Mike Peters brought his vintage music and fighting spirit to Jaxx on Saturday. In his prime, Peters, the founding frontman of '80s British rant-rockers the Alarm, put antiwar and anti-poverty tirades over a melody and beat that any suburbanite could easily absorb. These days, he's railing about ageism in pop music.
"There's a force operating against our generation!" Peters, now 45, told the crowd made up mainly of folks of a similar age, while introducing a recently recorded track, "45 RPM." Because the music industry showed no interest in the reconstituted Alarm, Peters released that song under the group name the Poppyfields, and even filmed a video for "45 RPM" with handsome lads posing as the band. The tactic worked, in the short term. The garage-rock tune got rave reviews. But when Peters confessed that the geezerly Alarm was behind the music, a backlash ensued. A critic for the Guardian put the Alarm's return on a list of the 10 worst reunions in rock history and warned fans to look out for "sweaty anthems about guns and storms."
But the folks who came to Jaxx wanted an evening of sweaty anthems. And the Alarm -- now consisting of Peters and '80s vets guitarist James Stevenson (Generation X), bassist Craig Adams (the Mission) and drummer Steve Grantley (Stiff Little Fingers) -- complied with vigor.
Among the period pieces was "Absolute Reality," which took on the president of the United States (that would mean Ronald Reagan). And "Strength," which sounds even more like U2 than it did two decades ago, had him begging, "Give me someone to live for!" The crowd supplied whoa-oh-oh-ohs in all the right places. As they left the club, fans were invited to have Peters record their favorite Alarm rant with a personal dedication for $150.
