<< Back To Press Melody Maker : Live Review : SFX : Dublin, September 1995 Do you want to talk about the music or the spectacle, the spectacle is easy - you never know what is going to happen next. Last time I saw them (at an open air festival in Glasgow), singer Fearghal clambered down off stage and spat out the words to a fiercely defiant 'We don't need nobody else' in front of a clearly petrified baby. Tonight, for the final number, a rousing, declamatory 'I think I miss you', Fearghal whips off his trousers and one shoe to reveal a fetching purple slip, makes Maker photographer Stephen Sweet kiss his stockinged feet, leaps into the audience and departs the stage muttering something about fucking someone's Dad. He looks like a freshly escaped convict with his shaved head and muscles. The guitarist to his right looks like he should be in The Field Mice, yet plays like he used to live next door to The Edge and would batter on the wall all night long. Spectacle? I'd say. Girls attempt to stand on my shoulders, clutch red roses to their bosoms and scream 'I want to take them all home with me'! Boys throw themselves with an alarmingly disregard for safety into the ever-growing melee. Security Guards clutch their ears and pray main band Smashing Pumpkins will be along soon. They can't be as rampant as this, surely? Fearghal looks more and more violent (demented, wild) as he whips the crowd into a feeding frenzy. The mike stand is taking a fearful beating. God, he looks sadistic. Sure, I'm with Simon Price when he points out that nothing you see on stage is 'real' (Courtney was an actress, remember), but this was so fucking exhilarating. Most of the set I'm stood, hands clenched thinking which particular musician's faces I would like to sink my fist into (go on have a wild guess). The emotion is overwhelming, the spectacle ain't all however, music counts. Often, The Whipping Boy recall prime time James (circus sit-down), the guitars all jangling and stubborn - hornlike even. Songs are vast flourishes of emotion, no room for petty trivialities here. Every time they finish a number it sounds like the world stopped. (Yes, ok, so they tend towards pomposity. Last single Twinkle is frankly and unashamed call to arms but what the fuck). Sometimes there is still uneasy echoes of their former Valentines influenced days or even something folksy and crap (the levelers, say). Thankfully, these moments are few and far between. And, sometimes, the Boy bring to mind A House or 1986 era Mekons, what with Fearghal's way of semi-speaking/semi-singing. But always the music sounds so passionate, so driven as if there is always something hurting inside, alive to human failing. You feel simultaneously repulsed and thrilled by the way Fearghal spits out words like 'Today I hit you for the first time' (from the new single 'We don't need nobody else'), sounding like a macabre Ivor Cutler. Frankly, you want more. More tails of youthful rebellion, disgust and casual violence. More tails which ooze with sleaze. Fearghal has been accused of misogyny, but that's probably only cos Whipping Boy songs are about confronting the dark side of human nature. His disgust is reserved for everyone. Me? I'm more than happy to experience this stuff vicariously. After all, voyeurism is so 90's. Everett True