SFist Reviews: The Vaselines @ Bimbo's
by Moses Namkung
After the end of "Come As You Are" on Nirvana's MTV Unplugged in New York, Kurt Cobain introduces the next song by saying, "This was written by the Vaselines." Yep. That's the only thing we really knew about the band for years.
On the one hand, it's too bad that everything ever written about the Vaselines has to mention Nirvana within the first couple sentences. But on the other, if superfan Kurt Cobain was not inextricably part of their history, the Vaselines, composed primarily of Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee, wouldn't be reuniting and embarking on their first US tour after twenty years -- they'd have been forgotten long ago.
At last night reunion show at Bimbo's, the rust did sometimes show, as Eugene at one point struggled mightily to properly adjust the capo on his guitar. "Why does it still sound like shit?" he asked, while adjusting it here... then there... then... several awkward minutes passed. More fiddling. More minutes. "Eh, good enough," he said, as they then began "Jesus Wants Me For a Sunbeam".
Frances, with her endearing Glaswegian accent, was very cute, even though her banter with the audience was filled with, in Eugene's words, "filth" (small surprise, considering many of the songs on The Way of the Vaselines revolve around coitus); throughout the set she joked about pedophilia, sexual offenders, bodily fluids and stamina in bed, among other things. Frances, how naughty!