance at the setlist: this one's there... this one isn't... never mind... they keep us waiting tonight (truth be told, it would be thirty years). 23:10: curtain. A piece of history truly returns on stage in the form of 4 fifty-year-olds with regulation paunches plus a youngster (deputy for J.Waddington, the only one missing) who start at full tilt, after barely a "Hallo Bologna" with the fury they were famous for: Gareth Sager dives onto a granny's keyboard making it scream and ignites "We Are All Prostitutes", Mark Stewart twists and writhes body and voice from Tim Buckley with a noose around his neck "...everyone has their price... everyoooone..." and the entire Locomotiv, from 15 to 60 years old, jumps up. On stage, to the right, the youngster (what luck, friend, to play with these four?) very emotional, churns "that" riff and Smith&Katsis, the angriest rhythm section of the new wave (yes, because if you close your eyes you jump right back to '79) scorch everyone with their napalm funk. Then "Words disobey me", a "minor" track from "Y" (strangely in the setlist) and an unremarkable new track, but everything detonates again with "Thief of Fire", the boundless free funk of Apocalypse that starts "Y", where among a thousand grimaces Mark relives the myth of Prometheus, with a suffering that can't be stage acting and Gareth sends his Fender Mustang totally out of control flying crazily up and down the keyboard.
What follows is a trio never heard before "Trap" (I don't think it's dedicated to our footballing writer) Mark and the band relaxed like never before in a sort of sunny ska, "Kiss the Book" one of their funks with just a splash of vitriol and a nice big hard riff in the middle and "Sense" an arpeggiated ballad (Group Pop?) to listen to again in calm.... fortunately they still tell us that "She's beyond good and evil" (first single!!) with Mark jumping and exhausting himself so much that he ends up slumped to catch his breath for a couple of minutes, and they continue to talk to us about "Forces of Oppression" (the only one from "How much longer") declaimed with a clenched fist (read the lyrics) and with such monstrous firepower to finally get even my very composed neighbor (and roughly the same age) moving along with everyone inside, young and old.
"... Sorry, this is the last song: We are Time" without Dennis Bovell, great dub master, at the console, their pure flight out of the physical world (and always their best track) gives a few less chills. But it's fine as it is, just as it's almost fine that, in the encore they remind us again that "We are all Prostitutes"; a little less fine that it's all over already after just an hour.
Over the speakers comes out "Good Times" by Chic (!?!?), the t-shirts for sale at the exit no longer say "Tatcher prostitute" like Gareth's from 30 years ago but "I love Pop Group" and I smile a bit. I get into the car and the seat belt beep sounds like Donald Duck's quack to me, my ears are so boiled over and I think I'll buy their new record even if, I don't think it will be much... might be nonsense but these guys have given me so much... long live them.
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