Sounds From The Junkshop #117 - The Kaiser Chiefs

 

"Due to lack of interest, tomorrow is cancelled..." - The Kaiser Chiefs - Ruby

So let's go right back here. Specifically to a gig my old band Brookside Riot Squad were playing at a short-lived Leeds venue called the Platform in the basement of the Corn Exchange some time around...I reckon 2003 probably? It was an afternoon bill with about six bands on it and we were the first one on. Headlining the evening was a group called Parva who'd just been dropped by their label Mantra (who'd also had China Drum and Compulsion on their books in earlier years) after releasing an album that hadn't sold the previous year. After our set had finished and we'd packed up our gear, I'd headed to the bar for a much needed post-gig pint while the second band of the evening were playing and I remember striking up a brief conversation with the bloke next to me who, as I'd find out later in the evening when he was onstage, was the headline band's lead singer. He told me he thought our set was alright and I said thanks. As we were both collecting our change and heading off our separate ways, he pointed towards the dancefloor. The Platform was one of those venues with the dancefloor being a sort of sunken area in the middle of the venue with some stairs leading up to the bar at the back which was on the same level as the stage.

"Have you noticed," he said, "That if a band gets a good reaction in this venue like this lot are that it looks like there's a load of drowning people in front of the stage?" We both laughed and walked off back to our respective bands.

And, erm, yeah, that was it - my encounter with Ricky Wilson before he was famous. I very much doubt he remembers it now but in spite of all the "landfill indie" jibes that his band attracted in the second half of the noughties, I always had a soft spot for 'em, mainly due to him being nice enough to be friendly to me way back on that long-lost evening.

Anyway, the Kaiser Chiefs - I guess they deserve a mention in these here annals just because of how utterly ubiquitous they were in the middle of the noughties and the fact that, for better or worse, they were the band who finally put Leeds on the indie map leading to what can best be described as a full on feeding frenzy in the area around this time. Like I say though, they'd actually been around as Parva (previously Runston Parva) for a few years prior to this and were a semi-well-known group (if only for the keyboard player's pork pie hat which used to make him pretty easily identifiable when you saw him at lower level indie gigs in Leeds in those days) on the scene, able to command a decent crowd at the middle-sized venues like Joseph's Well. But my main memory is that once they changed their name and were snapped up by Polydor, their profile seemed to skyrocket quickly. I mean like, really quickly. One week they were headlining the Vine and the Fenton and drawing decent crowds then literally a few weeks later they were selling out the Cockpit in double quick time as Oh My God, I Predict A Riot and Every Day I Love You Less And Less rapidly followed each other into the Top 10.

It may seem a bit odd given my general dislike of mid-noughties "landfill indie" that I didn't mind the Kaiser Chiefs but I still say that generally Employment wasn't a bad album. I remember a lot of people hailing Ricky and co as the new Pulp which even back then seemed a bit laughable - I think that as someone who was now in his mid-twenties, I was starting to spot quite early the fact that the attempt at a mid-noughties Britpop revival that the Kaiser Chiefs were, willingly or otherwise, placed at the forefront of, was really nothing more than a pale imitation of what had come a decade previously and steadfastly failed to get swept up in it. It didn't stop A&R men descending on Leeds with chequebooks desperately hoping to sign "their" version of the Kaiser Chiefs (much as they had with Soho based sleaze rock bands in the wake of the Darkness' success a couple of years before) and sure enough a million and one pale imitations were duly snapped up from the stages of the Vine, the Fenton and Joseph's Well. It was a very weird time to be in a band in the city from my (admittedly slightly raddled) memories - there was more than one time where you'd see a band playing to a few dozen semi-interested onlookers at one of the aforementioned venues or see their names in the listings while your band was playing there then three months later they were suddenly being tipped as the "next big thing" by the NME and breaching the Top 40. Ultimately though, without wanting to sound too bitter about it (suffice to say that my band of the time remained resolutely unscathed from any sort of record label interest!), I don't honestly feel that it was a case of the best bands who got signed so much as the ones who were prepared to be compliant in what their new paymasters demanded of them and be cajoled into fitting the mould of what was popular at the time. Hence we ended up with the dreadful likes of the Pigeon Detectives, the Cribs, Scouting For Girls etc being foisted on the general public and very soon the whole scene had (probably deservedly) become a total laughing stock, the preserve of third division Menswe@r soundalikes that actually made you yearn for the days of 18 Wheeler, Bennet et al. I wandered off.

The Kaiser Chiefs would continue onwards of course but I kind of lost interest in 'em some time around Ruby well and truly taking them stratospheric. I mean, if EVER a song deserved the epithet - "brilliant intro, brilliant verse, ruined by a fucking awful lads-lads-lads chorus" then that's it. Of course, these days Ricky is a reality TV judge, the Kaisers are still able to sell out arenas and they've not done too bad for themselves really. I still remember them releasing an album called Education Education War or somesuch around 2015 or so which led a friend of mine to remark "Oh, a Tony Blair reference - nice to know they've still got their finger on the pulse of what the kids are thinking, eh?" I'll admit that did make me laugh a bit.

Anyway, like I say, the purpose of this column isn't really to steer you towards the Employment album as you're probably aware of it and, more pertinently, whether you like it or can't stand it, already but the Kaiser Chiefs did definitely play a role in the Sounds From The Junkshop story as 2004 turned into 2005. Whether it was for better or worse, I'll leave it up to you to decide but I still quite like that debut album which reminds me of a lot of drunken nights back in my mid-twenties when I still had the energy and recuperative powers to be able to do that sort of thing...