The Primitives, 29 April 2010 – Scala

Paul Court is still a stone cold fox! In black needle-cord jeans, wee pointy Chelsea boots and a mod-ish top, he continues to rock the 60s-tinged cool indie-boy look to perfection. Cor! How come then, all the ageing indie-blokes in the audience have gone so badly to seed? Bulging of gut and naked of scalp they lurch and wallow at the front of the audience like a hideous herd of hippopotami. They’re having a marv time, bless ‘em, so I fling myself into their midst deciding to represent the laydeez in their good-natured moshpit. Yay! The Primitives are back, and all my worries about destroying cherished pop memories dissipate as I fling myself about to the oh so familiar tunes. The set opens with a quintet of songs from the band’s bestest earlier days; ‘Everything Shining Bright’, ‘Stick With You’, ‘Dreamwalk Baby’, ‘Thru The Flowers’, ‘Way Behind Me’. It’s quite hard to be objective about songs that are so embedded in my heart, much better to just get caught up in their rush and sing along.

There’s a fizzy cover of Lee Hazlewood’s ‘Need All The Help I Can Get’ Tracy injecting the vocals with a slight note of hysteria. There are argh! two later tracks which I’ve never heard; ‘Empathise’ from the oh dear third album and ‘Summer Rain’ from the second album, about which Paul mutters something to do with codeine, I think. Not sure if he means the song ‘Codeine’ or whether it’s a good tune to listen to having imbibed codeine, or maybe it’s about taking codeine, “I don’t feel anything today”. Or maybe I totally misheard him. Hmm. We listen patiently, it’s quite nice, lilting and wistful.

The ageing indie-blokes get themselves moving during the classic singles triumvirate of ‘Stop Killing Me’ (singing along, squished in the scrum, I mean this fairly literally), ‘Really Stupid’ and ‘Crash’. I’m shoved sprawling onto the rather low stage for the billionth time (gathering impressive bruises on my legs as I go) and when I look up Tracy is smiling at me. I am blessed by her golden blondeness! Like Paul, she seems to have barely aged at all and is managing to carry off a slightly eccentric outfit (including blue tutu, sparkly fishnets and red suede platforms) with popstar aplomb. This is because she is a star, hanging off the mic stand, tripping about the stage, bashing a tambourine, dragging the eyes of the indie-blokes after her like a cute, sparkly tractor beam.

Tig is still there drumming at the back, being the drummer and that. And over on the right is a bass player who isn’t Steve (sorry bass man). This is kind of the reason we’re all here, Steve’s death last year prompted the remaining Prims to get together in his memory and test out being a band again. It seems to be working pretty well. Sweetly, they dedicate the swoonily heart-melting ‘(We've) Found A Way (To The Sun)’ to Steve. It ends in a gently fuzzy haze, as Paul turns his guitar on his amp for a spot of feedback. Perfection.