Not a huge fan of Faithless on record, they’re a little souly for my liking but I had heard great things about their live performances, so thought it would be worth a punt. First though, a brand new band from north of the border, Mylo. Two guys and a couple of banks of synths and some seriously kickass dance music. Lots of samples, really old skool stuff, and not a duff track in sight. The one with the opening bar of ‘Betty Davis Eyes’ was a particular hit with me, my friends, and the 4000 other Academy punters. Well worth further investigation.
Faithless really know how to get a crowd going. They started off at a fairly mellow pace and moved up through the gears to a blistering crescendo that had the entire place on its feet (we were upstairs and supposed to be sitting down – the bouncers gave up trying after 3 or 4 songs). Maxi Jazz is the most unlikely frontman for a band that kicks out such bangin’ choonz. He looks like Scatman Crothers (Turkle in …Cuckoo’s Nest) on smack, wearing a zoot suit that is clearly three sizes too large for him but he was awesome – from start to finish he had the crowd in the palm of his hands. I don’t remember who else was on stage with him, he was pretty much the only part that mattered. They did (obviously) ‘God Is A DJ’, ’Insomnia’ and a few others that I didn’t realise I knew. Fantastic, the best atmosphere I think I would ever experience in the Academy.
Something of a pre-Christmas tradition now, but unfortunately because it was a Friday, they kicked off early (to make way for G.A.Y. later on that night), so we missed the first 20 mins or so. Fuck. Grr. Anyway, Astoria was as packed as I’ve seen it so by the time I’d managed to attract a barman’s attention, complete a lager-related transaction and head in towards the middle, another couple of songs had been played. The set contained a lot more recent stuff than the last couple of times I’d seen them – the usual old favourites were in there though – ‘Vengeance’,’51st State’, ‘Poison Street’ and more, but the highlight was a balefully poignant ‘Green And Grey’, dedicated to Rob Heaton, the writer and former drummer who had died of cancer only a couple of weeks earlier. Tragic.
First exposure to The Bravey was their performance of ‘Honest Mistake’ on Jools Holland a few weeks earlier. There followed a period of hype from the record company, releasing singles in frustratingly small quantities (75% of which went straight on eBay), and playing very small, exclusive venues. Somehow, and I really don’t remember how, I ended up queuing outside a small record store off Tottenham Court Rd at 9pm for tickets to a show later that night. I was, shall we say, several years older than anyone else there.
Tickets successfully obtained, I sloped off to the pub for last orders, and then down to a tiny club in north Soho. The smallest venue I’d ever been in, by a magnitude of several. I think they came on about midnight, and man were they worth the wait. Like The Killers before them, they were an American band trying to crack the UK as a way into their home market, and they were clearly not going to be playing venues this size for very long. The stage was a foot high, and even the people at the back of the room were only about twenty feet away, it was what you would call intimate. They look all wrong, as if they can’t decide if they want to be mods or rockers, but they sound good and they go about their business with real energy.
It’s 80s revival rock, nothing more and nothing less, as though Duran and Ultravox had a love child that was raised by The Strokes but oh my crikey they do it very well. They played for an hour or so, most of their set was high-energy stuff like ‘Honest Mistake’ and ‘Unconditional’ and all original as far as I could work out. Seeing as though this was their second gig of the night, and they were drinking champagne out of the bottle by the end, they did damn well to put on such a good show. They were far better than the Killers, who for some reason would go on to be mahoosive.
Not a fan, not in the slightest bit. Can’t stand the saccharine sweet safe-rock of Crowded House, but the wife’s a Kiwi, so I agreed. I had bought her the Finn Brothers’ latest album (‘Everyone Is Here’) for her birthday, but it had received somewhat lukewarm reviews from both of us, so I wasn’t really expecting much. The saving grace was that it was in the Hammersmith Odeon (now called the Carling Apollo, but to me and countless other gig goers of the previous two or three decades, will always be known as the Hammy O), first time back there in years, so a bit of a nostalgia trip. Fuck though, for a band I don’t like, they were bloody good. Awesomely tight and professional, fantastic sound (venue more than anything) and I have to say I even enjoyed ‘Always Take The Weather’ or whatever the flipping thing is called. They played loads of stuff I recognized, the better stuff being the Split Enz tunes towards the end, which is always a bit more ‘edgy’ than Crowded House. By the end of the main set, the audience were dancing in the aisles and the place was jumping. Well, bopping anyway.
The Scissor Sisters’ version of ‘Comfortably Numb’ is one of those records that you just can’t be ambivalent about. Most people hated it, as by rights any Pink Floyd fan should have, but it exerted a sort of voodoo hold over me, and it became something of a guilty pleasure.
So, I wonder what they would be like live? They had a good reputation and I’d seen them do a decent rendition on the telly, so it was worth a punt. The Academy was absolutely rammed to bursting point with (as you would expect) a varied crowd. The stage was done up in proper cabaret stylee – lots of red velvet and gold fittings. The support was a dreadful cabaret act that would possibly have been at home in the Vauxhall Tavern, but considerably out of their depth on the Academy stage. The Scissor Sisters where great though. Jake Shears and Ana Matronic (or whatever her dumbass name was) were a fantastic pair, loads of presence and oodles of energy. The other musicians were a pretty talented bunch, but unfortunately suffered from that condition that forces them to swap instruments every other song just to show the audience what marvelous multi-instrumentalists they all are. Very entertaining gig though, the highlight (fairly obviously) being ‘Comfortably Numb’ closely followed by the Elton John-esque one (‘Laura’?).
On first listen, the GLC comes across as a one hit novelty act – a bunch of Welsh chavs playing at being the 2 Live Crew meets Ali G. The more you hear and the deeper you dig into their past though, the more you realise that they are actually far more than a comedy show. The music is good, stealing riffz and loopz from a wide variety of sources (like Steeleye Span, ffs?!), but the lyrics, sorry, rhymes, are proper bo, I fucken tells you. Hilarious, especially to one whose sense of humour is rooted firmly in Viz.
I wondered if they could carry it off live though? There was a decent support act – a slightly more earnest young rapper whose name escapes me – but he was enjoyable enough though. Then, to some serious bigging up from the MC, enter from all sides of the stage at least 12 GLC personnel. All the way from Newport City, if you please. Visually they were impressive – like a rowdy Gap advert. 3 rows of synchronized dancing, spread across various sized podiums (podia?) and it was all change as each new vocalist came down to centre front stage to relieve the previous one and do their bit. The stage show was very well choreographed, and remarkably professional for a bunch of stoners. The lyrics suffered a little from poor sound, so it was difficult to follow the tracks that were new to me, but they literally had the place jumping. The entire crowd jumping, in unison, to the beat of ‘Your Mother’s Got A Penis’ had the floor shaking as though we would end up in the basement – I don’t think I’d ever experienced anything quite like it. I’d definitely never shouted ‘Your Mother’s Got A Penis’ at the top of my voice before either.
The Ordinary Boys’ debut album ‘Over The Counter Culture’ has a couple of crackers on it, and given that they were hyped as the next big thing, I thought I would see if they could cut it live. A painfully young (i.e. school age) and trendy crowd packed out the Electric Ballroom, many of whom had undoubtedly never been to a pop concert before.
The support act, the soon to be mahoosive Kaiser Chiefs, were utterly forgettable, barely raising an eyebrow from the vast majority of the crowd. I would like to say that they were clearly stars in the making, that I was witnessing the start of something great, but alas, no, I paid them next to no attention whatsoever.
So to the main act. They played their album, in its entirety, and 50 minutes later, they were finished. Very average. You can’t expect a new band to play for 90 minutes, but at least they could chuck in a couple of covers to make it stretch to an hour. The title track from ‘Over The Counter Culture’ was alright, but the rest rather uninspiring. Very average indeed.
A comedy metal band made out of Raging Speedhorn’s roadies or something. Fairly unmemorable. I remember being somewhat disappointed that the singer didn’t set himself on fire, as I had been lead to believe he might. Bloody rock stars.
Liked last week’s two gigs so much that we decided to go again. Much more of a local crowd this time, but the ‘Shirt won them over fairly quickly and got a great reaction from a hundred or so people that had more than likely never heard them before. Impressive.
The only time I had seen this lot previously, I had suffered a bout of limp-wristed bad-pint-induced foppishness and ‘watched’ the gig from a seat at the back, my head in my hands, so I was determined to get more for my money this time. Never been to the Barfly, but it’s brilliant – basically a room above a pub, holding no more than a couple of hundred. It was half-full, nearly all Kiwis, and it was evident from talking to the band in the bar beforehand (that’s the great thing about gigs this size), that this was a make-or-break tour to try and crack the UK market. I hadn’t thought much of ‘Fiji Baby’, which we had purchased a few months previously whilst on holiday in NZ – there was no anthem like ‘Green’ and at least half of the album sounded like filler to me. Live however, I began to see the point of it. They were even tighter and more energetic than last time, and the new ones came across really well. ‘Buck It Up’ and ‘Lucy’ were particularly good, easily rubbing shoulders with the masterful ‘Sophie’, ‘Blowing Dirt’ and ‘of course the ‘Green’ from ‘Good’. They threw in a cover of ‘Stay If You Want To’ by Pixies, as a nod to one of their more obvious influences.
The missus and I were right at the front, under singer Rodney’s nose. Probably too old for that sort of carry on, but who gives a fuck eh? He’s a little on the silly side, which irks me somewhat, I have to say. I prefer my musicians aloof and earnest, so clowning around on stage just rubs me up the wrong way sometimes. Anyway, a minor niggle – he’s a great singer though, which is what really matters. As last time though, it was the keyboardist/bassist that stole the show and they were very well received by the partisan crowd. I hoped that there were some record company ears there to get the message.
Possibly one of the most eagerly anticipated concerts of my life – Rush had been soooo good when I saw them before, and they had bypassed the UK on the last 3 or 4 tours so I would have paid double or triple the face value just to sit in row Z. As it happens, the seats were halfway back on the side, so not bad really.
After a couple of pre-gig pints in the Globe on Baker Street (that’s where you go when you’re off up Wembley way innit) we strode through the turnstiles at about 20 past 8, into the under-stand bar/merchandise area to find it strangely deserted, and some muffled music coming from the arena. I didn’t realise there was a support act? Hang on, either they have invited a Rush tribute act to support, or, or, or, no, fuck, it can’t be, that’s ‘Spirit Of Radio’ – that’s Rush. We’ve missed the fucking start of the fucking gig. They must have started at 8. I’ve waited all these years, and I’ve missed the fucking start of the fucking gig. Fucksticks. So we sprinted round what seemed like the entire arena to find our entrance, and yes, there they were, twenty minutes into their set.
Considering they are renowned for playing 3hr sets, I shouldn’t really have worried too much about missing the first couple, but that’s not the point, is it. The best thing about Rush is that you are guaranteed a decent trawl through the classics, and they constantly pull out little surprises. As well as the usual favourites, I was psyched to hear ‘Between The Wheels’ (contains the best Lifeson solo of all, IMHFO), ‘By-Tor’ and ‘The Trees’. Unfortunately, the sound was well, fucking awful, to be honest. The stage set was pretty minimal, and compared to Madonna’s show a few months prior, pretty amateurish, but it’s ALL about the music with Rush. Really odd crowd too. Almost all male (no surprise there) but no long hair, no black T-Shirts, hardly any rock element at all – they all looked quite blokey and footbally. I don’t know what I was expecting really, but not blokey and footbally.
The atmosphere was fantastic though, and there was lots of air guitar and all in all it was a bloody great show. Not as good as the previous time, purely down to the pants sound. Leads me to wonder how they managed to sound so good in 92.
Musically pretty good, Horace Andy was brilliant, and whoever it was who sang ‘Teardrop’ (Dot Allison?) did a passable impersonation of Liz Fraser, but it was the lightshow that I remember the most. They plonked two horizontal banks of a hundred or so strobes, one on each side of the stage. They started off with simple, flashing patterns of white light, and with each song upped the intensity, intricacy and the number of colours until by the climax of the gig, they were almost working as a giant video screen with a psychedelic mass of strobe sized pixels. A bizarrely over the top ravey davey gravey sort of a lightshow that was more suited to the Prodigy than to Massive Attack, but it was bloody good though.
I was possibly the only non-Kiwi in the entire crowd – this was a bit of a home from home for them, and the atmosphere was markedly different from the norm. More really drunk people, but silly drunk not aggressive drunk like you’d get at, say, an Oasis gig. First though, a band I’d not heard of at the time, The Rifles. They were bloody great, bashing out a really good up-tempo toe-tappy indie, a bit on the Jam-esque side (or
was it just the name making me think that?), but largely ignored by the crowd.
I had heard a handful of Feelers tracks on CD, and they were passable, rather bland rock, in the mould of Stereophonics, Snow Patrol etc. Very middle of the road. Live, they were pretty much the same, really. The only thing that saved the night was the crowd – such a brilliant atmosphere, never heard such a noise!
I had to be dragged kicking and screaming to this one, I really did. The wife some how convinced me that spending over ₤100 each on tickets would be a good thing to do. Our seats were halfway back, up the side, and were easily worth more than all my previous Wembley gig tickets put together. I estimated I was in a 5% minority – 50% women, 45% gay men, the rest reluctant husbands/boyfriends. This was going to have be very very very good not to seem like a total waste of money, I mean, I don’t even like Madonna, save for (literally) a couple of tracks that I’ll put up with if in an exceedingly good mood.
The first thing that struck me on entering the Arena was the scale of the stage set – there was just so much of it. Walkways suspended from the ceiling, podiums, risers, platforms and all kinds of stuff that would have filled a fair few dozen trucks. She hadn’t even come on stage and already I was beginning to appreciate that she might have spent a fair bit putting this show on. Her actual entrance (fnar fnar) was a little underwhelming, I think I was probably expecting her to abseil down from roof, or fly in by personal jetpack, but she just ran on dancing, to Vogue. I have to say, I never would have thought that I would say what I’m about to say next. Ever.
From the moment she opened her mouth to the very last farewell, I was amazed, enthralled and utterly gobsmacked by how good it was. It took the concept of live performance to a totally new level for me – every song brought a different stage set, a different accompaniment, a different set of dancers and a different lightshow. Slick is not the word – a huge amount of set changes went on virtually undetected in between songs, for one song (don’t remember which) she wheeled out a troupe of skateboarders on a full size half-pipe. Her dancers (no idea if it was many dancers with few costume changes or few dancers with many costume changes) were, as you’d expect, ultra-professional, it was like the corps de ballet at the Kirov (not that I’ve ever been to the ballet, but you know what I’m driving at). The interplay between the live music and the video screen, during the one (no idea, can’t be arsed to research) featuring Missy Elliott, was just stunning. It was so slickly put together, it’s as if she was actually there.
Musically, however, the highlight for me was ‘Material Girl’. A track I usually wouldn’t give you tuppence for (like, er, all of them), Madge came out with a Les Paul strapped to her, apparently playing a new guitar riffy version all by herself. Not sure if it was merely for show, after all, she has been accused of lip-synching so miming the guitar is hardly beyond the realms of possibility, but it really didn’t matter. She rocked, the song rocked, and above all she looked great wearing a guitar. All in all, a brilliant, brilliant show, I left thinking my 100 pahnds was well spent. A bargain even, given the scale of the whole thing. Shows of this magnitude are not put on cheaply.
Having seen the Tokyo Dragons tear up the Shepherds Bush Empire a couple of months previously, opening up for The Datsuns, I jumped at the chance of seeing them in a pub. And this really was a pub gig – no stage, just about 50 people crammed into the main room of a fairly small pub off the main drag in Brixton. Grande Cobra were from New Zealand, I know that much, but couldn’t tell you anything about what they sounded like. Then there was another band whose name escapes me, but they sounded like QOTSA and did a kicketyass stoner rock version of The Supremes’ ‘You Keep Me Hanging On’.
Then the main act. Bleeding superb. I don’t think they had a record out yet, but they had a single or two, a decent following and a shitload of attitude. The (admittedly very small) pub was crammed by the time they came on, and it became impossible to move from my spot near the front to visit the bar or the pisser. The volume was painful (I think I started wearing ear plugs not long after this) but they were so good and I was so twatted it didn’t matter. I have since obtained Give Me The Fear, and it’s a little bit of a let down to be honest – live they were raw and exciting, on vinyl they are just raw. The tiny wee Phil Datsun was there at the start – not sure if he was checking out his compatriots or the Dragons.
On the strength of their slot at the No Mercy Fest the previous year, I jumped at the chance to see them headline The Garage, the best small venue in town. They were fucking superb. Better, even, than the previous time, a) because they were able to play a proper full set and b) because wasn’t on a downer due to the disappointment of Nuclear Assault.
The intro to ‘Thrown To The Wolves’ is legendary – a few gentle bars of classical guitar breaking abruptly into the sort of insanely heavy riff that attracted me to thrash metal in the first place. Cue drums, cue more riffs, cue bass. Cue crowd go fucking mental. Eeeh, if I were twenty years younger like, happen I’d be banging us head all over’t shop.
It was a hot June night and the Mean Fiddler was a proper sweatbox, and I wasn’t especially in the mood for rock. There is only really one Canadian band I ever want to see, but in the absence of Rush, The Stills would have to do. They had just the one album out (Logic Will Break Your Heart), and there were a couple of corkers on it, so I was quite looking forward to it. Singer Tim Fletcher played a blinding opening hand before they started, by congratulating ‘us’ on having beaten Croatia earlier in the day (Euro 2004) – how to get a crowd onside before you even play a note! Not bad for a musician from a distinctly un-football mad country.
They started with the album opener, ‘Lola Stars And Stripes’, quite a common thing for bands touring a new album. They followed that with the second track off the album, ‘Gender Bombs’. Then the third. By the fourth, the singer asked the crowd if we could spot a pattern emerging. Uh huh. Sure enough, they played all twelve tracks off the album, in order, followed by the b sides from ‘Still In Love Song’. Bizarre, and rather pointless. They were fairly good, but for some reason, knowing what was coming next kinda detracted from it.
On the way home, I bumped into a couple of very drunk and deleriously happy Swedes who proceeded to give me a blow by blow account of how their 2-2 draw with Denmark had eliminated Italy from Euro 2004. Fantastico.
Promoting the awesome second album (Outta Sight Outta Mind) they scaled up their ambitions and moved to the larger and more salubrious Empire, in the heart of Kiwi territory. It’s a great little theatre, and it was getting on for full.
First though, Tokyo Dragons – a very similar sound to The Datsuns, and very good. They were a bit more ragged, with not such a good selection of songs, but definitely worthy of further investigation. The Datsuns were just as good as the first time I saw them, and they were even tighter and more energetic on stage – superb mixture of Ramones, Stones and AC/DC. The new track ‘Blacken My Thumb’ would soon become one of their stand out live numbers, up there with ‘Harmonic Generator’ and ‘Motherfucker…’ and after two performances, The Datsuns would be promoted to ‘one of the best bands on the circuit right now’ status. Always a fucking blast – go see ’em.
Not sure which of the several times I’ve seen Sabbathy-stoner-rockers Orange Goblin this was, but they have always been fucking excellent, and even more excellent when singer Ben Ward hasn’t been totally rat-arsed. If this is the occasion I think it was, the day had started very early, with a lunchtime session in a pub in Woking, watching a Premiership game, followed by Woking v someone equally crap, a few tinnies on the train back up to London, kebab on the Holloway Rd, and completely trolleyed by gig time. Hence, have no recollection of either support act. Would likely have been some doomy grunty outfits. Orange Goblin were good though. They always are. ‘Scorpionica’ is usually the pick of the bunch, and I rarely remember the end of the gig…
As hype goes, this gig was up there with the best of them. Long awaited reunion tour, ten years out of the game, and to cap it all they were playing the Academy, which by now was my local venue, as I was living in Vauxhall. As I waited on South Lambeth Road for a number 2 bus to come past, the Pixies’ black behemoth of a tourbus wooshed past on its way to the venue, the legendary Boston indie pioneers just a few feet away on the other side of the tinted glass. I waved my Travelcard frantically at the driver, but he was stopping for nobody.
Tickets for this show were immensely hard to come by, and only just managed to get them, for the second show, the first one selling out in about 12 seconds. It was 14 years since the last time I had seen them, and to say I was excited about it was something of an understatement. I would have sold my grandmother’s kidney to get in. There was a real buzz in the Academy, which the turgidly soporific Badly Drawn Boy failed to kill – nobody was really interested in what he had to say, and a couple of trips to the bar later, he was gone. Huzzah! Let’s be having you, Pixies. How annoyingly pretentious The Pixies are, calling themselves just ‘Pixies’ with no ‘the’. It makes it awkward to say, awkward to write, and very difficult to resist the temptation to slap some smug indie git upside the head for pointing out that fact when you accidentally include the ‘the’.
Anyway, to rapturous, nay thunderous applause, on came THE Pixies and cranked
Big fat Frank
right into ‘Debaser’. Hang on though? Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear oh dear. This won’t do. Appalling sound, even for the Academy. Really disappointing in fact. It was just a wash of noise, and because the place was rammed to bursting, it was difficult to get any closer than we were (halfway back halfway to the side). So, the most hotly anticipated gig in years was a distinct let-down, purely due to the inept sound man. Nevertheless, they were bloody entertaining, only having back-catalogue stuff to do, so there was no fear of them launching into new stuff. And all the hits were there – ‘Monkey Gone To Heaven’, ‘Gigantic’, ‘Here Comes Your Man’ etc but unfortunately no sign of my favourite Pixies song, The Jesus And Mary Chain’s ‘Head On’ from Trompe. A decent enough show, but it was a victim of its own hype – almost impossible to live up to.
Footnote: I heard an official bootleg (i.e. a feed off the desk, not a mic) of the gig a few weeks later and they sounded pretty muddy on that, so I’m guessing it wasn’t just down to the atrocious Academey acoustics or the ham-fisted sound man, it could just be that they’re not very good any more…
Heard ‘Somebody Told Me’ and ‘Mr Brightside’ on XFM a couple of times and thought they were absolutely brilliant. The Killers had been fairly well hyped for a couple of months, and the Mean Fiddler (previously known as the LA2, i.e. the little club under the Astoria) was very busy. They were really new to the game – although they were from Vegas they had no following in the US, and had come to London to get in on the scene. Good choice lads.
You could tell they weren’t really used to being on stage – Brandon Flowers was painfully shy, a most reluctant rock star. As with all their albums to come, they were a bit hit and miss – the good songs good but the rest just filler. The singles were great, there were a handful of other good tunes, but not a lot else. Was pretty cool to see them in a 200 capacity club though, as the next time I would see them would be in front of 100,000 people on the main stage at Glastonbury.
Every now and again, you stumble across a band that redefines your expectations of what a live performance should be about, broadening your horizons and exposing you to previously unknown delights. You open your mind to new things, new styles and this new band makes you realize that everything you thought you knew about music isn’t necessarily right any more. The Libertines is not that band, sadly.
We were only there because someone we knew had won tickets on a radio phone in and not been able to use them. Lucky, lucky people, is all I can say. The crowd was the youngest, brashest, most painfully trendy bunch I had ever had the misfortune to be part of, and they looked every bit as bewildered as I did to see Chas And Dave on the stage as support act. I hadn’t known who was supposed to be supporting, and when I walked into the auditorium I did a double take. It really was them – they were even playing ‘Rabbit Rabbit’, but I don’t believe I recognised anything else. Now, there was clearly some heavy irony going down here, as very few of the crowd would even have been born the last time Chas And Dave were in the charts, and they were never the most hip outfit in the first place. Ironic or not, they were not very good.
Now for the headline act. I knew nothing of The Libertines’ music beforehand, just downloaded a couple of random tracks the day before, and wasn’t overly impressed, it has to be said. I was hoping that they might surprise me with their live performance, and in a way they did. This gig goes down as the worst I’ve ever witnessed (and this includes dozens if not hundreds of pub gigs), and I will find it very difficult to erase it from my memory, although keeping it there serves as useful yardstick by which to judge others. To refer to them as ‘unpolished’ falls a long way short of describing how loose they were. ‘Amateurish’ and ‘sloppy’ don’t really do the job either – ‘shambolic’ is more the sort of word you’re looking for, but without resorting to expletives, it’s not possible to convey exactly how bad The Libertines were.
The bassist was totally unable to look up from his instrument, save for the odd panicked look in the direction of the drummer, who kept throwing in extra beats to keep the others on their toes. Pete Doherty and Carl Barat just made a racket over the top basically, neither being particularly good guitarists or remotely adequate singers. After what seemed like over an hour (but was actually less than 30 mins, how time doesn’t fly when you’re at a Libertines gig) Doherty threw a tantrum, smashed his guitar on the floor, and flounced off the stage, pausing only to kick over the backline on the way off. Fucking twat. Five minutes later, with the amps hastily reassembled, Carl picked up the pieces and finished the gig. What a pro. All rather contrived, I’m sure. The music press (and the few fans that are old enough to have a music collection that pre-dates Now… 46) compare this nonsense with the punk ethic of thirty years before, what with the have-a-go musicianship, the smashed instruments and the ‘grrr’ attitude, but I don’t know, it just doesn’t ring true. They’re just too soft and pretty looking.
I’d pay good money to see John Lydon or Captain Sensible take Pete Doherty’s stupid pork pie hat and shove it up his stupid arse. In front of Kate Moss.
one louder 