As Alabama 3 sung in their encore last night, there will be peace in Melbourne tomorrow, ‘cause tonight we’re gonna blow it all away, and blow it away they did.
You take that that phrase however you choose too, whether they’re referring to just having a good time or whether the profusely sweating sunglassed middle aged men who were babbling incoherently were talking about something a little more sinister, it doesn’t matter, because A3 guarantee a good time to be had by all.Whether you were shaking your booty to the catchy U Don’t Dans To Tekno Anymore or giving the “Commie salute” (remember, it’s the LEFT hand in the air!) during Mao Tse Tung Said, you were captivated by the world’s only country acid-house techno band’s electrifying set.
The band’s gangster shtick is giving a cred boost not by Chopper Read introducing their encore (which he did), but by the fact that harmonica player Nick Reynolds is the son of Bruce Reynolds, who together with Ronnie Biggs took part in the great train robbery of ’63.
So with this, the band can get away with their fake American accents (how many Londoners do you know with Alabama accents?!) and singing songs that pay tribute to the man in black, as did their closer ‘Hello, I’m Johnny Cash’.
Part of the fun of an Alabama 3 show comes not from the songs, but from the banter they throw into their songs. It’s nice to know that “motherfuckers don’t say goodbye, we say hello!”
And their honesty goes a long way, as they admitted their song ‘Woke Up This Morning’, which many people know as the theme song to the Sopranos, has nothing to do with Italian mob families, but who cares when they’re paying them that much money?
The band have been referred to many times as “the greatest live band in the U.K.,” and while that might be stretching it a bit far, there is no denying that an Alabama 3 show is more fun than you can poke a line at.
