A View From The Back Of The Room: Nashville Pussy (Review By Paul H)

Nashville Pussy, The Globe, Cardiff

Described as the “American Motörhead, the powerhouse of inappropriate innuendo and downright filth that is Nashville Pussy (7) rolled into Cardiff on a freezing cold evening, ironically the night before a sell-out crowd assembled to catch Motörhead guitarist Phil Campbell and his Bastard Sons in the same venue. Having kicked the shit out of various venues around the world for the past 20+ years Pussy really don’t worry about impressing anyone. They just do what they do. No support band, and a 9pm start. Really? Us Brits are outraged at such low value for money you know! A small but enthusiastic crowd raucously greeted Blaine Cartwright, Ruyter Suys, Bonnie Buitrago and Ben Thomas onto the stage and Pussy proceeded to race through a slab of tunes which ranged from We Want A War from the latest album Pleased To Eat You to Fried Chicken And Coffee from 1998’s debut release Let Them Eat Pussy.

Watching Nashville Pussy is a surreal experience. Cartwright stumbles around the stage at times, swigging from a bottle of Jack Daniels, his ample paunch adding to as much comedic value as his fabulous skullet hairstyle, whilst his swigging of Fosters from his cowboy hat was just bizarre. No one should drink Fosters. But the man can shout a tune okay and he’s no slouch on the old six stringer either although it’s his wife, the fantastic Ruyter Suys who took most of the lead guitar credit with some massive solos and anarchic playing style. In fact, anarchic is probably one of the better descriptions for this band who clearly don’t give a flying fuck about what anyone else thinks. With a smattering of crusty old punks, metal heads and the mandatory high percentage of Motörhead fans all lapping up the carnage, the band barrelled through song after song with only limited crowd interaction. A double drum solo was not called for but being the youngest in the band indicated that Ben Thomas would shoulder a bit more of the work.

With their average tune clocking in at about three minutes in length, Pussy crammed in about a billion songs during their 70 minutes, demonstrating that their fusion of psychobilly, Southern Rock and punk is worthy of attention. Okay, the band’s style is repetitive and many of the songs sound pretty similar, but it was good fun and entertaining to watch. When the last band you have seen is Slayer in front of 11,000 screaming Spaniards then it was always likely that this would have a challenge to live up to but when the band finished with an extended version of Ted Nugent’s Wang Dang, Sweet Poontang you knew you’d been to a gig.