The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster, Middlesbrough Cornerhouse

Steadily an eager crowd has built up tonight but then, suddenly fat, ugly stupidly dressed girls in too much make-up have made their way to the front of the crowd. This can surely only mean one thing. A glam punk band. And hey presto! Eyeliner, blouses and tight pant clad she-males take to the stage. There’s millions of the glittering twats, playing everything from Uzi shaped guitars to big bastard radiators with knobs on. We’re told there’s three females somewhere on stage - how the fuck we’re supposed to spot them amongst the ladyboys is anyone’s guess.

This isn’t so much a band, what we’re witnessing here is the mother of all icing coated, polished up turds, because Pink Grease are an absolutely huge shitty mess. They look and sound like the bastard offspring of every arse ridden musical of the twentieth century, ‘Grease’, ‘The Rocky Horror Show’ and ‘The South Park Movie’. In fact shove a neon light in its arse and Pink Grease could easily pass for the house band in a post-apocalyptic Burger King.

They pull every annoying little clichéd trick in the big glittery top shelf of a book to try and get a crowd reaction, ‘When I say Pink you shout Grease’ or ‘Who wants to hear a drum solo?’. The answer is noone you sweaty gimps. Still, not only do we get one but every cunting band member gets their own personal solo.

Obviously coming from nice calm Catholic families or something has fucked these kids over, and despite being the most fucking awful pile of shite to dare call itself a band, their show (if that’s what they call it) has to be seen to be believed.

The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster - in danger of getting on Top Of The Pops any week now, thunder out with nice early jump in the crowd like a madman rendition of ‘Morning Has Broken’. Kind of like morning assembly at a school for schizophrenics.

A crowd of everything from indie kids and goths to 40 odd year old topless skinheads dancing round like Roy Keane in a Manchester derby, lap it up. At one point a dildo is used to play slide guitar, this ain’t yer average gig. Possibly the most astonishing thing about EMBLD is that Guy McKnight manages to keep a straight face as he careers around the venue, followed by a spotlight, singing songs with titles like ‘Turkish Delights Of The Devil’. He pretends to be sick, has his shoe pinched and smashes a microphone off his head; this is silly behaviour yet somehow it’s all in a night’s work.

Soon this lot will be sharing a stage with all pop’s heroes on TOTP so with a new benchmark set will the likes of Busted be queuing up to jump on the EMBLD bandwagon? Well we suppose ‘What I Go To School For’ was Busted’s ‘Celebrate Your Mother’ so maybe it’s already happened.