Joe's Big Toe

Sonic Boom’s open­ing acts were the Skints and the Catch-It Kebabs. First up were Yorkshire’s own Catch-It Kebabs. Their cha­ris­matic per­form­ance of good old-fashioned ska-punk was littered with hints of Sub­lime, Catch-22 and Street­light Mani­festo. So, they were doing some­thing right! Their (per­haps overly) smi­ley lead singer’s vocals were power­ful, but wide ran­ging, and suited the music well. Mat­thew Embree would have been proud. It’s just a shame that at times it felt like there were more people on stage than in the audi­ence. By the time the Skints got on stage, the venue had filled up a bit, and the audi­ence was con­sid­er­ably lar­ger. The Skints were incred­ible, chan­ging from full-on reg­gae sound sys­tem to respect­able ska-punk band at the drop of a hat. Incred­ibly impress­ive for a four piece from Lon­don. The vocals are mind-blowing, the drum­mer has one of the weird­est voices I’ve ever heard, and the male lead has the voice of a 50 year old rasta — des­pite look­ing whiter than a dove. The female lead has a per­fect back­ing voice, and her rendi­tion of Sis­ter Nancy’s ‘What a Bam Bam’ was thor­oughly remark­able. Her mas­tery of a huge range of instru­ments also made her stand out as exceptional.

So, Sonic Boom Six. What can I say? It felt like the first time I listened to blink. My first cigar­ette. My first beer. It was refresh­ing, revital­ising. Watch­ing a group of people so com­pletely in love with their music, so com­pletely in love with the scene, and so des­per­ate to get that mes­sage across. The pecu­li­ar­ity of Naila and Barney’s voices, which work so well boun­cing off each other, in the flesh was so much more potent than their albums can express. The energy, the volume, the pas­sion in their music really devel­ops live, and there wasn’t a single per­son in the audi­ence that was able to stand still. It’s dis­ap­point­ing that the vast major­ity of the people who buy music are Phil­istines, and would prefer to pay for Sean King­ston than the genu­ine tal­ent that SB6 are able to demon­strate song after song after song.

I’ve fallen in love with ska-punk all over again.