The Kaisers - Edinburgh Venue 13/2

Let's get this straight right away. I hated the Beatles. OK they had a lot of tunes for sure, some good, adapted throughout the ever-changing 60's pretty adeptly, but they also produced a lot of chaff, a lot of soppy nonsense and drug-addled crap, and putting their songs head-to-head with the likes of the Stones and the Who they get blown away - in fact they'd have a job competing with Herman's Hermits.

So what chance to a early-Beatles-style band have of impressing me? Well, surprisingly, a bit. The Kaisers have that Beatles Star Club/Backbeat era down to a tee, with original Vox amps, leather waistcoats and those mikes that look like art-deco cheesegraters. But there the similarities between them and the tribute bands that you're visualising end. The Kaisers play almost exclusively originals

 in the style of Merseybeat in general, drawing on all the best parts. What covers they do are from the era - Love Potion #9, Woolly Bully. So you get a dance-packed hour of infectiously catchy pop/beat songs, none of which seem to last more than two minutes,. No pretensions, just honest pop. If they follow the pattern, they can start playing bigger venues, hire an incompetent ugly drummer, devote too much time to mind-expanding substances, and split acrimoniously by the millennium. By then they could be bigger than the Beatles, Oasis and God put together. They're already better.