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| The Wannadies,
Astoria, London |
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| Live,
Martin Algesten,
20 January 1999 |
Rating: F4
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I thought the Astoria was a bender centre with an around 20-ish crowd. I’ve seen the place present things like "Stoplight" evenings (dress in green to indicate you’re available, yellow if you might consider and red if your taken) and 5ive when they were being cute in the lower regions of the hit lists (as opposed to being cute in the upper ones). Recalling my previous encounters with Wannadies as quite "rockish" events, including sweat, beer and crowd-float; I did find the venue a bit odd, at least until I realised that it was actually to take place in the basement of Astoria.
Wannadies is one of those bands I remember from way back. I recall being annoyed by their name already around 1990 when in Sweden their "My Hometown"-single was a true pain. It is hard to explain why this is annoying, but in Sweden there's this thing about guitar-based bands being from the north-east coast (there was a ridiculous amount of such bands for a while). They all have 20-something members (or younger). So far so good. The main problem was that most of them took the issue of being opinionated (animal rights was and is very popular) to a ridiculous level where the point was about being opinionated rather than about having something to be opinionated about. At first I believed that Wannadies had these tendencies as well, and perhaps they had. In one interview they were asked "why do you call yourselves Wannadies, do you want to die?" They simply answered in a north-east-coast-opinionated-attitude way something in line with "it sounds good and rolls good over your tongue." Which I at that time I found extremely annoying.
As part of being Swedish in London, I have recently had to reconsider many of my previous opinions. Now I consider almost anything that is exported from Sweden as quality since I now compare it to the crap I put up with daily out here. Wannadies has now become one of my favourites. Their jolly pop-and-roll is excellent. Wannadies music must be described as playful and I’m pleased to notice that even though they have 10 years stage experience, they still reflect the same refreshing naïve playfulness that their music always had. The selection of songs is nice, of course targeted to promote their recently released album ‘Yeah’. My favourite for the evening is the encore ‘Hit’ where the crowd seizes the last moment to go wiiiild.
FRI 17-MAR-2000
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