Gig Review: Rubberbandits Continental Fistfight

The Rubberbandits have been away from Belfast for too long and while I wouldn’t have picked the Empire as the perfect venue for their return, it’s good to have them back. Support for the show had a decidedly hip-hop feel with Green Monkey, Gerard i2 and Bunny & The Banned Its getting the audience warmed up for the main event. Bunny & The Banned Its adding a Lucha mask wearing saxophonist into the mix was quite welcome as well as Green Monkey giving a Big Willie Style vibe to their performance.

When the time was right, Mr. Chrome and Blindboy Boatclub came on stage with shopping bags over their faces as is their want. As usual they were accompanied by Willie O’DJ whose purpose seems to be to hit play on the laptop (other MacBooks are available) and get rat arsed.

Throughout the night Willie could be seen downing beers, a bottle of wine and at one point stopping to eat a bag of crisps through his big rubber mask. He seems to have the best deal out of this set up.

The bandits wisely got things off to a start with the particularly apt for Belfast Hey Mister (are you a Hipster or a Hobo?) and one of the crowd’s favourites, Spoiling Ivan. Spoiling Ivan is the story of Mr Chrome befriending a ‘little bai’ in a park. It’s a cracking tune that’ll be in your head for ages afterwards. “Knack Knack, who’s dare, it’s my little teddy bear! Spoiling Ivan! Spoiling Ivan!” See? I’m even typing it now.

Next Blindboy and Mr.Chrome tell us of their exploits performing across the water for the Queen her ‘Black and Tans’. They like to give “them lot a lesson in Irish history” when they’re over there. The crowd knows what’s coming and looks to be ready for a history lesson too. Up the Ra is an excellent tune to get the crowd singing along (look how far we’ve come eh?). Most of the it involves a garbled mish-mash of republican history mixed with nonsense and the queen being punched in the jaw. This is then followed by shouting out the name of whoever’s on the big screen and exclaiming that they’re in the RA. Fun for all the family.

There were great performances of I like to Shift Girls, I Want To Fight Your Father and the ever ‘multicultural’ Black Man as well as the astoundingly mental Double Dropping Yokes With Eamon Devalera. The highlights for me being the truly terrifying Your Dad’s Best Friend and the jaunty Fellas performed by Gabriel Byrne in creepy puppet form.

The Rubberbandits have come a long way from their beginnings at comedy festivals and on RTE but they haven’t forgotten what put them on the map in the first place. After the traditional spoof end of the show/walk off, “that’s us done now, if only we had one more song”, they came back on to perform Horse Outside like we always knew they would. Blindboy and Mr.Chrome have shown that they’re able to keep producing great songs but they’ve also shown that you don’t need a full backing band to give a room full of people a good time. Sometimes all you need is a laptop, 2 ‘Gas’ lads and a sense of humour.