We’ve featured no end of cool club night and cool people in the Source over the years and Born Bad is another to add to that auspicious list.
The difference in this case is that I mean cool in its most timeless, and in my opinion most authentic usage. I don’t mean cool like those skinny dudes in day-glo t-shirts and turned -in toes – their cool will fade and eventually be considered uncool.
At Born Bad, the guys and girls are cool in the same way as Lauren Bacall or James Dean – unconcerned with this trend or that, but instead with the music that they love, and the attitude that it embodies. From there you get the style – with the high waistlines and collars, and still higher quiffs – and the dancing.
So what you get from the speakers is a trashy, gnarled mish-mash of sleazy surf, girl group garage, riotous rock’n’roll, rare r’n’b, and a whole swamp of all things that scared the bejesus out of the parents of teenagers in the Fifties. And what you get from the floor is a twisting, foot-stomping gang of devotees.
This being a special festival issue, I can’t forget to mention Born Bad’s slot at Beachdown, with their guest, the legendary Andy Weatherall reprising his Sci-Fi Lo-Fi compilation of last year. Wow.