Fu Manchu at Double Door, Chicago (31/10/09) review 5/5

I was flicking through some god-awful Metro-style paper on the Chicago L-Train when the night’s entertainment listings caught my eye. Bob Dylan and his band were playing some fancy downtown club, and perennial stoner-rock campaigners Fu Manchu were playing the ‘Double Door’ out in North Chi’. Needless to say, the choice was obvious.

Admittedly, Fu Manchu could be accused of getting increasingly commercial, over-produced and frankly uninspired in their studio output in recent years - in fact they (arguably) haven’t produced a truly solid album since 2001’s ‘California Crossing - but it has never been in doubt that they are an absolutely cracking live band. I get the feeling that with the generation of bands emerging today, going out on tour just isn’t as important as it should be; everyone just gets their single out on iTunes and headlines a minor stage at Download three weeks later. After all, who really wants to live out of a van, surviving on cheap beer and gas station food? Well, Fu Manchu, that’s who. They’re the ultimate road warriors, having spent their entire lives in an epic circuit of the USA (and when we occasionally get lucky, Europe), only taking the odd month off to churn out a new album to tour for. The latest excuse is their 10th album, ‘Signs of Infinite Power’, out earlier this month, and the Fu chose to hit Chicago not only on a saturday night, but on Halloween.

Over here, it seems, Halloween is something of a big deal. This was reflected in the fact that not only half the crowd dressed up, opening band ‘Springa Sonic Droogs’ emerged onstage dressed as a collection of villains from Batman films, with the singer predictably enough being the Joker. They were mildly amusing and at least distracting (dreadful Heath Ledger impressions aside), which is more than could be said of LA’s ‘It’s Casual’, who filled the second support slot; consisting of just a guitarist and a drummer, they embarked on some kind of relentless half-hour shred, the majority of which I spent sheltering from in the bar.

The Double Door is by no means a huge venue, barely bigger than a pub, and when the support bands were on it seemed somewhere between half empty and utterly dead; however, the minute Fu Manchu approached the stage it was packed out, all sweaty guys in old Fu tour t-shirts, clutching cans of beer, yelling obscure song titles from the band’s extensive back catalogue. However, being seasoned veterans of the road, this just is the kind of atmosphere that Fu Manchu can excel in - indeed, they thrive on it. Opening with the classic riff-fest “Eatin’ Dust”, they tore through a selection of hits from right across their 25-odd year career, showing exactly the kind of confidence and tightness that you would expect from a band who has made the road their life. I’ll state that again; you’ll probably never see a live band as tight as Fu Manchu - they’ve played literally thousands of gigs, and know every inch of their material inside out. Even tracks from their more recent albums sounds as solid and well-practiced as the songs they’ve been playing since the 80s; the couple of songs from new album ‘Signs of Infinite Power’ that were on display slotted easily right into the set alongside the classics.

And classics aplenty were on show; Fu have been around long enough to know what they do best, and how to build a setlist. “Evil Eye”, “Hell on Wheels”, “Mongoose”, “King of the Road”, “Ojo Rojo”, even “Superbird” - maybe the only great missing was “Godzilla”. There was even a bizarre interlude in which they invited the Joker from Springa Sonic Droogs up onstage to sing an old hardcore punk number, harking back to the earliest days of the band, when they a hardcore act known as ‘Virulence’. Singer and guitarist Scott Hill was visibly moved by this blast from the past, and indeed the band appeared to be having the time of their lives throughout; lead solo-meister Bob Balch threw himself around the stage like a man possessed, living from hook to hook, while drummer Scott Reeder kept the beat like a demonic metronome, despite some girls down the front repeatedly buying him rounds of shots.

They attempted to close with “Ojo Rojo” after a full 90 minutes of pure, uncompromising, blisteringly heavy stoner rock, but returned at the insistence of the crowd (I’m taking full credit for starting the “fu man-chu! fu man-chu!” chant) with “Boogie Van”. The closer was an old favourite of mine, the song indeed that closes their classic live album ‘Go for it - Live!’, the epic behemoth of “Saturn III” (if you’re a novice in the ways of the Manchu, incidentally, I would strongly suggest you go get that album). When the final ringing, fuzz-laden chord faded, I was almost certain that I’d gone deaf. And you know what - if I were suddenly to lose the powers of hearing, I reckon the final sound I’d want to hear would be just that; a great band, on the form of their lives, playing to an adoring crowd and obviously massively enjoying themselves. You couldn’t ask for much more than that.

Article by Phil Sim on location in the USA