Join the official MEDICINE SHOW Facebook Group HERE!
MEDICINE SHOW
------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------
Taken from The Independent Online
"I remember seeing The Clash in 1977. Every song stood alone. It was like a greatest hits set played by a band at the pinacle of their career. I really didn't think I'd see the like again but much to my surprise, along came The Smiths, followed by The Stone Roses, a few years before Oasis, who were in turn followed by The Libertines. The greatest music doesn't introduce itself politely and wait until you're ready - it sneaks up behind you, stabs you in the back and drags you along in it's current; washing you up wondering where the hell the wave had come from.
When I saw MEDICINE SHOW for the first time I really was reminded me of London Calling-era Clash. The power of the songs, the amazing energy, their presence on stage and the simple poetry of every heartbroken lyric all added up to the shortest, sharpest, perhaps greatest 25 minutes of music I've had the pleasure of hearing in a long time. It's a cliche but i felt like I was 18 again - watching a band who could save my life. And then they were gone. No encore. Just a stunned audience and the sound of the Everly Brothers' 'All I Have To Do Is Dream' pouring out the battered speakers.
Drunkenly profound and unbelievably fun, MEDICINE SHOW are in many ways the definitive Camden band, so it seemed fitting for me to see them for the first time at Camden's musical mecca, The Dublin Castle. Whether it’s the almost guaranteed stage invasion at the end of every performance, or the way their ever-growing fanbase seem willing to travel the length and breadth of the country just to watch them play, it’s clear MEDICINE SHOW are a band that incite a genuine level of devotion from their audience.
It's difficult to believe they formed only a few months ago but in that time MEDICINE SHOW have already supported Babyshambles, the View, and The Holloways, played at Paris Fashion Week twice, been featured in i-D, NME, Pop, Vogue Japan and Tank magazines and still found time to shift 1000 copies of their independently released debut single (see the video here )
However, in this age of insta-fame, MEDICINE SHOW have thus-far managed to remain hype-free, perhaps due in part to their great suspicion of musical middle men. Be it press, promoters, management or agents, MEDICINE SHOW spend as little time courting them as possible, preferring instead to run their own affairs from a run-down flat just off Camden High Street. Nicknamed Medicine Towers, the place has become a second home for the freaks, geeks and assorted riff-raff that follow the band through hell and high water - the same "rogues, martyrs and upstanding citizens" that find themselves celebrated in set-closer 'Vagabonds'.
Like their drinking buddy and fellow Camdenite Amy Winehouse, MEDICINE SHOW's heartbroken ‘doo-wop ‘n’ roll’ looks set to make huge waves in 2008, despite not being your average commercial fare. Already attracting the attention of several major record labels, it won’t be long before MEDICINE SHOW bring their Phil Spector-esque wall of sound to a much wider audience.
In short, MEDICINE SHOW are gloriously rudimentary and crude; a raw mix of battered-bedsit-poetics, Little Richard-style rhythm and blues, doo-wop, Irish-folk and punk, played by a band without a single music lesson between them. Like their beloved Bo Diddley, or some long lost James Dean movie set in modern London, MEDICINE SHOW's Dylanesque lyrics combine with an electric-blues backbeat that'll soundtrack the lives of any young rockabilly rebel; dancing, fighting, falling in love..."
www.medicineshow.co.uk
[email protected]