Live Review: No Sweat, Islington Powerhaus, 1990

SWEAT IT OUT

The Powerhaus is just the sort of place where you can see a band like NO SWEAT really sweat, but it's just big enough to generate just the right atmosphere.

In case you don't know NO SWEAT are a young Irish band from Dublin (yes another one) who've had nice things said about them by none other than Joe Elliot of DEF LEPPARD. Thankfully this does not mean that they're a Def Leppard type band. In fact, this lot have been around for a few years, replaced their original singer, and toughened up their sound.

They open up with "Lean On Me" a hard-driving rocker with a cutting edge. "Shake Your Body" and their recent single "Tear Down The Walls" are in a similar vein but a bit rowdier. "Is it hard enough for you?" enquires vocalist Paul Quinn. The crowd gives the thumbs up sign! However, they mellow out a little over the next few songs, and a song like "Diamond Rough" displays Paul Quinn's husky vocals at their best. "Heart And Soul," the single that was No. 1 in Ireland is a bit more commercial but it doesn't sound bland.

What really impressed me tonight is just how tight the band are. No Sweat glide effortlessly between full-blown rock (complete with harmonies) and their more acoustic-based songs. It's all performed with an infectious sense of fun, and irrespective of Joe Elliot's approval, No Sweat look set to go far!

Mark Liddell
Riff Raff
July 1990

Revenge...?

Riff Raff was a legendary rock magazine based in London in the late 1980s and 1990s. Edited by the ultimate music biz insider, Mark Crampton, and employing such talents as Mark Blake, Jerry Ewing, Mike Harris, Paul Smith, Chris Collingwood, Alan McCrorie, Simon Robinson, Lyn Guy, Anna Marx, Nick Douglas, Marion Garden, Peter "Grunty" Grant, Joe "The Crow" Mackett, Billy "The Kluck" Kulke, and, lastest and mostest, the incredible Liddell Brothers, Mark (a.k.a. "El Perro") and Colin (a.k.a. "Der Fly"). Unfortunately, Riff Raff was just too R n' R for its own good. A genuine working class rock mag, written, edited, and translated into 16 European languages in a drug-N-Jack-D-fuelled haze, often on the back of motorbikes, with spell checking by our staff of attentive rock bimbos (chosen purely for their blondeness and big knockers), it soon fell behind more trainspotterly, nerdish, and politically correct publications like Q, Kerrang, Mojo, Metal Hammer, and Horse & Hound. This website is an archive and kind of shrine dedicated to the writing of its greatest writers, some of whom, luckily for the Rock Kosmos, still continue to write about music. This is the REVENGE of Riff Raff...Rock on!