A month or so back Grade 2 were at Wembley arena opening for Rancid, so they’re used to punk rock legends, plus 3500 or so in the new Halls ain’t going to phase them. More than that, though, the Isle Of Wight based four piece are excellent. At one point in their set they play a cover of The Misfits’ “Where Eagles Dare” and then they do one of their own in “Tired Of It” (a co-write with Tim Armstrong – which probably answers how they got on Rancid’s radar) their sound is closer to Operation Ivy than the former, though, and there’s a real skill in their melodies. This is authentic, working class punk rock, as “Brassic” proves, and Grade 2 – as they underline again with the title track of their new album – “Graveyard Island” are a band to watch. After years of hard slog, things are looking up for the Isle Of Wight’s finest. It could be quite a Ryde (sorry!)
There’s always a moment in Bob Vylan gigs where you can feel the tension. Here there’s two. First the frontman (both of them are called Bobbie Vylan) reckons that “we at Bob Vylan Enterprises believe the only good pig is a dead pig” before they play “Pulled Pork” then before “England’s Ending” he says this: “the Sex Pistols sang ‘God Save The Queen’ we say ‘kill the king and arrest his paedophile brother”. He’d said something similar when they played with The Offspring 18 months back.
Still think music can’t shock? No one told these two.
I believe that BV are one of the most vital bands in Britain. No one uses words like them, no one tells the stories they do, and yes, no one works with such a threat of violence.
There’s various points in the set, notably the brilliant “I Heard You Want Your Country Back” and “Pretty Songs” where they attack racism with such laser-guided hate its scary, the singer waves round a cricket bat in “C.S.G.B” and they’ve got the best song released in years in “Take That”.
“The Delicate Nature” sees Bob the singer, climb onto the tiered seats to make his exit, he walks past where I’m sat. He’s big, imposing and yet confident.
He knows too, that for every new fan here, he’s made an enemy, and that’s fine. Because either way, they’ve got a reaction. Bob Vylan are stunning. Simple as that.
Billy Idol is about two thirds of the way through “My Way” – which acts as the main set closer here – and I happen to notice a woman, I’ll be kind and say she’s maybe late 50s, come back to her seat at the end of the row I’m on. He’s doing the bit about “I shot it up, or kicked it out” and she sits down by what I assume is her husband and snarls the words.
Just for an hour and a quarter, she’s the sneering punk rocker she used to be, and deep down still is. She – and everyone else like her – is why Generation Sex matters.
So it is that Billy Idol, Tony James, Steve Jones and Paul Cook arrive on stage, Interestingly with nothing approaching fanfare, with “Pretty Vacant”, but those first two men named above, and the first part of their name are just as important as the “Pistols” missing word.
This is an equal split between Generation X and the other mob, and “Wild Youth” “Kiss Me Deadly” (“we never had much chance to play these songs” reckons Idol) and “Dancing With Myself” – which Idol had included in last years set when he toured solo – are magnificent.
But there are those of us in the crowd (and it has to be said there’s a good minority) who didn’t get chance to see any punk first time around, and for whom the likes of “Bodies”, “Black Leather”, “Silly Thing” and “God Save The Queen” have been staples throughout the decades growing up. Seeing them here, you can only imagine the excitement back then.
The band, though, are great. For all of Jones’ protests that when he plays lead he doesn’t know what he’s doing, the riffs keep coming. Cook is having fun, James behind his dark glasses looks cool, and then there’s Idol. He’s one of the great frontmen and he does it with ease here.
After the aforementioned “….Way” comes an encore of a vicious (pun unintended) “Problems”, “(I’m Not Your) Stepping Stone” and the “Great Rock N Roll Swindle”.
That chorus: “The greatest rock’n’roll swindle/The time is right to do it now” hangs heavy in the air, and it could have been that. It isn’t, nowhere near.
And OK, they aren’t “the future, your future” anymore. Even they know that, but this is far from a swindle, rock n roll or otherwise.
No one feels cheated, but they did have fun, and that’s all this was for.
