ASIAN DUB FOUNDATION AND JUNOON: LIVE AT THE WEMBLEY CONFERENCE CENTRE June 12th, 1998

Review by Saurav Dutt

This was the first ever gig that I saw ADF perform at. After heavy promotion on an Asian televison channel: Zee TV. This double bill of the yet -unkown Asian Dub Foundation and the even more unknown Junoon: a Pakistani Sufi band- had been promoted for a month or so, with music videos from the respective bands being aired on the channel in the build up to this eagerly anticipated event.

Although ADF were by no means totally unknown at this stage -Zee Tv's promotion first introduced me to the band and their music. And this was the same for many of the viewers; and for the vast majority, this was their chance to see one of the country's best live bands and most successful Asian bands, performing live at a venue noticeably larger than they had been performing at previously.

ADF's set was performed in 2 parts: they took to the stage as the first band, performing 4 tracks in succession: then after Junoon went on with 4 more: ADF came on straight after and concluded their set with an additional 5 tracks.

Junoon, who were making their London debut playing live, could not even compare to the power that ADF displayed. And for the majority of the audience, including myself, this was a first hand experience of how powerful ADF can be as a live unit.

Starting with "Assassin"; ADF leapt into "collective mode" (HA HA) straight away and took the near full Wembley Conference centre by storm. It was hugely noticeable however, that because of the limitation of 4 songs in their first burst, ADF kept there energy and on stage resolve until their final set.

Afer Junoon's relatively dismal performace, ADF launched straight into "Naxalite", and the band, who had been noticeably withdrawn slightly thus far, ripped into true ADF fashion with "Dub Mentality" thereafter, where Deedar and Chandrasonic took the oppurtunity to introduce the song as it begun it's beat, jumping up and down in unison; at last ADF had sprung into true action.

Sun-J's "radical movements" at first had us all mesmerized and a little perplexed, but soon realised how important the dance steps were to most of the songs. As "Charge" followed quickly after -Deeder threw himself from one side of the stage to another in a frenzy as the song took its final burst towards the end; and then realising that some tossers were laughing at this illustration of "Dub Mentality", Deeder then casually asked in his wicked machine gun-style delivery: "What U laughing at??" -in fact it seemed our normally reserved jungle master, had picked a fight with this certain s***t head who though it was funny -all issues were resolved as the fury of "Free Satpal Ram" kicked in. Chandrasonic put the tin lid on the whole performance when saying "We don't care if its unfashionable to mix politics with music; cos it can work sometimes".

Junoon were hiding in the shadows, ADF were the stars of this show -it didn't matter if it was a double-bill show -this WAS ADF's night-they had us all captured with their militant rythms and unstoppable power. As it was my first time seeing them live -it was not a night to forget very quickly. I rushed out and bought "Rafi's Revenge" the next day.

THE SETLIST:

ASSASSIN
BLACK WHITE
REAL GREAT BRITAIN
BUZZIN'
NAXALITE
DUB MENTALITY
JOURNEY
CHARGE
FREE SATPAL RAM