Live reviews:

Stirling Tolebooth - 2003
From the March edition of Is This Music?

The original Zips split in 1980. Twenty two years on,
and it might as well have been in 2000. Re-formed,
re-styled and raring to put themselves back on
Scotland's musical map, it's time for a lesson in
premature history.
There are a half dozen or so bored looking teenagers
standing at the front of the stage. On walk the
Glasgow four-piece and the Tolbooth's stage is alight
as previously unheard classics such as 'Money Is
King','I'm Not Impressed',' Never Neverland'
reverberate around the theatre venue.
The Zips are no mere retro stylists. They could argue
that fashions have just caught up with them, but
they're much too smart to simply regurgitate their
original sound or try to outplay the current crop of
noo-noo wavers.They instead are opting to layer a
(don't tell The Exploited) sheen of mod sharpness
over the jagged and sneering attitudes that
characterised the sound of the urban 70's,and its a
timely reminder to the more melancholic artrockers of
today that you've got to walk off a little more
energetically than you walked on.
It's a sound which wouldn't have found an audience at
that moment in the early eighties when grotesque camp
took over from sullen rebelliousness. It's finding an
audience now.
The kids at the front of the stage are still there at
the end of the set.

© Jon Gordon 2003

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