The aforementioned band was The Clean. I raved about David Kilgour the other week, so when I heard that the band that originally made him a cult hero was reforming for three gigs in New York City, I had no choice but to go.

On the way there, my bus got stuck in the most impenetrable traffic jam for about three hours, during which time I became intimately acquainted with The Clean’s Anthology album. It’s a pop masterpiece, this greatest hits comp, and I’ve been highly recommending it to just about anyone within earshot.

It was extra disappointing, therefore, to find the reunited Clean barely able to play their old material. A friend was explaining to me that their muddling incompetence was a testament to their honesty, a tribute to their humble roots as a muddling punk band. Hogwash, sez I. Those early songs aren’t nearly as amateurish as all that. “Tight as a duck’s ass”¹ springs more readily to mind than “sloppy”.

Yet the show was somehow thrilling despite the slop. It must be the time travel aspect of it: I probably spent most of the show imagining what it must’ve been like to be hearing these songs in 1978. And though David Kilgour seemed rather sour, his brother Hamish, he formerly of Bailter Space, and Robert Scott of The Bats, seemed to be having a grand old time.

In conclusion, go buy Anthology and revel in gems such as these:

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And if you go see The Clean live, be sure to keep the original versions firmly in mind. That way you too can pretend you’re listening to a young group of pop geniuses rather than three aging men not even trying very hard to relive the glory of their youth.