The Trinity Ball

I’ve never been totally convinced by La Rocca’s power pop efforts, but tonight everything falls into place and they morph from the Stereophonics wannabes of old into genuine contenders. What sets them apart from other meat ’n’ two veg guitar merchants is the quality of their writing. Driven along by their now trademark keys, ‘Last Of The Big Time Benders’, ‘Sing Song Sung’ and soon-to-be-released single ‘I Built A Gun’ are as good a triumvirate of tunes as you’ll hear from any young(ish) Irish band. The early Main Stage arrivals seem to agree, miraculously abandoning the beer queues for some enthusiastic idiot dancing down the front.

They may be about as fashionable as stovepipe hats, but there’s no denying Aslan’s crowd-pleasing abilities. Or boundless enthusiasm. By the time Billy McGuinness decides to climb the lighting rig, there’s not an immobile bum in the tent. Actually, that’s not entirely true. It’s barely one o’clock, and there are nine future TDs/attorney generals/captains of industry comatose on the grass. They might teach you lots of things at Trinity, but how to drink ain’t one of them.

This has never been a problem for Alabama 3 whose ability to perform while twatted out of their heads is legendary. Never mind that D. Wayne Love has defied medical science and become pregnant, Brixton’s finest get the party going goodo with such genre-bending faves as ‘Mao Tse Tung Said’, ‘Speed At The Sound Of Loneliness’ and the obligatory ‘Woke Up This Morning’ which carries just as much menace as a marauding Tony Soprano. Nothing, not even expanding waistlines, can stop the acid country house techno revolution.

If the Bammies are a tough act to follow, nobody bothers telling Death In Vegas whose all-out electro-guitar assault has never sounded better. Highlights include a red raw ‘Leather Girls’, ‘Rekkit’ and the closing ‘Dirge’ which sounds like a thousand cluster bombs going off in your brain. Fuck working for a living, let’s all go back to college!