Bad Touch

Bad Touch – to put it simply – bossed it on Saturday night at ULU to a packed crowd.

I’ve been looking forward to seeing the boys from Norfolk properly headlining a tour and the show at ULU really demonstrated that they are one of the best live bands in Britain at the moment.

They opened with ‘Show Me What It Means’ from the brilliant new album ‘Shake A Leg’ and for the next 90 minutes they played their songs, their way, getting the capacity crowd dancing and shaking various bootys. As Stevie pointed out towards the end of the set “This is the sweatiest night of the tour so far” – this on a night when the rain outside was constant and the temperature outside was barely touching on 8 degrees.

One of the things that makes Bad Touch special, for me, is the lack of gratuitous soloing – they just pour the music out and the crowd just got right behind the songs. This makes for an intense rock experience with no let-up in the power and the focus where it should be, on the songs. When they did, apologetically, play a short drum solo and bass solo it was almost as a joke between them and the audience. So what you get is 90 minutes of solid rock, no cop-outs and no rest for the band.

The set included material from their first two albums but inevitably most songs were from ‘Shake A Leg’ and new songs like ‘Skyman’ and ‘Hammer Falls’ came over with a terrific sense of snap and power. ‘Outlaw’ from the ‘Truth Be Told’ album had a great reception and encoring with ‘Dressed To Kill’ and an uproarious ‘99%’ left the crowd buzzing.

Daxx & Roxanne from Switzerland opened the show with half an hour of stroppy and rather enjoyable rock, lots of moves and shapes. Aaron Buchanan & the Cult Classics followed and while I get the intensity of their set I wasn’t totally convinced by the punk/grunge/OI stylings.

All around, an excellent night and really proved Bad Touch are one of the most exciting bands in Britain at the moment – there are a few shows left on this tour, don’t miss them.

Picture by Al Stuart