There’s a scene in the recently rebooted 21 Jump Street where Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill are going back to school. They look around at all the cliches and quickly identify what they thought were the cool kids. Now back in their days the cool kids were these rude kids who don’t give a fuck and smoke and drink and skip classes but when they happen on these kids, they are all about saving the earth and stuff. Times have changed. It was a weird, funny and true scene.
Which brings me to Shame. They are young, they are brash, they are in your face. When you take a look at them on stage, it’s not entirely far fetched to say they look like they came out of a time warp from London in 1979. Some bands just have it. Shame has that presence. They are awesome.
Lead singer Charlie Steen paces on stage, he sneers menacingly at the crowd. When you see him on stage, you really come to terms with the fact that some people were born to be singers. He is one of them. The way he carries himself, the way he grabs the mic as he spits out his songs, and the way he switches hands manically on the mic. It’s all mesmerizing and it’s incredibly hard not to get into it when you are there. His presence is intense and that intensity spreads throughout the crowd.
This is great, because Shame plays a really aggressive brand of post punk rock music. By the time the second song hit, the mosh pit was flowing, moving faster and faster to match the pace of the drums with the crowd feeding off the energy of the band (or vice versa). It was getting chaotic.
Which brings me back to the top. These kids seem like good kids – during a mid song break, Charlie Steen reminded the crowd that this was just all entertainment, but everyone should be allowed to have a good time, and that we shouldn’t all be that aggressive to each other. It was an odd thing for a band that incites such an intense crowd to say, but I thought it was pretty cool.
Anyways, Shame is awesome live. They have big loud guitar songs, a hell of a presence on stage and just this vital energy about them that makes you wish you were young and fun again.