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Rock & Pop: Slaughtered Daughters And Airbrushed Colleens Iron Maiden Shepherd's Bush Empire, London the Corrs NEC, Birmingham
By: Simon Price - The Independent - London
January 14th 2001 6:37pm
What will London look like in 2050? Thus ponders the row of Time
Out ads in the street outside the Empire. The answer, according to
Iron Maiden's painted backdrop, is a grey cityscape dominated by
globular balustrades, overlooked by a demonic, wrinkled face in the
sky.
What will Iron Maiden look like in 2050? Probably much the same as
they do now, bar a little less hair and a few more demonic wrinkles.
Change in the world of Iron Maiden is slow and incremental: with
every passing year, Bruce Dickinson looks a little more like Bill
Oddie, and there's a touch of the Still Crazys about watching
fortysomethings like the Spandex- panted Janick Gers swinging his axe
behind his back, or Steve Harris pulling shoot-you-dead poses with
his bass (held on with an Alf Garnettesque Hammers scarf).
Poignantly, even Eddie, their giant, red-eyed, fright-wigged zombie
mascot, is now bald and clad in tartan. Comes to us all.
Maiden's audience could use an image makeover too - tight jeans
and Dunlop Green Flash sneakers wasn't a good combo at Donington
10, less so now, and while Dickinson sports a black vest and a pair
of Lonsdale shorts, it's the band's sole concession to the Nu-Metal
era. Iron Maiden inhabit a world where Limp Bizkit don't exist yet,
and I think I want to join them. They may never be loved in the way
that, say, Sabbath or AC/DC are loved, but the wall-to-wall smiles
and gleeful devil signs of the Maidenheads are infectious.
If Old Metal's staple diet was Sex and Satanism, Iron Maiden have
always taken a very "No thanks, we're British" attitude to the
former. With the exceptions of "Women in Uniform" and "Bring your
Daughter to the Slaughter" (apparently a euphemism for fellatio),
Maiden target that peculiarly prepubescent mindset which shuns the
company of girls on the grounds that they've got the lurgies.
Instead, they specialise in the stuff of Boys' Own pulp fiction:
Spitfire pilots, nuclear armageddon, Red Indians (not "Native
Americans"; in Maiden's minds they're definitely "Injuns") and devil
worshippers. And they're still at it: the first track on the new
album is called "The Wicker Man".
The weirdest thing is that they are not, actually, all that loud -
not in the pin-you-to-the-wall, instant-tinnitus sense. The volume's
no higher than, say, a Savage Garden gig. You can hear yourself think
- even hold a conversation. Perhaps the Maiden are gamely staving off
the inevitable day when they stop rockin' like muthas, and start
rockin' like your mum.
If your mum was rockin' anywhere this week, it was probably at a
Corrs gig. And your dad, and your little sister - this being a family
show to which you can bring your daughter without any danger of
slaughter.
The shorthand wisdom on The Corrs - three Monica Gellers and a
Ross - is that they have done for Irish folk what The Dixie Chicks
have done for bluegrass: that is, made it palatable to people who
would instinctively run to the hills at the sight of a fiddle. And
made it sexy. (Andrea Corr, in case you hadn't heard, is Officially
Pretty, and her image sits alongside airbrushed paintings of red
Lamborghinis on the bedroom walls of thousands of boys who are at
That Awkward Age.)
The reality, however, is that much of their set consists of
Eighties- style soft rock, redolent of espadrilles and jackets with
the sleeves rolled up (the merchandise stall is doing a brisk trade
in leather blouson jackets of the kind unseen since the heyday of
Lovejoy). Close your eyes when Andrea is cooing professionally and
sister Caroline is pounding out those tub-thumping foursquare arena
rock beats, and it could be Belinda Carlisle or Heart.
Then, suddenly, three quarters of the way through each song,
Andrea whips out a tin whistle, Sharon gives it some elbow grease on
the violin, and Caroline drops her drumsticks and bashes the bodhran.
In context, it feels every bit as incongruous, tacked-on and
artificial as the fiddle breaks that garnish each B*Witched single.
The Corrs - or, being fair, The Corrs' "people" - are flogging a
contrived version of Irishness as patronising and sentimental as
anything you'll see in a beer commercial - the same cliches of "all
the Irish stuff" invoked by Alan Partridge while cack-handedly
attempting to impress an Irish production company: "leprechauns,
shamrocks, Guinness, horses running through council estates,
toothless simpletons, people with eyebrows on their cheeks, badly-
Tarmaced drives, men in platform shoes being arrested for bombings,
lots of rocks, and Beamish."
Even the title of their breakthrough album, Talk On Corners,
pushes those same buttons, invoking a place where you could still
leave your door open and the local women would swap friendly tittle-
tattle in the street; a fantasy which has been lucratively lapped up
by English suburbanites who would inform the Neighbourhood Watch if a
stranger actually talked to them on the corner. Especially if they
had an Irish accent.
The case for the defence, then. The Corrs can't help being
beautiful (Andrea has eyes like Beverly Hills swimming pools, and
Sharon is Liz Hurley with dimples). They've paid their dues, they can
play their instruments (as demonstrated by the proper Irish jig which
precedes their Lloyds-TSB jingle, "What Can I Do to Make You Love
Me?"). Their souped-up cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams", although it
misses the magic of Stevie Nicks' ruminant bleat, is pleasant enough.
There's nothing demonstrably evil about them, nothing to spook those
council estate horses. The Corrs mean no harm, and do none. But what
did they do to make you love them?
The Corrs: Westpoint Arena, Exeter (0132 446000), Mon and Tue;
SECC, Glasgow (0141 24 3000), Thur and Fri
(C) 2001 The Independent - London. via Bell&Howell Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved
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