When they line up every rock band outside the pearly gates of rock 'n' roll heaven, and choose which ones are cool enough to enter, then The Dandy Warhols' celestial backstage pass is assured. With a singer named Courtney Taylor-Taylor, a skinny, elegantly-wasted guitarist, a drummer who looks like Eric Clapton circa 1967, a keyboard player who regularly removes her top onstage, and an official t-shirt that says "You drive fast - I'll do the drugs", the Dandys' image is all sex, style and substance abuse. Perfect.
Onstage, the Portland, Oregon quartet, augmented by the "mysterious" Troy on guitar and trumpet, play up to their stoner reputation by lamenting the shortage of "grass" on our little green isle. But when they let rip with the trashy riffola of Bohemian Like You and the sneering, state-baiting Minnesoter, the Dandy Warhols prove you don't need drugs to get a real rock 'n' roll high.
Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth is greeted with ecstatic cheers from the crowd, but sometimes you wonder if The Dandy Warhols are better viewed through a narcotic haze, deep in some cavernous club on the seedy side of New York. Get Off is followed by a bizarre break during which the band members sit around onstage, chatting and smoking; the audience doesn't know what to do with itself.
When they return to the rock, they blow us away with the trumpet-driven Godless and the insistent Boys Better, then come down with the spaced-out slide guitar of Country Leaver, going straight into the encore without bothering to leave the stage. Cool.
