The Mighty Saguaro

The Bandwagon gigs down here at Liverpool's Zanzibar have featured some quality acts – step forward yer Corals, Bandits, Zutons of this world – but on the underbelly, munching merrily 'pon this city’s musical liver, is to be found a brilliantly irreverent and magnificently inclusive gabble of rockers, punks, scummers, vampiric in their gleeful resplendence and genuflecting to a higher power of – well – powerchords and elemental Independence.

Y’all see, on every first and third Tuesday of every month sees the Useless nights – a misnomer if ever there was one. Run by horror-punk-mayhem-beautifulfreakers Zombina and the Skeletones, the gigs consistently feature quality acts who share a lust for all that is edgy and impertinent.

And tonight’s no different. Inordinately young opening act The Cordettes jump onstage, tune up and launch through a set that is imbued with a spirit and fucky’allness that no doubt will see ‘em through life without ever having to be excluded from the excitement of discovery an disrespect.

So I stand, Guinness-gutted and grinning, and as Zombina and the Skeletones take the stage to a murder of applause, the Zanzibar is gravid with expectation…

Quite fuckin right too - Zombina, Doc Horror et al create something very, very special, even by their usual standards. Ribcage T-shirts for the band, a Zorro-T for the delectable-deceased, liplickingly-licentious sex-spider Zombina herself, not to mention some fucking brilliant songs and some superb musicianship, their fallen-angel fecundity exists somewhere between Cramps, Dr. And The Crippens and The Rezillos. They may be made up as window-mannequnins for Burke n' Hare's Discount Corpse Emporium, but the infidel inspiration that they radiate makes me feel as alive and Critterlike as anything you could find scuttering under The Trapdoor.

Humour, love, fucking and poetry, they're all there in these crushed-cranium chord progressions, in these skullscrape stomps, this rockin, punkin, stoner-ing majesty that the band creates... fuck me, I’m in love tonight.

And they even pull off a quite magnificent 50s paean to unrequited love in the mid-set ‘Prom Night’, Zombina’s voluptuous vocals tenderly backed by the subtle and gorgeous a capella trio that have abandoned their geetars n’ stix awhile to crowd round a sole microphone like The Jordannaires exhumed for one last chorus. Its perfidious piquancy is somehat akin to dripping hot wax into your heart – until the band blast back into full-on fuzzfuckin and finally leave the stage beaming with the enraptured th(r)ong. Life, and death for that matter, ain't that bad after all...

The Mighty Saguaro are a dirtyass, quality proposition whose Fugazi / QOTSA bang-a-zappa-blastification is best served by tracks such as the Batman-with-a-big-fuckin-problem workout ‘Merseyburgers’ and the altogether more intricate sonic construct of ‘Julie Says’. Ben, Kiran, Craig and drum destroyer Liam work the stage like it’s where they’re born to be (it is), and tonight’s set shows once more why the songs, the performance and the band are so justifiably, skyscrapingly regarded.

Useless? Hardly. Merseyside may be dead in the eyes of certain publications – more fool them. With the creativity, squelchy scream-filled distortion-depravity, mischeivous, eyeraising magnificence and mustard-eyed magic on show tonight, the present, never mind the future, is in safe Clawwwz.

Class in (Ace Of) Spades.