Words & pictures by Andi Callen – All Rights Reserved
The Blues Kitchen in Manchester is a fairly new venue to the city, which to be honest has no shortage of live music spaces. One of its previous existences was as Aussie watering hole the Outback, now converted into a bar restaurant with music upstairs. With very subdued lighting and a low stage I’m intrigued as to what Jah Wobble is going to sound like in this setting. There’s a very distinguished looking crowd gathering, smattering of 30 somethings but most of us are of a similar age to Jah himself. The band are currently engaged in the small tour, alternating between the regular set and the recent Metal Box In Dub album. Tonight is one of the regular sets, although this does not stop Jah from drawing on his Public Image Limited back catalogue throughout the evening.
Several times during the evening he makes reference to his ageing years, whilst also urging us to be careful with our dodgy hips and knees, so it’s no surprise then to see a chair strategically placed to his left. Despite moving to Greater Manchester over 20 years ago there is no dilution of his cockney twang, and larger than life “geezer persona”. With no defined set list, this evening is really set up as a Jah Wobble buffet as our host dips in and out, asking what we want to hear and at one point actually stopping to ask if there’s enough bass, to which of course the answer was met in the negative. The sound engineer is encouraged to ramp it up a bit and even participates in a little live onstage remixing, as Jah instructs him to tweak his vocals with a little bit of delay and reverb, having already stopped mid-song to offer another treatment. It’s almost as though we’re witnessing Wobble’s creative studio process live, an insight to how the songs are built up and layered.
We’re even asked to vote on whether the next song should be made more difficult for the drummer, changing the tempo to something more demanding. Mark E Smith used to mess with members of The Fall’s amp settings, but never inviting public scrutiny. In effect it’s almost as if it’s too easy for him to regurgitate some of the old PiL songs, challenging him and the band in real time to deviate from what’s gone before. There’s no point in trying to recreate those old songs exactly, Jah is not Lydon and the world doesn’t need post punk tribute bands, despite venues the size of The Academy being packed to the gills with Madchester copyists every year around this time. And besides Lydon’s current version of the band do that more than admirably.
This really is the most modern of jazz experiments, threading and weaving the recognisable strands of something over 40 years old, smothering it, stretching it out and then letting go to see the elasticity of the original form snap back into line, albeit just a few degrees off centre. Jah looks genuinely pleased at the end of each song, flashing us a big cockney smile. We also get to witness members of the extended Wobble family join him on stage.
There’s also a few other surprises in store with the inclusion of his take on the ska classic Liquidator by Harry J & The Allstars, as well as The Chain by Fleetwood Mac, showinghow diversehis musical taste really is. It wouldn’t have surprised me at all to have had a whole set of Ambient dub, as Jah himself had told me in a recent interview with Backseat Mafia, that Apple Ambient makes up the bulk of his music consumption at home. No surprise perhaps that the incidental music before the show ploughed that particular furrow.
All in all, a fascinating evening spent watching a master craftsman at work, taking on songs like Poptones, Careering, The Suit and Public Image, without resorting a karaoke treatment, retaining integrity and at the same time offering us a different perspective. Mrs Gump said that “life is like a box of chocolates” and I suspect a Jah Wobble show doesn’t stray far from that narrative, except that instead of not knowing what you’re getting, you know exactly that you won’t know what you’re getting! It’s a very imaginative way of getting the audience to stay focussed throughout and live in the moment.
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