Pink Grease

Pink Grease are not a fashionable band, and people have a tendency to get a bit snobbish about them. They say: 'But they wear flowery plastic pinnies and perform night fever-esque dance moves! The bloke on the right of the stage has a massive homemade synthesiser strapped over his shoulder and he never, ever looks up from the control panel! They bump and grind, shamelessly explicit filth drips from their every note… and they seem to wholeheartedly love and believe in what they do! Where’s the knowing, self-aware nudge and wink, the sense of in-joke privilege? Where, when you get right down to it, is the irony?'

Well, exactly. I’m sick of post-ironic statements on the post-ironic state of something-or-other; sick of bands who don’t love the music so much as they do the oh-so-clever jeering melodic statement about the redundancy of music. I’m sick of in-jokes and self consciousness. What’s wrong with fun being escapist and enjoyable, rather than stemming from a sense of smugly amused detachment? Why do being good and being heartfelt have to be self-exclusive?

So yes: Pink Grease are a band full of inherent humour, and they know it. But they don’t let it get in the way of loving rock‘n’roll and they don’t detach themselves from their set at all – they throw themselves with glee into every wail of the saxophone and every lightning-speed between-lines dance move from their singer. They’re alive, flamboyant and over the top; they’ve got rhythm and flair and style. And they have the ability to provide, for the duration of their set, the kind of fundamental escapist kicks which erase reality and all its attendant miseries and which make those watching it unreservedly happy. Which is a feat of no small might, and is worth a thousand doses of smug post-modern posturing cynicism. Try forgetting for one night that you’ve a reputation to uphold as a jaded, world weary youth who only buys the kind of records justified by your cynical, super-cool image; try having fun instead of concentrating on maintaining a facade. Go on, lose yourself.