Nips in the air Source: unknown - (probably NME) Date: ?? 1978 Author: Dave McCullough Photo: by Justin Thomas. Caption: "THE NIPS: token rockapunky rebels" The Nips Moonlight THE SINGER'S got big ears, the guitarist has a raging beer-gut, together The Nips look like they've hopped over prisonwalls and made it to the other side. If you take them seriously you ought to take up bingo. The Nips are a token band of rockapunky rebels: flash and ageing, with a set of songs that tear to pieces yer contemporary agit-rockers. What's the scam? They have a superb sense of humour, an all but rare quality nowadays, their set is clipped and concise, packing punch and steam, trading on stock ideas but with a refreshing sense of surprise and pride in their worthy eclecticism. Where have you seen a lead-singer play a mouth-organ upside down and only realised what he was doing when someone in the audience shouted out? The Nips provide instant delight. The music is R&B based, centring around a strong rhythm section and a vocalist who knows how to chew granite and survive. Previously distinguished not only by a string of fine gigs but by a sadly neglected single, 'King Of The Bop' on Soho Records, the Nips are the sort of band who should care but don't. The set, revolving around such R&B standard fodder as 'Crazy', was funny, often exciting and rarely less than absorbing, a fact due in no small way to the striking rapport between the band and their manager, Rockabilly Stan Soho, who advised shamefacedly from the more obscure sections of the buzzing Moonlight (in my goodbooks now after putting on The Specials). Hightpoints on a night of freeflowing, rum and unbearable sycophancy in the region of so-called 'rival journalists' was the minor epic, the poignant 'She's Got Big Knockers', a whimsical Pop Group tinged rocker that inspired rioutous laughter in all but the most jaded. And all this after I'd fled a Tandoori curry after spotting a maggot on somebody else's papadom! 'King Of The Bop' closed the set in shockingly magnificent fashion, rough as the proverbial bear's arse, but full of drive and feeling in the playing. . . .