Ding, ding. Seconds out. Round two, as it were.
The second show on the same tour. You do it for the elite, right? You do it for Iron Maiden. For The Wildhearts. Bob Dylan. The Almighty.
MV has to sit in the disabled sections at these things, and towards the end of The Almighty’s gig, we become aware that Girlschool are sitting on some spare chairs there. Given how much one of their party is enjoying “Devil’s Toy,” you can only guess that they are fans too.
Certainly, as I wrote in yesterday’s review, they are a brilliant fit to open here. Leather-clad, slightly dangerous, and as “proper” a rock n roll band as there is.
The 50 years that Kim McAuliffe has spent in this music show that she and Jackie Chambers can knock out riffs with the best of them. “Demolition Boys,” “C’Mon Let’s Go,” and “Hit And Run” are full of them.
Perhaps, the more you think about it, they were more pioneering than you realise and there’s still a gang feel to “Kick It Down.” Their most recent album is given a chance with “It Is What Is” before there’s a real NWOBHM flavour to “Race With The Devil” (and I’m telling you Beelzebub has his work cut out).
After they do “Emergency”—and considering it’s 44 years old, it still sounds fresh enough to give you a kicking—McAuliffe says, “Cheers you lot, thanks for a great show,” and to be honest, that is mutual.
She follows that up with “and up next, The Almighty.”
And just after 9 o’clock, the intro tape that ends with the words “the all wild, the all loud, the All fucking mighty” begins.
It heralds what I think is the first show in the West Midlands since the 20th-anniversary tour in 2008 (that’s what my t-shirt says anyway). While I might have been lucky enough to see two of the four shows on these Three And Easy tours, there are many here that haven’t, and the atmosphere as they start “Crucify” is sensational.
Perhaps it’s best summed up by the reaction of the couple behind me, who pretty much after every song turn to each other and go, “This is brilliant!” (add in your own expletives, there were many).
And it was. It really was. Even as someone who classes this band as their favourite, this was special.
They’ve paced this trio so well. “Do You Understand” being back in is so welcome, “Wrench,” and “Addiction”—pick them out—somehow sound better than ever, and even work like “Ultraviolent,” which may not have appeared on a list of best Almighty tracks, comes into its own.
Of course, there are ones they have to play, like “Little Lost Sometimes,” “Jonestown Mind,” or “Power” from the first album, but it almost doesn’t matter what they play because it is all delivered with such joy.Bassist Floyd London appears on the disabled platform, just because. Tantrum looks like he’s enjoying being back in his rightful place. (Full disclosure: I never actually saw them with him in the band the first time around.) And if Ricky Warwick always looks like he’d never want to be anywhere else than onstage, then maybe here that’s more the case.
However much songs like “Bandaged Knees” or “Over The Edge” mean to us, then maybe for these four, they mean just as much. Their shared history is clear, and the smiles everywhere when they do “Wild And Wonderful” are so clear they light this place up. Never has the line “I’m fucking loving it” seemed so apt.
A lesson in how they did it—and still do—comes in the encore. (And it is an oddity that they do encores when Warwick never does in any other endeavour) “Jesus Loves You….But I Don’t” and “Free N Easy” are from different ends of the spectrum but from the same cloth. No gimmicks. No tricks. Just incredible songs.
Songs that have lasted 36 years and counting. And a band that will continue, given that Warwick has made a point the last two nights of telling the crowd, “We will see you again.”
The future can take care of itself. Tonight was a moment—a celebration of a shared past.
Or as the bloke behind me says to his companion at the end: “Wow. That must be the best gig I’ve ever seen.”
