One of your fellow forum members wasn't as impressed by this show as the rest of you were:
The Good, the Bad and the Queen
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The Good, the Bad and the Queen's sold-out show at the 9:30 club on Wednesday was a pop concert, sure, but it felt more like a chance to glimpse a one-off of British pop royalty (Blur's Damon Albarn), uber-royalty (Paul Simonon of the Clash), Afrobeat legend (Tony Allen of Africa 70) and a consummate guitarist (Simon Tong of the Verve). And although the set of spectral dub-pop was entertaining, it never rose above the nagging sense that the crowd was applauding individual personas more than group performance.
A top-hatted female string quartet preceded the top-hatted Albarn, who proceeded to lead GBQ (a default moniker -- officially, the group has no name) through its album with a faintly academic air that wasn't so much short on warmth as simply dispensingwith frivolity. Simonon elicited the most delight from the crowd -- which mostly looked too young to have seen the Clash live -- and he seemed to strain against the tether of his huge, loping bass lines, slinging himself side to side.
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Ringleader Albarn appeared delighted to be performing his mind-movies about life in a disconnected, modern London. Aptly, the hour-long set's highlights were the inward-looking tunes: the distended "Behind the Sun" and the weary pair "A Soldier's Tale" and "Green Fields." Better still was "Three Changes," which provided much more tension and angularity (especially from Tong and Allen) than the limp rave-up on the project's title track.
The encore did not bring the hoped-for version of the Clash's "Guns of Brixton," which reportedly was played at some British dates, but rather two negligible extras -- a fitting encapsulation of a night of major stars making minor music.
-- Patrick Foster
