OFF: Fu Manchu Review

[Scott Heller]

FU MANCHU and Spiritual Beggars- LILLE VEGA, København 3/13/98

        I rode my bike across town (4.5 km) to the show and that was not
too bad. I am just getting back in shape for bike riding after taking the
winter off, which has turned out to be very mild and it is now colder than
I was in most of Jan and Feb!  The weather does not stop the danes, they
ride the bike even when it is snowing, rainging, hailing....  When I got
there the only people at the show were swedes who had invaded from
Helsingborg, Malmo and other citites close to the border.  I had a nice
chat with some of them. They were very curious to talk to an american and
get his point of view and see what music I was into. They were a bit bummed
though that I had seen bands like the Melvins, Butthole Surfers, Nirvana,
and they never had, since most of those bands don't come to sweden and they
are just now coming to age to be able to travel to denmark to see shows.
They were all getting totally hammered on danish beer and smoking tons of
cigs... A lot of these swedish kids chew tobacco and have no clue as to how
dangerous it is.

        So the Spiritual Beggars hit the stage at 10 and rocked the place!
I was really blown away by them and liked them a lot. I had been listening
to their first CD (they did not play anything off it) and Another Way to
Shine, which I really like a lot.  They might not have played anything off
this one either!  Since Another way to shine they have added a organ player
and percussionist, but they fit well into the sound.  It is a heavy organ,
like the old Uriah Heep or some of the organ fromAtomic Rooster, mixed with
70's influenced metal.  The singer had a great style. I was pretty
impressed with their 45 min set. It seemed like they would just play the
songs like they are on the CD, but the last tune, Mushroom Tea Girl, they
stretched out to 10m and the bass player/singer came off the stage and
played in the crowd, which was cool.  Good band!  Being that they are
swedish, they spoke to the crowd in swedish, since most danes can
understand them, but at this point in the evening at least 50% of the crowd
seemed to be from sweden!

The set list was:

We won't be Back

Euphoria


Send me a Smile
        Wine
Mushroom Tea Girl

        Fu Manchu wasted no time getting started and hit the stage right at
11 with a heavy short instrumental number before blasting to numbers off
the new CD, the Action is Go, and numbers off In Search of..
I think they did regal Begal, Asphal Risin', Redline, Supershooter and a
lot off the new one, like Saturn 3.   They did not do Godzilla, which kind
of suprised me. I asked Scott Hill before the show if they had ever played
Chevy Van live and he said never, only played in rehearsal. I mentioned
that it seemed like it would be a fun tune for them to play and he agreed.
Who knows if they will do it. Anyway, they were very loud and heavy and the
crowd was really into them.  They were the best when they varied a bit in
the way some of the songs were done. At times a lot of their guitar riffs
sounda lot a like. Very good and aggressive set of music. I still like the
former guitar lead guitar player better as he had a more twisted fuzzed out
tone, but this guy is getting closer to that sound than when I saw them
last year.  They played for 60m total, including the encore, so it was a
short set. Great recordings of both bands were made!

Scott

ObCs- Ugly Custard- s/t (UK 1971)

R. Scott Heller PhD
Hagedorn Research Institute
Niels Steensensvej 6
DK 2820 Gentofte Denmark
(45) 44 43 91 96  or 44 3 91 38 Phone
(45) 44 43 80 00 Fax
shll at hagedorn.dk  or  heller at hagedorn.dk
Http://www.geocities.com/sunsetstrip/stage/7713