Nothing Ordinary About Babyshambles Gig
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"Hey, I've got an even older one!" the lady who scans my ticket yells to her colleagues. Yeah sugar, that's because I've been hanging on to the ticket since two-thousand and fucking six. The year Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd died, the year Italy became World Champions soccer, and also the year pop venue Effenaar expected The Babyshambles to perform. But after three cancellations, last Tuesday- in 2008...- the band of Pete Doherty took the stage.Quite early, I may add. Arriving well before the supporting act is supposed to go on I already see Withnall and Doherty on stage, doing some sort of a public sound check. Later they are even joined by the rest of the band as they go on to play a mini set. Really cool, and really promising.Words that can't be said about the 529's, the supporting act. They play bland post-punk. I've seen numerous young post-punk bands, and I do believe that with some of those I've seen the future of the genre. The 529's ain't it.Then on to the actual set, which starts pretty good with songs like 'The Delivery', 'You Talk', and The Libertines classic 'What Katie Did'. But the crowd cringes for the first time when Doherty stops in the middle of the song, turns to Ficek (The drummer) and tells him publicly that he is playing the song too fast.A couple of songs later, he sneers something to the public, the only words that I can make out are "cunts", and he leaves the stage. Apparently because people were talking throughout the whole gig.While leaving, Mike Whitnall tries to get the audience to make noise to persuade Doherty to come back. Probably after some persuading of Whitnall the band take the stage again, surprisingly play a pretty decent version of 'Fuck Forever' which has the crowd go mental, to just as surprisingly leave again after that song. Lights come on, DJ starts playing, and the gig is over.So after three cancellations, the band only plays half a set. And naturally, the press only talks about Doherty's behaviour, but that's very much understandable, as his behaviour directly undermined the gig.Sometimes you see a shimmer of the potentially genius Babyshambles, but that is swept away quick enough by Doherty's tabloid antics. The hope that Doherty will actually mean something to British pop again is diminishing per week, and gigs like this do not help.Alas, move over Doherty, it is time for new heroes, ey.
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