Little Big Men
There's a pretty good size crowd for a Wednesday night in Manchester, a nice mix of ages too (but none of the kiddie hooded top brigade!).
Having never heard the Dwarves before I'm not really sure what to expect & I admit to getting worried when they play Blink 182 before the band come on, thankfully this is tempered by some Damned from '76 & my fears are calmed.
It's 10.05pm & the Dwarves hit the stage & the first thing most people do is laugh, this is mainly down to one of the guitarists being completely naked apart from a rather fetching silver & blue wrestling mask! They launch straight in to a brisk mix of their back catalogue & the crowd love it, half way through the first song the singer launches himself into the crowd & is carried aloft. What makes the Dwarves work is the way they do things, they just put everything in to their live show, the singer throws himself into the crowd, during the next song the naked guitarist climbs up on the back of the drum riser, treating us all to a rather unwelcome view of his marriage tackle. It's all very silly but it can't fail to raise a smile.
As for the music, well it falls somewhere between the faster moments of the Dickies (& has much of their humour too) & the hardcore of early NOFX. It's melodic hardcore punk & it's decent fayer but there aren't really any killer tunes which perhaps explains why the Dwarves have failed to emulate the global hyper success of many of their contemporaries.
The in between song banter consists of 'Yeah! F*ck yeah!' & 'Oh yeah!' & nothing more for the first five or six songs but even this is funny. When they finally do decide to elaborate we are informed that 'Hardcore punk is good time music' & that 'rock legends walk among you'.
Tonight they play for a short 50 minutes with no encore, for the uninitiated this is just right, a short enjoyable set. The Dwarves are worth checking out if you get the chance to see them live, they play tight old school melodic hardcore, it's not very big, it's not particularly clever but it is funny.