Maguires Pizza Parlor and Bar
8th September 2018
Gig review by Rob Harrison
“Liverpool is a pool of piss”, so says Kim Kix lead guitarist from PowerSolo as he berates the audience for not having a good night. The scouse sense of humour seems to been lost somewhat in translation to the Danish psychobilly band Powersolo, as Kim strides into the audience half naked and sweating profusely to eyeball a heckler.
Once there, he then smiles in the knowledge that he now at least has his attention. Is this a Danish joke, humour abounds then, it’s that sort of night.
As weird gigs go this is one of them, sometimes better than so called normal gigs because these are the ones you tend to remember more. The mad bits, the strange bits and the plain confusing bits.
All this can be summed up by PowerSolo at Maguires the other night.
I think expectations were high, the shows performed before the departure of Kim’ brother where possibly quite different. And as a consequence of this, the band have now radically changed musical direction, leaning towards Fall territory or alternatively Tav Falco and Panther Burns, who could be described as rockabilly post punk.
Where before the influences came from straight rockabilly bands like the Cramps and Hasil Adkins.
Tav though on the other hand is more interesting for his strangeness, and willing to experiment with different sounds. And so in true Bob Dylan style Powersolo give the audience exactly what they don’t want.
The people here don’t want to ponder on the existential possibilities of the messed up southern psyche, seen through the lens of hipster New York kids of the seventies.
Oh no, they have come here to be entertained, and to lose themselves in a Dionysian frenzy on the dancefloor.
Being presumptuous here, but there is a preponderance of bald men losing it, or trying at least, stereotypes abound as well as dark Danish humor then.
After the gig, which seemed like a dress rehearsal for a bomb explosion, I said a professional goodnight to the gig promoter. He flashed a grin at me “They are entertainment aren’t they” but as Shakespeare was wont to quote “therein lies the rub”.
And finally, in my last review I mentioned that Maguires is to close, but no more, it’s had a reprieve which is excellent news, Liverpool still retains its dark and dank wonderful Pizza bar. It’s been taken over, but the owners still want to keep it as a national treasure. Good news folks. More on that as it happens.