If the name Bez doesn’t ring any bells it may be an indication that you have been dwelling in a popular culture void. The ex-member of the 80s/90s Manchester rave band Happy Mondays, is either best known for his drunk-man-at-a-wedding dancing and monosyllabic, thuggish charm, or for winning Celebrity Big Brother in 2005.
Bez fans of two ages were out in full force on Friday night at Windsor’s Firestation. There were excited Bez fans of about 40, reliving the glory days of their raving youth, while a younger generation of fans were no doubt out to see ‘the guy from Big Brother’.
There is no escaping the fact that Bez’s past has also become Domino Bones’s present, even the band know that, and lead singer Monica Ward, speaking in a smoky dressing room after the show, noted: “We always walk on stage to a Happy Mondays song.”
True to form, Domino Bones took to the stage on Friday as Happy Mondays blared over the PA. With raucous energy the band, Bez and Ward on vocals, began playing their own brand of 60s rock/blues infused with that laddish sound of the drug-fuelled Manchester scene that the Mondays so epitomised.
Bez provided the latter, ranting (a description he attributes to his role in the band) his lyrics, while he danced hectically with his eyes bulging. “I just get captures in the moment,” he told me later. His spaced look on stage did make one suspect that this was a chemically enhanced moment.
However, despite the hype and the performance, this was not Bez’s show. It may have been his face glaring out of the posters around the Firestation, and his name selling tickets at the box office, but this show belonged to Monica Ward.
Ward has a gutsy, powerful instrument and put on a tantalizing performance, dancing and grinding around the stage. In between songs she declared that she’d sing for her post-show cigarette, and boy was that smoke earned.
Classically trained Ward brings the 60s rock/soul feel to the band. “I grew up in the R’n'B generation, listening to Lauryn Hill,” she said in the dressing room. “Then Janis Joplin came into my sights and I never looked back really.” Ward said that when the band formed she tried explaining to the other members that there are four crotchet beats in the bar, to which they responded “we don’t count f**king crotchets.”
“But seven years on,” she says “I have had my wicked way and we are now counting crotchet beats, dotted minims, everything.”
Domino Bones have an eclectic sound; the catchy Gotta Believe in the Sunshine showcased Ward’s voice, while Bez ranted along with what she sang. This was the style of the whole set – very busy and upbeat, often with Ward and Bez singing simultaneously.
The chaos extended to the on-stage antics too. Bez and Ward have great chemistry on stage, the source of which was unveiled at the beginning of a slower number, when Bez dedicated the song to his lovely fiancé – Ward. They twisted and ricocheted around the stage like a pair in a pinball machine. It was just pure unadulterated fun; they went where the music took them, whether that was bumping into each other or gesticulating wildly towards the crowd.
At times it felt a little like Ward was babysitting, whilst they commanded the stage without inhibition while performing, there was a wary look in her eyes in between songs as if she worried Bez would perhaps become a little too excited. It was clear that she wore the trousers, and she performed with a gusto that said so.
Amid the excitement the band – guitar, bass and drums – went practically unnoticed. But they were solid, the glue that bonded, and had clearly honed the art of carrying on regardless – dodging falling mic stands and flailing limbs.
Yet behind the spectacle of the show, there was a bittersweet note lingering in the background. Ward, talented and vivacious, is unheard of on the music scene and probably needs Bez’s name on the bill to sell tickets. Bez, on the other hand, is a character and nostalgic face of many people’s youths, but is not a whole show on his own. (Mind you, he has never claimed to be.)
Whether or not Domino Bones’s mix of genres is a necessary compromise to keep this mutually beneficial union together, there is no escaping the fact that they have found a unique sound and for all its quirks, it works.
The final song of the relatively short set got the audience going. It was a medley of Bob Marley’s Get Up, Stand Up, T-Rex’s Children of the Revolution and Domino Bones songs. “Stand up Windsor!” shouted Bez as he began ranting like a pill-popping preacher. At the same time Ward was using that instrument of hers to great effect, splicing together the songs in a chaotic rollercoaster ride of an arrangement. Bez was bouncing, Ward was wriggling and the audience wasn’t sure if they’d all topple off the ride. But then they were there, at the end, everyone in one piece and the crowd cheering.
Someone must have been counting their crotchets.
Resident Music Reviewer
Hannah Masters-Waage
More from Hannah can be found on her blogsite
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