It's 7pm on a miserable, Monday evening. It's been raining all day and I've been revising Philosophy until the cows came home, leaving my brain well and truly frazzled. It's the dreaded month of January and all looks lost, the gloomy feeling is even somewhat present in the crowd I found myself waiting in outside the O2 Academy. Mutters of the atrocious ticket price and muffled bets of whether P. Do will actually show are rife in the air. Will he bother?
In our quest to find out, we saw support act Volts grace the stage with their Indie by numbers. Whilst not boring by any means (imagine The View but less Scottish mixed with a less bland Pigeon Detectives and you're halfway there) their 'oh no she left me' songs aren't exactly innovative. Still, as support bands go they weren't that bad.
Then there was the suspense filled wait with the all important moment of truth: would Mr Doherty and co. be able to grace the stage tonight? Well, as it turns out, he did, and it was truly mesmerising. In all the gigs I've been to in my little life thus far, I don't think I've ever been in that energised a crowd. Within the first 10 minutes three people had been hurled away by security and cups of lager were flowing freely into the crowd. Now this is what I call a gig. Almost every song was received by stadium like rapture, some of the crowd even going as far as chanting the instrumentals, which Doherty and his merry men lapped up nicely. Playing all classic Babyshambles songs with a truly spectacular Albion leaving the crowd hanging on Pete's every word, and concluding in the laddish Fuck Forever, providing an emphatic start to the new year.
If that wasn't enough, Roger Daltrey of Who fame joined the lads on stage for a singalong of some of The Who's hit singles, My Generation and a duet with Pete on Magic Bus to name but a few. For an old dude, Roger still emanates coolness, if that's a word, even managing to send the crowd into a frenzy with his mad harmonica solo. The legend also performed seminal track Behind Blue Eyes, dedicating it to a mutual friend of Pete and Roger's who lost his life to cancer, hearing the hundreds of inebriated people in the room cheering and applauding the memory of the young man was nearly enough to make a lump in my throat.
So after all the worrying and hassle of getting the tickets at the last minute; paying god knows how much for them, having to give up valuable revision time and nearly getting knocked out by a dozen 7 ft students, seeing Babyshambles and Roger Daltrey play in Bristol was absolutely one of the best performances I've ever seen. Fuck revision, that was ace.
It's good that they're back at the academys rather than the arenas. I'm looking forward to pete's solo album now, that will be interesting.
ReplyDeletenot as irrelevant as you might have thought :>) thanks for your posts which i enjoyed reading. mainly because we are such a contrast. i'm from asia and am old enough to be your mother ;>) but i like being around those who are younger and much much younger than me. wish you well in your studies
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