Video Review: Badlands, "Dag the Giblets"

If you never got a chance to see BADLANDS only UK show so far, then, this will provide you with a taster. Filmed mainly upon the set of their latest promo "Last Time," the video also includes live footage along with the best of the old and the new videos intersperse with interviews with the various members.

Badlands want to do their own thang: hard rock blues, dabbling in country, funk n' jazz, and nobody's gonna stop them. Simple and straight ahead, fuckin' brilliant. As they say, "there's no poodles in this band". The ball really starts a rolling with "Winter's Call." Both Gillen and Lee give a most outstanding and a typical performance in this one. On top of that, it's such a great tune.

More idle chat follows, then it's into a live version of "Devil's Stomp." The great thing about this live take is that it's totally untouched, no overdubs, no bullshit, and no trying to tart things up. Next on the agenda is "Dreams in the Dark," another of their early promos from the first album, with Ray Gillen proven he's a right twat 'cos no-one looks that good. Bastard.

More chat, then we're off again with a live version of "Whiskey Dust," proving with both this and "Devil's Stomp" that the band are able to do live what they do in the studio. "Last Time" is probably the weakest amongst this bunch. Maybe 'cos Gillen looks like he doesn't know what he's doing, or maybe 'cos he looks like he doesn't want to be there.

At the end of the day, they could have done better; how about less chat and more live footage? But if you're a Badlands fan you'll love it and may learn something. In this they prove none of them are out to be rock stars, they just wanna play their music their way. There's a real passion for playing live, none of that backing tape shite. As they say on 'The Match,' "superlative!"

Mark Kulke
Riff Raff
March 1992

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!