Of the four opportunities to see ex-Adverts frontman, TV Smith, over the weekend, this was my must see set. In fact it was probably my number one must see set of the entire weekend! I have written about Cheap on these pages in the past. Like the Explorers, they were a short lived band that existed between The Adverts and Tim's long solo career. Once again, like the Explorers, only one album surfaced, postumously in the case of Cheap. With the exception of 'Third Term' (which surely to God cannot happen next year!), the songs in Cheap's set are so painfully relevant today that it is hard to imagine that nearly three and a half decades have raced by since TV penned them! In those intervening years the world has got warmer, wetter and madder. Oligarchs still live out their life of 'Luxury In Exile' and when some people need the income from more than one job to subsist, for sure someone stole their leisure time!
Cheap's songs saw the emergence of themes that continue to this day in Tim's solo material songwriting, 'them and us', 'the have's and have nots', 'the 99%'. Society is unfair and TV Smith holds a mirror up to it and calls it out. Consider the lunacy of two of the richest men on the planet challenging each other to a cage fight whilst millions forego meals just so that their children can eat, how pathetic, no not pathetic, just obscene. As a post on social media put it recently 'Whatever happened to the kind of philanthropist that built libraries rather than space ships?'
However, it wasn't just about the music. It is the fact that nights were spent in the back rooms of pubs, The Anglers Retreat in West Drayton, The Bull and Gate in Kentish Town or The Square in Harlow where I hooked up with a crowd from the Uxbridge area that I am still friends with to this day.
For the occasion Tim resurrected the look of the day to a tee, top hat with scarf band, blazer and umbrella (of course!). He even sported a hand printed 'heart' Cheap t shirt and there can't be many of those still around. The band behind the replay were Dublin's Paranoid Visions who played the songs brilliantly. The sight of TV wielding that umbrella propelled me back to the Anglers Retreat all those years ago and I was twenty again.... at least in mind if not body! I hope that he and the band enjoyed the experience as much as I did.
Sincere thanks to Peter for sharing this one!
FLAC: https://we.tl/t-kepN8vve9o
Artwork: https://we.tl/t-eXBxjW7Moq
Hi do you have shepherd's bush empire 1994?
ReplyDeleteCheap were amazing! The songs still as relevent as ever.
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