This isn’t a review, really, as Becky’s going to take care of that. But watching Les Savy Fav I was struck – it’s hard not to be – by the wonderful showmanship of their bearded, bald and bonkers frontman, Tim Harrington.

Do not be put off by the stunningly dull name. At various points in the evening he cavorted in tight red tights, donned a safari hat and goggles and distributed paper trumpets to the audience, walked through the crowd and out the emergency exit, stripped to his waist and stroked his ample belly, dry-humped a member of the crowd (in a funny way, not in an Akon way), and generally had the most fun of anyone I’ve ever seen on-stage. And from what I’m told, this was a fairly restrained performance.

In between all this chicanery he found time to sing some great songs really well, which is always a plus.

Now, Les Savy Fav are a top band: last year’s reunion album, Let’s Stay Friends, was a contender for record of 2007, in what I maintain was a damn good year. But as much as everyone was dancing, and singing, and shaking their floppy fringes like they were going out of fashion (hah! As if …) the only thing people were talking about after the show was “that crazy fat dude!” Except for one girl, who walked past me afterwards, nose in the air and distaste all over her face, upbraiding her desperate-looking boyfriend with a withering “I thought you said it was going to be indie.” She was not amused.

Everyone else was, and that’s the power of a frontman. A poor gig can be made into a good one if the man upfront works hard enough, and a good gig can become a great one. Going to see a band with a definite frontman is a very different experience to seeing one where all the members are chained to an instrument. For better or worse, those gigs are more about the music (man), whereas a frontman, liberated by the freedom of just a microphone, demands and gets a frankly uneven share of any given audience’s attention.

This can cut both ways. Primal Scream, for example, have always struck me as a top band handicapped by the pillock up front. There is also the danger that the frontman will supersede the band, whether by media-driven accident (Beth Ditto) or selfish design (Johnny Borrell). Go on, name me any member of Coldplay that doesn’t have children called Apple and Moses.

We all fetishise these focal points, and not just because they tend to have the best cheekbones. It doesn’t matter how involved they are in the songwriting process – Ozzy Osbourne didn’t even write most of Black Sabbath’s lyrics, which explains the lack of fucking profanity – they take responsibility for the singing, which is almost always the foremost aspect of a song, or at least the presentation of a song. (Where it isn’t, you generally don’t get frontmen.) And for taking on the task of presentation – of communication, I suppose – they are rewarded with the big rock-star love: it’s their pictures up on the teenager’s walls and it’s their names being squealed in high voices.

Guitarists come a distant second, though they often get more respect; fans of bassists are usually dangerously unhinged; and nobody likes drummers except other drummers, and that’s mostly mutual pity. It’s all about the man up top. But they know, and they know that we know, that without the music, they would be nothing. Compare Morrissey-solo with Morrissey-Marr: I like a lot of Morrissey’s solo stuff, and I love a fair chunk of it, but he’s never come close to the chiming wonder of “Hand in Glove” since he lost his Sancho Panza. Or compare your favourite Pulp album with Jarvis’s solo effort, or Smile to Pet Sounds, or Stephen Malkmus’s (perfectly respectable) solo work to Pavement. Has Zak de la Rocha done anything good since he left Rage? Yes. He rejoined.

That’s the nature of the front man: at once puffed up and vulnerable, dependent on others for his glory. This is why almost all bands end in failure, of one sort or another: the rewards of rock stardom are not distributed proportionally, and (as Marx would have said if he’d junked in the philosophy and written for Wire) disparities between effort and reward will lead to bitter and bloody revolution. Les Savy Fav were great, but without his band, Tim Harrington would just be a fat bald man in tights, shouting. Nobody wants that.

A note. I realise that throughout this article I’ve used the gender-specific term “frontman”, when I probably should have said “frontperson”, or “vocalist”, or something. But “frontperson” is a clunky word, and “vocalist” doesn’t quite nail the concept I’m trying to talk about. And irritating feminists is a worthy goal in itself, or so my mother always said.

Another note. Future of the Left are very good.