Terminally Groovie

NORMAL CONQUESTS

NED'S ATOMIC DUSTBIN
LEICESTER DE MONTFORT HALL
ALEX IS the bassist lying prostrate on the dressing-room floor, bare chest against cold tiles. A tearful, swooning Japanese girl Is outside, supported by a kindly, dumpy St John's Ambulance woman. In the hall, a lovely, maybe 15-year-old girl staggers to her feet whenever medical attention arrives, and as soon as the medics depart, faints again. It happens over and over.
It has been one of those gigs. Blackout City. Ned's Atomic Dustbin have changed, but the effect Is the same; swayed and suffocated by the Atomic attack, you jump until there is no jumping, nor even standing, left In your legs. Tonight the De Montfort Hall goes nuclear, and a generation of kids—and I do mean kids— is lost.
Backstage before the show, there's little indication that we're about to witness the destruction that must come. There are mini Aeros to be eaten, progress reports on car-smash Injured friends to be digested, and, a sure sign of road boredom, the sad, unpatriotic discovery that a brand of matches called Le Match is made in High Wycombe.
It's tour trivia, but Ned's weren't brought up to be in a band, they were meant to pass A-levels, get respectable Jobs, go to the football on a Saturday and polish the car on Sundays. Instead, they're the most human group on the planet, not fuelled by coke or smack, but powered by camaraderie, an occasional pint and the bizarre Idea that a bunch of Honest Joes like them could really mean something to so many.
Matt—the second bassist— sits in his Cypress Hill hat and admits a fondness for rap. Guitarist Rat is salivating at the prospect of Sonic 2, released tomorrow. He's the only one not to have sworn off computer games, with singer Jonn admitting that his addiction got so bad that at one point he couldnt sleep without getting Tetris nightmares. "I'd be standing somewhere looking at a wall and imagining the bricks as Tetris blocks," laughs Jonn. He used to be mad but he's better now. . . .apart from his back, which holds torn ligaments and is evidently giving him a lot of pain. The doctor has told him not to dance onstage, but his eyes sadden at the idea. "You can't do that," he laments, clutching a canister of analgesic spray for dear life.
It all seems so simple and well-oiled that it's hard to imagine that these guys are the same motley bunch of apparent wasters that create such fury onstage five minutes later. But it's precisely because they are so normal offstage that they can rip it up onstage. They dont need further chaos and catharsis; grievances and frustrations are thrown wholesale Into the music. They provoke an ecstatic reaction immediately the opening 'Suave And Suffocated' bursts into the hall: Ned's are infectious.
The place isn't full but it's huge and there is an economic war on. But who are the 2,000 kids who have turned up anyway? This isn't the Ned's crowd of 18 months ago. They're neat, mop-headed, teenaged to a fault, many yet to take their GCSEs. They don't cheer much or clap, but Jonn doesnt say much either. It's not that neither party is interested in the other, but both are saving their energies for the task in hand.
The Ned's are busy making an astonishingly good racket, while the audience are occupied with going berserk. After 'Happy', three songs into the set, the audience have used up their initial stamina, It is time for the fainting to start.
The Ned's dont have choruses because they dont need peaks and troughs; it's all one massive pop orgasm. The kids know it, acting like Michael Jordan and defying Newton for a second or two. Star-shaped bodies tumble over heads, finally arriving at the stage, where bewildered bouncers wear their best beseiged expressions. This is true pop perfection. Even when the energy level wavers on 'Capital Letters' and 'Cut Up', It's like a respite rather than a let-down.
The twin-basses of Matt and Alex are the root of the newer melodic approach which has bemused their original hardcore following and sets Rat free to do pretty much as he likes. Behind the kit, Dan works harder than anyone, but when the show's over he says he'd like to do it again, the healthy, sad bastard. This band are still loving every second.
No imagination. Boring. Road-band with over-inflated kudos owing to Protestant work ethic. The anti-Ned's mantra of the critics is staler than last weeks' sandwich rider. The Ned's are among the most imaginative, vital and exciting bands on the planet. The fact that their audience Is becoming younger, while their original fans cry 'I cant mosh to that music you're playing' and sulk off to the Ozrics, is a sure sign that Ned's are one of the few things moving forward In this tired land.
The new Ned's fans know the songs word-for-word and are willing to be carried out on stretchers to prove their devotion. Neds are no longer mosh stormtroopers, but the ultimate laminate-bearing superpoppers, a ten-legged - 14 if you count their china dog mascot - groove machine beyond compare.
The fainters, moshers and revers go home, coveted tour shirts soaked, ripped, or lost overboard in a sea of skin and sweat. Earlier, in one of the few announcements that wasn't a simple, parodic "Cheers!", Jonn told the hall: "You lot sound frisky tonight. You're gaggin' for it, I can tell." We were, and we got it. Every last drop.
Ian McCann