There is a pleasing irony about tonight's show. The Sonics' first British gig is a sell-out, thanks to the very things that cost the Seattle quintet commercial success in their heyday.
There were plenty of similar bands in mid-1960s America, knocking out three-chord songs about girls and cars for a frat-boy audience. Many had a couple of hits, but the Sonics' cocktail of musical ineptitude, surliness and an obsession with distortion (which led guitarist Larry Parypa to attack his amplifier with an icepick) meant their celebrity remained strictly local.
There is, however, a school of thought that suggests they inadvertently invented punk rock. Tonight's audience would clearly agree. Anyone seeking evidence of the Sonics' wide-ranging appeal need look no further than the queue for the bar: mods alongside rockers (they appear to have sorted out their differences, an example to us all), balding record collectors, even evidence of the continued existence of the psychobilly, a punk/teddy-boy hybrid presumed extinct since the mid-1980s.
You would have a hard time equating the cheery middle-aged gentlemen on stage with the glowering youths in the old photos projected behind them, were it not for the noise they make. Time has sanded down some of the Sonics' rough edges, but they still sound more savage than you might expect. Their celebrated lack of finesse is much in evidence: they deliver a version of Little Richard's Lucille that leaves the original sounding like the last word in subtlety and sophistication.
Lead singer Gerry Roslie's raw-throated vocals carry a menace at odds with his avuncular appearance. He sings Money (That's What I Want) as if he is about to leap offstage and mug someone, while the scream he unleashes during Psycho is truly disturbing. The song is evidence of the Sonics' willingness to take everything a bit further than their peers: garage-rock bands often sang about being frustrated by the era's prim sexual mores, but only the Sonics wrote a song suggesting the era's prim sexual mores were making them mentally ill, Roslie still sounds hugely upset about the whole business: "I'm going out of my head! I wish I was dead! Psycho! Psycho!"
Watching the band is a disorienting experience. Between songs, they are charm personified: "We knew we'd love London, we just didn't know how much," saxophonist Rob Lind says with a smile. Then they play a song called Strychnine, and, for two minutes, they are the nastiest kids in town once more.