After storming of the Isle of Wight Festival stage on their regrouping an exhilarated Bob Geldof said “It’s weird. I’d forgotten how powerful a band The Rats are!” Others hadn’t.
What was only meant to be a brief moment of reuniting it turned into triumphant sell out tours, a block-booked season’s, new albums and major documentaries.
Beyond nostalgia both press and audience agreed that those many classic Ratsongs had indeed stood the test of time morphing from the radical, upstart transgressive rage of the mid-70’s into tunes for the ages with a tragic contemporary resonance.
The audience, ranging from the Rats’ contemporaries to the newer, younger curious crowd wondering what the fuss had been about, immediately recognised the timeless frustrations and rage of the Now embodied in the Rats’ tunes and performance.
Age had indeed not withered them, but made them more potent.
At a time of cookie cutter anodyne musical drivel the visceral Shock of the Old from its original purveyors is one of contemporary music’s great treats and revelations.
