GLC have that uncanny knack of strangulating all maturity out of their audiences, this is without doubt. In what was one of the last ever gigs at the Metro before work starts on an underground extension, the venue couldn’t have had a much more raucous grand finale. The gig was a ‘pay what you want’ gig enticing all sorts of waifs and strays into the belly of the dingy Metro. But more importantly a chance for the Newport clang to get back into the limelight.
With no support act, we were going to be sent into the tracksuit, head band wearing kaleidoscopic mosh pit bare-back tonight. Their album ‘Asbo4Life’ is out in April so fresh material is a dead cert and so is the usual outlandish tomfoolery from the Newport crew. It wasn’t till around 9.30pm when the GLC collective finally bounded onstage, nine strong this time. The profanity laden onslaught was about to hit us. With a 23 gig tour ahead of them in March, some of them already looked they had just come off one, not starting one. Anyway GLC still clamber up like a bunch of giddy teenagers about to go on the dodgems fighting for their cars, even though in this case it's stage space.
And this is the thing about GLC, although taken with laughter they are ingenious in their own way and utterly audacious. Fusing comedy and music is usually a thankless task, however they accomplish it with precise acumen. Whether it be with the tracksuits, shambolic rave dancing, hip-hop hand gestures, comedic lyrics and the all round cohesive onstage chemistry, GLC happy slap the hell out of you.
They open with the tin-foiled-shop-visiting ‘Half Man Half Machine’ and straight away the chorus is being sang straight back amidst their frenetic onstage antics. With the crew already in mid-sweat they pull out their first new track of the night; ‘By Any Means Necessary’ asking for complete crowd participation. This is then followed by fellow newcomers ‘3D Superwoofer’ and ‘Everybody Is A DJ’. ‘New Day’ is another mock up of an unfortunate boy band lamb-to-the-slaughter track. So the band congregate into what Adam Hussain described as a ‘GLC male vocal choir’ while the former rapped through this newbie and forged yet another brilliant comedy moment.
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The commercially successful ‘Gun’s Don’t Kill People Rapper’s Do’ -their original springboard track - goes down as well as the first day you heard the track. ‘Delivery Driver’ a snapshot of Adam Hussein's trips across Newport delivering weed appears for the first time live. Unfortunately another of GLC’s narcotic based (and one of my own personal favourites) ‘Soap Bar’ isn’t being delivered tonight. ‘Sister’is always a funny track purely and simply because looking round the venue and seeing everyone sing ‘Can I fuck your sister/And your best friend' never fails to amuse.
With all the crowd enticing more stage time when they declare that the show has finished, the boys eventually agree they have unfinished business and rip straight into ‘Your Missus Is A Nutter’. Then as GLC PR put it on the set list he sent me their final song was simply ‘A Massive Penis Pile Up’ a.k.a. ‘Your Mother’s Got A Penis’. The thing is that’s what it was, a massive all male bonding session of gigantic proportions.
Tonight may have seen the end of the Metro but we hope it just the beginning of a new dawn for the GLC boys. Utterly entertaining as ever and if you were a tight bastard, tonight was the perfect antidote to the credit crunch, music stylee!
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