Doncaster gave birth to two of my favourite bands of the past decade or so but 2024 hasn’t been a good year regarding either, The Blinders performed their farewell gigs earlier this year and Bang Bang Romeo officially announced “The closing of a chapter, a door closer of sorts without locking it” regarding their future too. Not good news…
The Blinders announcement was something of a shock especially as they had signed to a new EMI label for their last album but for BBR it was more of an on the cards thing a lot of fans were already aware of. It’s hard to see what went wrong with both, Tom and Charlie are still yet to talk about the sudden split but for BBR I honestly don’t know of another band that ended up with so much go wrong against them in the build up to the release of their debut album Heartbreakers Guide To The Galaxy as everything on the surface seemed to be falling into place whilst simultaneously falling apart and I blame a lot of it which was squarely in the lap of the label they signed to.
The absolute shambles of decision-making that occurred when the world was ready for the taking was frankly unbelievable! In 2019 they got a dream of all dreams, the opportunity to support global superstar P¡nk on her UK and European dates around some of the biggest stadiums in the world. Now call me baffled but if you had an album launched already planned just prior to the dates this was due to uccour then you would have thought it sensible to have plenty of physical stock of yjr album either on sale at the merch desk or available to purchase directly from the bands website yeah?
The physical releases actually finally rocked up a WHOLE 5 months later with CD release actually arriving in November 2019 but the promised 180g coloured vinyl version never even appeared, the label released a vinyl copy another month later in December just as a 140g black pressing but at least it contained an updated song list to include the Example collaboration, so that’s alright then… What label in their right minds could be so inept?
The band were rightly furious and left the label shortly after but the damage was already done for them and any chance of rescuing what quite frankly was an absolute shit show was then further compounded with what came round the corner, the global pandemic! This proved to be pretty much the final nail in the coffin of what should have been an incredible twelve months for both the frankly brilliant debut and indeed Bang Bang Romeo going forward.
So fast forward around four and a half years later and on this night we got to celebrate and commiserate together, to hear the album tour that never happened and to say farewell to the band – possibly just for now, hopefully not forever…
Rombi Tauro. Unfortunately getting to pay much attention to her was pretty difficult as we were bumping into so many people arriving who we hadn’t seen for a while but what I caught was that her voice very much reminded me of Amy Winehouse’s. The girls got soul but she is needing an original catalogue to showcase it.
ADMT, another soloist (seriously, where are the new young bands these days – they’re not just a dying breed they’re practically extinct!) with a style that sort of sets him apart with a bit of genre crossing, he sings the ballads like so many do but also maintains a streets vibe that gives his songs a bit of an edge to them. Brave lad to take on a Whitney Houston track but he makes How Will I Know his own.
Bang Bang Romeo, With a good sized audience full of expectation and a band that haven’t played together for a while which in itself could have been a recipe for a complete car crash with many bands, but this was Bang Bang Romeo and they have never been anything other than a powerhouse so it wasn’t really likely to happen when you have a singer like Anastasia Walker fronting you, people listen regardless!
The cheers go up as the band enter stage right during Intro with the loudest cheers saved for the girl herself as she rouses the audience up waving her arms and dives straight into Love Yourself. If this was the Heartbreakers tour then they weren’t doing the album in order, long time around track Cemetery which followed got folk moving along with Bang Of Bones but it was the first cover of the night, their wonderfully camp disco version of 4 Non Blondes What’s Up that got the vocals from the crowd.
Runaway’s bluesy swagger segued the night into another couple of firm fan favourites, Chemical and my personal favourite BBR track, the sublime Johannesburg – a track I told the band they were mad about leaving it off the album back in the day.
The regularly appearing live cover of Creep, the Radiohead classic brought the atmosphere down a few levels before Shame On You sent everyone bouncing again, You Scared The Love Out Of Me was a surprising inclusion as the time was ticking away but it was delivered with plenty of vigour that carried on into You & I – a reminder of why you crossed Stars at your own peril, that furious face is quite the scary one! Album closer, the haunting(ly) Beautiful World closed the main set.
Belting track Natural Born Astronaut opened up the encore much to everyone’s delight followed by a surprising final cover song, Stevie Nicks Edge Of Seventeen after which Stars disappeared off the stage only to appear in the crowd for the very fitting Adore Me and where she stayed for set finale, the crowd rousing Invitation which always showcased the vastly underrated Richard Gartlands epic power behind the drums.
And with that it was all over bar the aftershow party. The gig showed there’s still a hell of a lot of love for Bang Bang Romeo, be it Stars’ incredible vocals or Ross Cameron’s knack of song-writing, a hookster that is second to none. Some of their songs are around a decade old now but still sound as fresh as they did when first performed and all we can do is but hope the opportunity comes around again in the future to hear them live again once more.
I’m certainly going to miss hearing all the band perform and just as importantly all the people involved around Bang Bang Romeo. Many of us went beyond being just fans, we became friends, not just between fans with fellow fans but fans with band members and their families.
The connections made were special and the gig get-togethers were special and will be missed just as much as the music! I’ve met a lot of wonderful people through the love of this band, hell they even made heading to Doncaster something to look forward to, not something I’d have ever thought of hearing myself say… So, to Stars, Ross, Rich and Rich the Second, from the bottom of my heart I have to say thank you for the ride along, it’s been an absolute blast, you will be missed on stage together like you will never know!
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