Old gig reviews: Therapy? w/ King Prawn, The Rig (Rock City), Nottingham 2nd April 1998

THERAPY & KING PRAWN @ THE RIG (ROCK CITY) 2/4/1998

King Prawn deserved far more than they received. Their cool blend of ska-metal should cause whole planets to move, but instead led to only 3 people dancing. Eventually, after 'Restart', the crowd started to take notice of one of the best British bands around at the moment (partially due to the antics of bassist Babar Luck-he's madder than a mad thing!) but they failed to keep the momentum. If only they had played 'Depths Of My Soul'...

Therapy? pushed their luck early on by going on-stage really late. Suspense is one thing, rioting is another, and a lot of people were near that border. Anyway they started well with 'Nausea', and unlike King Prawn, were able to keep up the momentum. For an hour. A word of warning: NEVER crowd surf at The Rig. It's about the size of a shoe box and you WILL be injured by the wire mesh ceiling! Then a shaved gorilla (sometimes known as a security guard) will 'escort' you back stage. Which isn't always bad I suppose. I stayed backstage (next to King Prawn's guitarist, Aryan Devil) long enough to see the last two songs of the main set: an amazing cover of Husker Du's 'Diane' (complete with cello!!!!!!) and the Therapy? classic, 'Screamager' (the latter ruined by a poor mix). Incidentally, about 500 different basses were used, for no apparent reason.

For their encore they played 'Skyward', a poor sounding version of 'Nowhere' (their best song by far) and a cover of some song that everyone except me seemed to know! Would have been a much better gig if it wasn't for that fucking sound man!

[with apologies to everyone who has ever been behind the mixing desk]