The Yummy Fur/ Neverever @ Part Time Punks (The Echo) 1/17/10

FROM LARECORD.COM

Yummy Fur and Neverever @ The Echo- Part Time Punks 1/17/10
Truth be told, most reunions shows usually suck. Who wants to watch some oldster relive former glories while dipshit kids sing along to lyrics that they weren’t out of diapers for the first time around? Yet this is hardly a steadfast rule, and I am happy to report the exception was the Yummy Fur’s glorious reunion show on Sunday Night at Part Time Punks.
Michael Stock started off the night right, as he always seems to do. I love walking into a night club and hearing the Shop Assistants being blared at top volume. We, the people of Los Angeles, really are blessed to have a night like this, where else you gonna go to dance to Blurt and Section 25?
The opening act, Neverever, came on strong and slick, like a Roxy Music send up of a doo-wop 45: Blondie does Dion in day-glo design. There was a serious Chiki Ti-Ta up front in a letterman sweater and panty hose, cooing like a mocking bird. The backup was workmanlike and locked in. I was reminded of The Long Blondes or Music Go Music and I was into it.
People started tripping in the door, two by two, and man was it a stylin’ crowd. Fred Perry and stove pipe pants were just as meticulous and the hair do’s. The Yummy Fur, who were obscure in the 1990s, seem to have found an audience ten years after their break up. This was their first ever tour of the good ol’ US of A and people were stoked to be there. As they fell onto the stage and began trading barbs with the crowd, their Glasgow charm was whisky soaked and affable. “We are going to play a long set, because when do the Yummy Fur play Los Angeles? Next you’ll tell me it’s raining outside.” John McKeown plucked the opening riff of “Career Saver” and up jumped the crowd like a bag of Jiffy Pop. Paul Thomson smiled wryly through the gap in his teeth and managed to give a wink to every lady in the crowd, while simultaneously pounding a drumbeat with a Belmondo swagger. Songs such as “Kodak” and “Plastic Cowboy” were gorgeously shambling around repetitive riffs that Mark E. Smith would disdainfully wag a wrinkled thumbs up to. Ever the showmen, jokes of the evening included doozys like ‘Why can’t Stevie Wonder see his friends?…Because he’s married! (rimshot).
The song “Policeman” brought guitarist Brian McDougal to the mic, chanting “Policeman” as John sang “You’re working for the government, that uniform is excellent.” Scotland apparently loves cops as much as we do.
At the tail end of an hour and a half long set, they broke into “Department,” which effectively communicates the Yummy Fur mission statement as well as anything else: “She asked for makeup tips, not my department baby, why don’t you ask your lady?...I’ve got my own department, Rock and Roll!”. A clichéd term for any other band, but Yummy Fur play with such a “who gives a shit” attitude that they really do rock, without all the trappings and studied poses that usually come with such a misnomer. Instead of an Axl Rose, you get a Pete Townsend.
The Yummy Fur stumbled offstage, after a jubilant encore of “Chinese Bookie,” to no doubt be plowed by whiskey n’ gingers and dance around until the keys in their backs wound down and they passed out on somebody’s couch, in true “rock and roll” fashion.
Eyad Karkoutly