Fool’s Gold and Benin City, Camden Bar Fly

Fool’s Gold’s debut album brims over with the enthusiasm of a band who have discovered - primarily through African music - that there’s another way to play the electric guitar other than to just form workman-like bar-chords, stamp down hard on the distortion pedal, and then hit those six strings as hard as you can.  And fortunately for them, there’s a young audience clearly thrilled to have this discovery passed onto them. By the end of their set at the jam-packed Bar Fly, there’s actually a substantial number of the audience pogo-ing! I never thought I’d see that occurring to music that owes more to Congolese rumba than it does to any kind of CBGB’s rock tradition.

Fool’s Gold’s debut album brims over with the enthusiasm of a band who have discovered - primarily through African music - that there’s another way to play the electric guitar other than to just form workman-like bar-chords, stamp down hard on the distortion pedal, and then hit those six strings as hard as you can.  And fortunately for them, there’s a young audience clearly thrilled to have this discovery passed onto them. By the end of their set at the jam-packed Bar Fly, there’s actually a substantial number of the audience pogo-ing! I never thought I’d see that occurring to music that owes more to Congolese rumba than it does to any kind of CBGB’s rock tradition.