| 27 July 2002 Pistols At The Palace Sex Pistols And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead Dropkick Murphys The Libertines The Rapture Mellabollistic Okay, so this was a gig that was supposedly never gonna happen, but it did and a bunch of us caught the most uncomfortable coach known to man from Ippo to London. On arriving the first thing we noticed was how well organised it all looked, plus the bootleggers that met us off the bus, very nice Pistols t-shirt for a fiver, thank you very much! There was quite a broad cross section of people queing up to have their bags searched (oh no my home made calloah!) mostly yoofs, but a few old 80's mohawk punks, to which everyone just kinda went aaah, how sweet! There was a big sign up saying that nobody could take in cameras, but you could buy a Pistols union jack disposable camera once you were inside?!? Anyway dodgy looking security people and the ####ed punks they were arguing with soon become a distant memory once we were inside the arena. They had put down some sort of black plastic matting over the grass, and bizarrely enough had positioned a bunch of the food vans about halfway into the crowd. Hmm, time for food. Now I chose some veggie noodles, and considering I normally eat meat, this was the ####ing greasiest platter I had ever eaten! About 2cm of brown lard in the bottom of the tray by the time I was done, plus a five pound eighty dent in my wallet! We made for the near empty stands and some much needed shade, so that we wouldn't turn into human shaped blobs of red paint like many pissed and passed out people already dotted along the place had. Now I ain't exactly straight edge, but getting so ####ed you are passed out before you even see a band, hell, Whats the point? As we sat comfortably in the shade the first 'entertainment' came on. Apparently Mellabollistic are a couple of DJ's and a bunch of geezers wandering around them on stage. They said they were gonna play us some reggae to warm us up,everyone cheered, and then they played Shaggy. Mind you, they did do a pretty good job of fending off the barrage of plastic pint glasses that were hurled at them! One of the guys even managed to bunt a few back into the amassing crowd. A few came close to hitting the record decks, which I guess was what everyone was aiming for. Mellabostic didn't do down entirely well as you can imagine, but yet Mr Lydon appeared to be enjoying himself back stage. He did pop his head around the massive speaker stacks occasionally to much cheering (or should that be jeering?) and made a few appearences on stage to wave his finger at people lobbing detritus and threaten to get his arse out. He also appeared to be wearing pyjamas! Eventually the pumping beats ceased and the first band was on. The Rapture looked like they were the smallest band in the world as they came on huddled together in the middle of the huge stage. They also looked like the youngest band in the world, but boy did they get jiggy! They started kinda like loosely played ska, and ended up sounding like loosely played At The Drive In. Was this EMO? Well it nearly made me cry! Actually thats a bit harsh, it was cool to see something different, as the Pistols could have taken the easy route and just booked a bunch of punk bands, but they didn't. By the end of the set they were starting to get pretty entertaining, their sax playing/cowbell twatting/ yelling bloke looked like he was being dunked in freezing electrified water, which although losing something in the re-telling, was pretty cool. Also kinda interesting was what I could swear was a cover of 'Careering' by PiL. Next up, The Libertines. These guys came on wearing what could only be described as majorette jackets, apart from the bassist who was obviously having none of it. I'm afraid I can't remember much more about this band, they were kinda inoffensive dull indie. From where we were sitting we had a pretty good view of the backstge area, and it made us laugh how all these hyped up bands had vans just as ####ed up as the one we use! Soon on were the Dropkick Murphys, now I've heard alot about this band but never actually heard or seen them. We were pretty ####ing impressed, unfortunately the PA set up made the bagpipes sound a bit like evil feedback though! But good jeebus did these guys have some energy bearing in mind the sweltering heat. One guy, who I guess was the rhythm guitarist, lept around like a madman, we were absolutely stunned that he was able to play at all! A decent mosh formed and everyone seemed to really enjoy the Boston scamps. We were all a bit sad to see them go too,especially considering who was on next. And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - had some half decent tunes, but the singer came across as a total cunt. He announced he was gonna be as punk rock as possible, apparently this meant telling the crowd to #### off every few seconds. Do you think he may have missed the point? They were okay, they just seemed a bit to staged. Although I'm sure he thought he thoughwas being punk rock, the singer did some things which we thought were pretty dumb. After one of their songs and whilst he was busy telling the crowd that his band were punk as #### (oh yeah, and #### you crowd) he shoved a monitor off the front of the stage, narrowly missing some poor photographer. I looked around the crowd and the general reaction was something akin to a Joey Deacon impression. One of us made the observation that this band gave each song the big finish, but unfortunately neglected to fuck off! About this time a bunch of old fashioned 80's punks decided to get friendly with us up on the back row. Well, when I say friendly I mean scrounge tabs, snort handfuls of my Carling (the only beer avalible) and beg us to skin up for them by waving a lump of cheeb the size of a cats head at us! But it was all in good humour, I think. Later on I found one of them laying on his back, he raised his head to gesture at me to help him up, which I did, then he called me a lazy cunt?!?!? By now, although we had pretty much lost interest And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead were busy trashing their drum kit, especially funny when the roadies came on and really carefully picked it all up and wheeled it off on a wee trolley! All day everyone was wondering who the replacement for Amen (who pulled out) was gonna be, as it turned out there was no replacement and Mellabostic ambled back on stage to wind everyone up. Some in a good way, others in a glass chucking way. Eventually the Sex Pistols came on stage and jumped around with the MC's for a wee while, much to the crowds delight. Then they assumed positions, and Lydon exposed his shirt that said 'Sorry' on the front, and they exposed the massive queens flag that they had as a back drop. They launched into Silver Machine by Hawkwind! This completely threw the crowd, which was cool as everyone was expecting a straight down the line Pistols set and you can always count on the Sex Pistols to throw everybody off balance. As I scooted down the stands I looked up to see concord doing a low fly over, it just seemed kind of perfect. I won't go into massive detail on each and every song they played, there were 23 for jeebus sake, and they only ever wrote17 songs! They hammered through the early part of the set sounding ####ing amazing and appeared to be really making an effort. Lydon spouted his usual rhetoric about Tony Blair being the new Queen of England blah blah blah, and the crowd cheered but I don't think anyone really gave a #### what he was on about! continue... |