Attack of the Cazals Brigade

Cazals play Alternation in Paris on the 17th June 2005
Cazals jouent à Alternation le 17 juin 2005



Cazals (not THE Cazals-very important) deliver the purest rock 'n' roll experience (with guitars et al.) that I have seen in quite a while.

Now, please do not misunderstand the above statement. These past few months I have experienced: masked disco, euphoria, stadium in a T.V studio and post-enjoyment in a stadium. All as valuable as each other but very dissimilar from a pure rock 'n' roll experience.

Cazals take the stage with swagger and bravado but without second thoughts, as if they were taking a street corner back in London. They start playing without warning, when the crowd is expectant but not yet at fever pitch. Consequently, when the stick hits the drum, when the finger slaps the bass and the hand clasps the mike... you can imagine the response.

They introduce themselves with a sideways sentence into a mike after Poor Innocent Boys : 'Hi we're Cazals' . Let's quickly come back to the missing 'the'. Why on earth did they decide drop it from their name? I imagine it's for the same reason that James Joyce chose to call his early collection of short stories "Dubliners" and not The Dubliners. There is a sort of humble self-assurance in Cazals that makes the defining article completely superfluous. In a way it is linked to how they started the gig and how then played on so effortlessly, completely oblivious to the fact that they were playing in public.

May be that is just it, it didn't feel like a gig. There was none of that infuriating retro-rock ritual we have now come to expect from so many bands. Yet the mood is difficult to pinpoint. The ease with which they played was not of an indifferent nature, it paradoxically made them more involved in the music. In fact, I get the impression that the crowd felt redundant. The band was so caught up with the music that they didn't need to be cheered or heckled. Any attempt to re-enact ritualistic audience response fell flat on its rosy arse.

Then there was also a song supposedly about Phil and Dan (guitar), preceded by hurried and hushed discussion amongst band members. It's a slower track, that still retains all the tension from the others. Dan has this habit that I love; in some songs he works the spaces by thumping the back of his guitar and creating imptomptu squalls. I imagine that since his guitar parts are so tight, he must require some sort of release.

And how could we forget, their utterly magnificent cover of Spandau Ballet's 'To Cut A Long Story Short'. From the first few guitar licks, I was sobbing with my gob wide open. The cold poignancy of the orginal remained intact as guitar riffs interwove and the offbeat rimshots were all there to relieve the tension. The last time I cried on the dancefloor was two years ago in Geneva when DMX Krew played "The Glass Room", his Hi-NRG teary vocoder lament. The fact that Cazals made me cry without a single synth proves that they amazingly managed to retain the essence of the original, and that is no mean feat because guitars have never before made me cry.

This is indeed a momentous day, the day when Rock 'n' Roll lost its 'the'.

Pre-Scriptum: Walk into the patio, playful chat with the girls at the till. Take the wrong entrance and bump into Phil Cazal (lead vocals), say that I enjoyed their video on the Trash website. He smiles, slice is nice. He turns to a familiar but self-effacing fellow to my right who is wearing a dandy scarf and a NASA T-shirt. I immediately approve noddingly and break off for the main event only to find DD and G already at the front. The stage rides low, the set-up simple and the soundcheck ramshackle. The man in the NASA T-shirt appears in my periphereal gaze.

Post-Scriptum: As I walk out into the lamplight with DD and G, I spot a sleek jet black sports car under some trees, a uniformed man waiting inside. Then I make the connection with the dapper scarfed fellow with the NASA T-Shirt.