29/9/2008 - Part 1. Britny Fox, Fatal Smile & Pretty Boy Floyd @ The Underworld

Subject	Britny Fox, Fatal Smile & Pretty Boy Floyd...
PostedDate	9/29/2008
	Another night at the Underworld - a venue that seems to specialise in 1980's rock acts on the comeback trail. Tonight it's 80's glam rock overload! The place is full of people of widely differing ages -  in fact some of them could be the kids of the older ones there. I'm not knocking it though - it's nice to see that at least I'm younger than quite a few of the people there! They all have one thing in common though - there are determined to rock like it's 1984!  First on the four band bill is Britny Fox. I have to confess - I actually own a vinyl 7" single by this band.  The A side of that single 'Girlschool' is the only song of theirs I know. I dusted it off and gave it a play to refresh my memory before leaving for the gig tonight. I couldn't make it in time after work to catch most of the band's set as they went on so early. In fact I arrived just in time for the last song, and I recognised the intro to 'Girlschool' - still familiar as I used to try playing it when I first started teaching myself to play the guitar. I'm glad I made it in time for that anyway. I'm not sure how many original members are in the current band, but they bear very little resemblance to the glam rag and makeup wearing big haired dudes on the sleeve of the single I have at home! Next up is Fatal Smile. I don't remember them being around in the 80's - which isn't surprising as they are a fairly new band from Sweden. One of them seems to want to be Nikki Sixx, while the rest of them seem to base their look and act almost entirely on G'N'R. The frontman puts on a good show, but I have seen a hundred virtually identical bands in Camden over the last couple of years. After that we have Pretty Boy Floyd. Although I was aware of their presence back in the day, they pretty much passed me by as I was never really into that scene. I couldn't even name one of their songs, so like the previous act they fail to make much of an impression. Like all the bands tonight they are good musicians and make the effort to put on an entertaining show - but there seems little substance behind the style and none of their songs reach out and grab me.  As I said earlier, there are four bands on tonight's bill...