INTERNATIONAL 88
26/02/88

Here we go again. Another 'indie' band, that most abused of terms, for sure, but what is the nature of this particular beast? Another NME NME C86 rejection? More dour Manchester hopefuls slipping in the trail of trendiness left by The Smiths, reminding us why REM and Sonic Youth have to be American? Bad haircuts, cosmopolitan dress sense (and that's just the band) and the absence of any one a day over 25 confirm that this is indeed a "student" band, a millstone of a tag enough to drown any group.

Well, maybe not. The Stone Roses overcame my ignorant preconceptions, calamitous amitous technical problems and el-ements of the audience who had decided that the singer has their fight for the night to deliver a powerfully enjoya-ble set. It's all very mid-60s, from the floppy fringes to the Paisley shirts a psychedelic trip back to the heyday of a certain Liverpudlian foursome but with enough realism to satisfy 80s sensi-bilities and free from the self-conscious references of bands like Primal Scream and The Mighty Lemon Drops (the name-dropping gets worse).

A fiercely partisan/well pissed crowd left me thinking that I was the only person there not closely related to the band members but, alas, I fear that their efforts are in vain. As the late 1980s replaces the guitar with the sampler, and the song with the mix, the omens for such overtly nostalgic music are not promising.

Mark Walton
Mancunion