The Montecristos: Born To Rock’n’Roll

Sigue Sigue rockabilly.

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Thought he’d settled down as Marc Almond’s sidekick? No chance. Unrepentant Sigue Sigue Sputnik guitarist Neal X will scratch that itch any time he gets a chance.

His new band play rockabilly, glammed up with the kind of excess you’d expect – everything echoing louder than everything else. That includes metallic guitar solos, wild brass and sax riffs, and over-amplified sound effects.

To his credit, X never forgets that vital ingredient of rockabilly: the spongy string-bass rhythm. He also gets Marc Almond to join in the fun, guesting on Vince Taylor’s Brand New Cadillac.

He even covers Love Missile F1-11 just to prove the rockabilly connection was there all along. There may be a visual element too – his band are mainly female./o:p

Hugh Fielder

Hugh Fielder has been writing about music for 47 years. Actually 58 if you include the essay he wrote about the Rolling Stones in exchange for taking time off school to see them at the Ipswich Gaumont in 1964. He was news editor of Sounds magazine from 1975 to 1992 and editor of Tower Records Top magazine from 1992 to 2001. Since then he has been freelance. He has interviewed the great, the good and the not so good and written books about some of them. His favourite possession is a piece of columnar basalt he brought back from Iceland.