This reminds me of when The Good, The Bad and The Queen chose to play an intimate gig at two working men’s clubs in North Tyneside, namely Cullercoats Crescent Club and Tynemouth Social Club back in 2018. They sold out in five minutes, which is exactly what happened when Mike D, along with his band 5D, played to the sold out capacity crowd on Wednesday night. The support tonight was by Tony Bontana from Birmingham, the enigmatic MC, artist and producer.
I’ve been to a few social clubs in my time, and the King Street CIU Social Club is no different, it has the usual 70s décor, satin curtains around the stage with the pelmet. The weighing machine in the ladies. The Saturday night ‘turn’, cheap drinks, darts and meat draws. But this club is somewhat different - Geoff Kirkwood of Are you Affiliated is hosting a new breed of talent and old favourites to the upstairs concert room and bringing music to the far reaches of suburbia and making music accessible to all.
And what a night it was! It was absolutely packed; the low ceilings were making it so hot that the queues to the bar were out the door. The atmosphere was buzzing with electric nervous tension, that collective frisson like everyone was waiting for the fight outside the youth club in the 80s.
Starting off with one of his new tracks What We Got, the crowd went crazy! Brilliant track sampling of The Avalanches amongst others, which is one of the true beauties of Mike’s old band the Beastie Boys by using samples from well known and obscure tracks to add a little spice to their own.
Mike D and 5D’s sound is self-titled ‘Chaotic’, but this is tight and totally on point. There’s no denying they have a purposely positioned sound. Sampling and using influences from the likes of Lee Scratch Perry’s dub effects, Kraftwerk’s Trans-Europe Express and Afrika Bambaataa’s Planet Rock loop, this is very well curated and even though it feels chaotic, it has a complex synergy which is continuously surprising and uplifting. The whole place was grinning back at the stage, fingers and phones up in appreciation.
5D are five guys including Mike Diamond’s two sons Davis and Skyler who have their own indie band Very Nice Person. The five play a combination of decks, guitars, bass and keys. They are playful and work in harmony, enjoying every moment together with Mike D on the vocals, who it’s clear to see is enjoying himself enormously! They tease him a few times through the night, playing back tweaked sound-bites from earlier chats with the crowd, talking about Newcastle Brown Ale and the North East heavy metal band Venom, a throwback to a comment made in 1992.
The energy on stage was extraordinary – these guys are moving non-stop in sweatshirts God damn it! The guitars are epic. They there tearing up the decks. Fading, scratching and blending tracks with relentless energy.
The third song in is Looking Down the Barrel of A Gun an old Beasties track – the extra guitar comes in, along with the bass. The guys are backing too, so there’s lots to see and the sound is fantastic.
One of Mike’s new songs, True Colours has a vague sound of PiL, which again has strong drums overlayed with an almost kazoo sound; mental! There’s definitely a Prodigy sound in there too. Mike got us all clapping along to the vocals interspersed with strong beats and clever guitars.
Another new track, I Don’t Care, has a slight reggae vibe to it. And Will Grey skilfully plays an acoustic guitar here, which ends in a beautiful softer sound of him plucking strings.
My favourite, the new single Switch Up; is an absolute banger, with its deep bass notes and crazy chaotic lyrics, which just grabs you from the first second. Every drop lands perfectly.
Their penultimate song Thank You, was a surprisingly tender track with lyrics ‘we were just kids, freaking out’ which perhaps was a throw back to earlier times with band members. It was full of emotion.
For the encore, they played Delta 5’s Mind Your Own Business, which they also played Live at Maida Vale on BBC 6 Music this week. This time they said it was for the ‘fuckheads of governments right now’. We hear you.
Ending with the Beastie’s old favourite So What’cha Want – the crowd go flipping mad.
What you see here is the genuine joy they get from playing together. There’s an obvious love of music, but also a chemistry there impossible to miss. They play with enthusiasm and there’s confidence and spontaneity where they feel free to experiment. You can really see the band are enjoying themselves which spills out into the crowd.
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