Wednesday 30/03/05 Pink Grease @ Carling Academy, Liverpool

Now, there are three types of live performances in the world: 1) The band that, either through a lack of confidence, sheer arrogance, or utter pretension stare so hard at a stage floor for 40 minutes that the chewy gum mould which has developed on the deck for the last decade actually moves with fright. 2) The band, that has just started out is in a state of flux, one band member will move a bit, let another band member move a bit, then decide that they can’t be arsed at all, and 3) The band are so incongruous, so eccentric, so grotesque that all the signs are saying this band must be lame, but more often than not this absurdity somehow comes to fruition. For whilst that band are on the higher level of ground, the clowns become kings. Last Wednesday’s pop royalty…Pink Grease.

You may not know this, but Sheffield’s finest, Pink Grease were formally known as… The Butt****ers…so ‘deviant’ is probably a word that would severely underestimate this band! Let’s just say they like to have a good time! They arrive to a fan fare set on Nick Collier’s scratch built synthesizer that resembles a primitive VCR (the old DVD players, kids!) with built in fairy lights that gets the “PARTY MUSIC” a-jiving. Pink Grease really are a right motley crue in more ways than one - all of them have their own crazed look, from polar necks, to visors, to skinny ties with afros, singing loon, Rory Lewarne even has a semblance of Motley’s peroxide blonde bombshell front man, Vince Neil. Then there’s the music…the theremin fanfare of 'Party Live' is suppressed by the unmitigated chug of a driving Motley Crue-esque geet riff that causes one bedazzled Grease fan to make a one woman stage invasion…in the first song! Lewarne, encouraged by such idol worship then goes on to climb the rafters, whilst another hard rock tune with sax accompaniment belts out of the massacred speakers. The odd balls launch into their new single, ‘Peaches’, blasting into your ears with redolence of Queen’s ‘Hammer To Fall’. The crowd are then treated to a special love song, an Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster type love song - Pink Grease are not your commonplace Casanova’s!

The highlight of such a compelling show (in every sense) had to be ‘Pink G.R.Ease’, it’s the class of song that Electric Six should have been producing instead of creating the quagmire that is, ‘Senor Smoke’. “Freaky teenagers, c’mon fight the power!” It’s Pink Grease’s call to arms. It encapsulates them to the tee: the sleaziness of Jon Spencer, the synth rockin’ of Surferosa and a show of their own. The Pink Grease carnival comes to a finale with yet more jumping of all kinds of barriers, humping of every discernible rafter and embracing of each Pink Grease fanatic. It’s this eccentricity that has culminated in such a cult following for the Steel City boys. The social hierarchy was turned upside down by the Pink Grease rock circus on Wednesday night- the clowns killed the king; the king is dead, long live The Butt****ers.