The Style Council, the Questions, Billy Bragg: Dominion Theatre, London

Neil Tennant, Smash Hits, 29 March 1984

OUTSIDE, COPIES of Socialist Youth are on sale and touts are trying to buy tickets because they can resell them for twenty quid to those with more money than sense. This is The Style Council's first full show in London and there's quite an evening in store.

First The Style Council troop onstage, Paul Weller barking "People Are You Ready?" into a microphone, then launching into the old Curtis Mayfield song 'Something Over Yonder'. Apart from Paul and Mick Talbot (looking like a youthful Arthur Daley in his braces, tie and pork-pie hat), there are three brass-players, a synth-player, a girl singer, a percussionist (from The Questions) and a drummer. Between songs there are pauses while musicians wander on or off stage, depending on whether or not they're needed. Peter Martin mutters to me that it's like a Marc And The Mambas show with the different musicians and changing styles. 'My Ever-Changing Moods' is followed by an almost unaccompanied, close-harmony song, 'It Just Came To Pieces In My Hand'; there are instrumentals, 'Mick's Up' and the jazzy 'Dropping Bombs On The Whitehouse'; and a painful 'Long, Hot Summer'. To be honest, this first section of the show doesn't gel. It's paced too slowly and would work much better in a small club than a large theatre.

Billy Bragg dashes on for a manic 15-minute set which is rapturously received and then The Questions dance on, refreshingly colourful and bouncy and genuinely funky. 15 more minutes of Billy Bragg and The Style Council return. This part does gel. 'Money-Go-Round' is even more frantic than on record; Mick Talbot's 'Le Depart' instrumental with a solo trumpet is beautiful; the brass players dominate a powerful and emotional version of an old soul song, 'Hanging On To A Memory'. By the time the encores are over there have been three hours of music, confused, varied and finally triumphant; a brave attempt to do "something different" that just about pays off.

PROBABLY THE BEST BAND IN THE WORLD