Hard-Fi

Hard-fi's penultimate show of their five night stand at the Brixton Academy delivered a respectable treat for many in the audience, well for the elders anyway - Billy Bragg was the support act de jour.
Still equipped with all the cheeky chappiness of his heyday, the red or dead lefty bound onto the stage with just a smile, his guitar and a proud fist held high.
And needless to say, among many others, his set of course did include the classic ‘New England', which inevitably kicked the crowd (well okay those aged 25 +) into full sing-a-long mode to the tune which was eventually made famous by the late, great Kirsty MacColl.
Bragg is out to please, and achieves just that, not even the most hardline Tory could disagree….maybe David Cameron might spot some irony and adopt it as his anti-Blair theme…or maybe not.
The years have been kind to Bragg and have not robbed him of his political vigour (BNP and Nick Griffin beware – Mr Bragg has your cards marked), nor his passion for his beloved West Ham, and clearly the man was still mourning their oh-so-close loss in the recent FA Cup Final.

Then out skip the Hard-Fi massive against an impressive backdrop of massive plasma screens unveiling a montage of carefully edited shots of Brixton and its surrounding neighbours.
Hard-fi get straight down to business unleashing uber-single ‘Cash Machine' (you may have heard it), followed by ‘Tied Up Too Tight' and ‘Hard To Beat'. New songs ‘Suburban Knights' and ‘You and Me' have hit written all over them, and in middle of all this fuss they still manage to pull off a not too bad at all cover of Big Audio Dynamite's E=MC2 from their musical bag of tricks.
The man in front - Richard Archer sprints from one side of the stage to the other with all the vigour of a man who has finally made it after years of hard slog or like someone who has indulged in one can too many of Red Bull.
Bass player Kai Stephens, whose wrap around mirrored shades are initially at odds with his sixth-former haircut and button-down collared shirt, eventually relaxes into the role of ‘the cool one with the bass', as well as providing some impressive backing vocals to Archer's yelping.
The man himself, despite his swagger, appears utterly unphased by his new-found celebrity status, as well as being 100 per cent proud of his Staines background (case in point being his recent flit home from a tour in Norway to reopen a mate's pub in his hometown, ah bless).
To be fair it may not always be exactly clear what Archer is saying, but tonight the crowd know the words better than he does so it does not really matter that he looks like he is licking the microphone like a candy-coated Cornetto. Tonight the stage is theirs.
Hard-fi, we and of all Staines salute you.