It’s been 40 years since the Manchester based post- punk legends released their opus Strange Times. The Geffen release was critically acclaimed but never received the popularity it deserved. A small clatch of pre-adult bandits masquerading as UConn students thought it would be a good idea to gobble some hallucinogens and drive through the woods to Providence, visit a rickety low ceilinged club to catch a glimpse of The Chameleons lightning in a bottle. Fast (or maybe lurch) forward to 2024 and the magnetic front man vocalist bass player Mark Burgess along with original guitarist Reg came back to these shores for the reincarnation of Strange Times. With a younger crew of keys, drums, and second guitar the new Chameleons launched. The Ballroom was packed with grizzled punks and new appreciators, even some of those same bandits 40 years hence. The setlist was stellar: Mad Jack, Caution, Tears, Soul In Isolation ( snippets of The End, Be My Wife, Eleanor Rigby, and There Is a Light), Swamp Thing, Time/ The End of Time, Seriocity, In Answer, Childhood, I’ll Remember, Ever After. The encores were jacked: Where Are You, In Shreds, Nostalgia,Second Skin ( snippet of Please, Please, Me), and Don’t Fall ( snippet of Cracked Actor). Burgess has not skipped a beat, older, paunchier, but the same level of magnetism. The crowd was rapt, I even spied my friends singing along with each tune. At one point, Mark spit a short rhyme “ time is not a thief in the night, time is an embezzler, time….is your enemy now.” Forty years is a long time, the LSD and Panama Red was replaced with Prevagen and Statins, the music on the other hand was decidedly the same. Lightning. One thing is for sure, “it is autumn before the winter”, and I experienced “ man’s last mad surge of youth”.
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