Primal Scream's opening set reminds us that the less they copy singer Bobby Gillespie's collection of classic rock albums, the better they are. Swastika Eyes is crushing and thrilling: its hi-NRG-cum-metal sounds uncannily like one of the Xenomania production team's efforts for Girls Aloud. But the new songs fare less well. Beautiful Future and Can't Go Back are entertaining enough slices of glam-meets-Krautrock motorik. But the mid-set pairing of Suicide Bomb and Uptown kills the momentum. The latter, an 80s-style pop ballad, sounds as if it were written to soundtrack a seduction scene in the original Miami Vice TV series. The former, with typical tact, sees Gillespie so sexually excited he's "going off like a suicide bomb".
The MC5 must have been a blistering experience in Detroit 40 years ago. But the deaths of two members (the late Rob Tyner is replaced at the microphone by William DuVall, who already has a career replacing another dead singer in Alice in Chains) mean they are a cabaret turn these days, a role guitarist Wayne Kramer seems happy to accept. When they keep it tight and focused, as on Ramblin' Rose and The American Ruse, one appreciates why they have passed into legend. Too often, though, they trudge when one wants them to fly, dragging out the kind of blues-rock plods that punk was meant to put an end to.
The two bands jam together to end the show, but it is more of a pleasure for the musicians than the audience, as jams usually are. I Can Only Give You Everything sounds fine, and Primal Scream's Movin' On Up actually benefits from four guitars, two basses and two drum kits. Gillespie is clearly delighted at singing Rocket Reducer No 62 (Rama Lama Fa Fa Fa) with his heroes, but the session descends into self-indulgence when the 5's former "religious leader and spiritual adviser", John Sinclair, arrives to maunder interminably over the improvised Black to Comm. It's a piece of history, certainly - but sometimes history is best read about, rather than experienced.
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