Smooth Sailing For The Good Ship Albion

This week saw The Libertines reunite for not only one warm up gig but a warm up for the warm up gig.

I was very lucky to have a chance to attend the "Friends and Family" warm up for the official warm up that took place on the Wednesday. Confused? Well you must be thick then!

Anyway being a big fan of The Libertines I jumped at the chance to see their first gig in around 6 years.

We arrived at The Forum in Kentish town at 19:00 and were kindly told that the doors didn't open until 19:30. So we came back later and joined the queue. The security made an attempt to be funny by telling my girlfriend that she wouldn't be able to take her perfume into the gig at which point she look horrified as it was a Channel perfume the best perfume known to man! She was reassured that it was indeed a joke and it would be fine. This then lead to an odd conversation I had with the gentleman about how if it was a reggae night he wouldn't have let us in with the perfume as some people spay it and set it on fire! I agreed that it wasn't a good idea to do it and then looked hopefully in the direction of the box office on the off chance they could very quickly get me out of this potentially dangerous conversation. The conversation could only go wrong as I have a habit of becoming over familiar with people who start a conversation with me and make some kind of crass generalisation about their race or heritage well and truly for comic effect.

Luckily Lady luck was on my side and the box office called us over. We made the requested donation to the charities picked by the band and we were in!

At last we were inside the gig. The venue was awash with skinny jeans, no socks and deck shoes. Trilby hats were another favourite with the fans too. I did notice a few famous faces such as Barack Obama, Andy Townsend, The man from the Mr Muscle ads, Cherie Blair and The Dave half of Chas and Dave.

None of the above people were actually there or are in any way fans of or associated with The Libertines.

So we took some seats near the front and eagerly awaited the arrival of one of the favourite bands of my teen years. Another look around and I managed to spot Mickey Mouse, Ken Barlow and Lionel Blair. Again none of which were actually present.

They burst onto the stage without introducing themselves (didn't really need to as everyone there was either friends, family and had not recently escaped from an eight year imprisonment by an oversized rock) and launched straight into "Horror show".

The first few songs the band looked a little like they were only doing this whole reunion thing for a million pounds or so. This however did improve as they got to the song "Vertigo" when Pete and Carl shared the mic in typical Libertines Homoerotic subtext fashion.

The seating arrangement was becoming a farce as there were about 200 people now in the front two rows "moshing" and being generally excited with what they were witnessing.

I really did enjoy the show and though towards the end after many cigarettes (Naughty boys smoking inside!) Pete and Carl did seem to time travel to before the day Pete burgled Carl's house or the many times he didn't show up for gigs or any of the extremely rock n roll things they have done and back to the time when they were at their best.

However not all the band seemed to enjoy the show or even look at all like they wanted to be there. The bass player, I think his name is Clive or something (John Hassel) looked as if he had been told before the gig that Pete was going to shoot up on stage and then pull his trousers down and excrete on the many cheering fans as they dance and fight their way through The Libertines back catalogue. This may sound odd to you unconnected plebs who were not on the guest list for the event but if you had seen the expression on the face of the bass player then you would understand what I'm talking about.

I genuinely think that if the band were not offered something in the region of £1.4 million then the bass player would more than likely be at home with the wife and kid. I have to be honest it did spoil the show a bit for me as the other band members tried to fake their way through the gig and for a few strong minutes I actually forgot about all the rubbish they got up to between the breaking up and right now and was just happy to see them playing together, but the bass player did not want to act. He was not happy and he let everyone in the crowd know it when at the end of the gig the other three hugged in a line and bowed to the audience and the bass player cringed and half heartedly joined in like a forced Nick Griffin having to shake the hand of a gay, welsh, black, Muslim mother of 4.

Anyway I wish "The Good Ship Albion" all the best at Reading and Leeds this weekend. You boys will bloody well need it!