It’s not like me to review the same band twice in a row, but there is a reason behind my fangirling.

   “Are they still going?” was the question that followed almost every mention of going to see Jet. Almost as frequent was this exchange, recounted verbatim:

   “Who are Jet?”

   “You know, Are You Gonna Be My Girl?”

   “Oh yeah! God, are they still going?”

   My favourite remark came in the amused and slightly condescending dismissal of the band with, “Jet, haha brilliant! So retro!”

   Having learnt the back catalogue crash course-style in the week since rediscovering them at Portugal’s Optimus Alive festival, the week preceding their only UK date before disappearing back to Australia, I find these questions harder and harder to comprehend. Not least because Are You Gonna My Girl?, the song that propelled them into mainstream consciousness, has been far surpassed by their later musical output.

   I’ve speculated for longer than the dilemma probably warranted, but it remains a source of bafflement to me that Jet have managed to stray into obscurity in the UK, especially after the experience of seeing them live outside a festival setting.

   Opening with a snarling That’s All Lies, the tone of the gig was set. Retro it was, but in the best of ways. At the front amongst the pogoing the atmosphere was more reminiscent of a 70s punk gig, raw with aggression and resulting in much bruising from over-exciting jumping.

   The set list was nicely split between the three albums. Highlights included the monstrous Black Hearts (On Fire), seeing the venue’s crowd-surfing ban pushed to the max and frontman Nic Cester smouldering his way through the lyrics. La Di Da proved an unlikely touching singalong, and the outrageous tidal wave of riffs that is Start The Show was played ironically in the encore. 

   Nic played his part to perfection, swaggering with Godlike arrogance and his vocals alternating between a combustible growl and deranged screaming. His love for demanding a bit of audience participation apparently never gets old either, judging by Seventeen and Beat On Repeat.

   Meanwhile drummer Chris Cester, also on backing vocals, attacked his drum-kit with the intensity of an unhinged vigilante pulverising a floored mugger. The effect was too big for Shepherds Bush, and only served to reinforce the question of, why aren’t they bigger?

   Are You Gonna Be My Girl? inspired its expected spree of head banging and shouty-pointing from the crowd, and songs like Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is, Hey Kids, and Walk have choruses made for stadiums. Songs with less impact and similar appeal have achieved that in the past (Arctic Monkeys, anyone?), and with much less stage presence and charisma to back them up. So why not Jet?

   There are a few theories that carry weight. One, that they are Australian and therefore not taken inherently seriously by the rock ‘n’ roll aficionados governing UK airplay. Two, that Are You Gonna Be My Girl?, while so incredibly successful at making their name, with a tune that is played in introductions and adverts to this day, became their downfall in the eyes of the UK music Press. They ‘sold-out’, or became ‘too commercial’ or ‘mainstream’; all these words and phrases now so commonly used with fashionable distain.

   Whatever the explanation it’s a sad conundrum. Far from the gimmick that the UK’s knowledge of them makes them out to be, Jet are a fantastic and truly underrated rock ‘n’ roll band. Capable of far more than walls of noise and catchy riffs, their songs range from the grandiose to the gritty; wryly comical (“There is good and there is better/Just like imitation leather”, courtesy of Beat On Repeat), uplifting, raw, anthemic, intelligent, and simple, the best examples of which are sadly not given half of the credit they deserve.

   Come back soon, Jet. I do hope that one day we’ll be ready for you.   

I’ve never liked support bands. Even when they’ve been support bands I’ve liked, I’ve never liked support bands. Bands that are on before my preferred band on a festival bill count as a support band. They tend to serve nothing more than a better (though this is often not the case…) way to pass the time than staring morosely at a drum-kit and backdrop while supporting myself on the barrier because I no longer have the will to stand up straight.

   Jet were, at first, in the unfortunate position of being such a band. Two bands on before the Manics at Optimus Alive Festival in Portugal, I hadn’t even fully recovered from the sprint to the barrier in temperatures of over thirty-five degrees.

(For those of you who don’t know or can’t remember who Jet are, think “Dum dum dum du-du-dum da-da-da duh-duh-duh-da-da-duh-duh So, one two three take my hand and come with me because you look so fine and I really wanna make you mine!” Yes, that was the only song I knew of theirs too.)

   A vague memory of owning one album while only knowing one song at the age of sixteen was all I had to make me interested. Then they came onstage.

   It was symptomatic of my ignorance of them post-2006 that I was surprised at Are You Gonna Be My Girl? being played in the middle of the set. Why would they play their best song before the end? I thought. Turns out, to my surprise, that it isn’t their best song. Not by far.

   Vocalist and rhythm guitarist Nic Cester has benefited massively from cutting his hair, not least because his stage presence (which he has in excess) is now reinforced by the realisation that he is very, very attractive. The squeal of, “Ooh, the singer’s cute!” to my right confirmed my theory. He also has the perfect (almost to the point of rock parody) voice for this style of music.

   She’s A Genius was the song I could still hum afterwards and that I could sing along to after one chorus. It’s an exemplary song as far as gritty rock goes, with a riff that goes straight to your elbows and seems to demand a Michael Stipe-esque dance*. Rip It Up also ranked high in the singalong ranks. Black Hearts (and I must admit Youtube and Wikipedia have aided me in discovering what these songs were actually called) had the same effect, but with a great melody to match. There are countless chants here, made for a mass clap-along.

   By the end of the set I was genuinely sorry to see them leave the stage, which they did to a residue chant from their moment of audience participation during the catchy, but oddly moving, Seventeen. Their set had been such an unexpected jolt of fun that I had even failed to notice the festival photographers taking many shots of me gazing up at the stage, with the sort of smile on my face that made me look like I was on day release and had lost my medication…

   I don’t know enough about them to write an informed and Q-worthy review, yet reviewing them I am. Upon returning from Portugal after the end of the festival the first thing I did was check what UK dates they were playing. I have nothing to convey, nothing of journalistic worth, apart from total over-excitement in the realisation that a band I had forgotten about have not only been rediscovered, but have become rather brilliant in the years that passed. 

   If you, like me, have the opening riff of Are You Gonna Be My Girl? imprinted in your mind until the end of humanity, you will be surprised at how far they have come since. If you, like me, love uplifting, dirty and raw rock ‘n’ roll, buy Shaka Rock and I can guarantee you will not be disappointed.

* I feel the need to add, as a disclaimer, that this may be because I was on the barrier and therefore unable to move anything but my arms and my head…

So it transpires that football isn’t the only thing that the Portuguese are superior at. Music festivals can also be added to the (somewhat extensive) list.

   Optimus Alive festival is a three-day heavy rock affair in Alges, up-town Lisbon. The line-up was a failsafe combination of Florence & The Machine, Kasabian, Manic Street Preachers, Pearl Jam, Deftones, Faith No More, Jet and LCD Soundsystem. The temperature wasn’t predicted to drop below thirty degrees. There was going to be free Iced Tea. I was sold.

   So frequently in the UK festivals are much more enjoyable in advance than in the grim mud-soaked, piss-stained, beer-saturated reality. Festivals such as Glastonbury and T in the Park, costing around £200 per ticket, have gone from being lairy gatherings of over-excited music lovers to magnets for every wannabe indie kid and irritant poser under the age of 20. Those who would be content with taking amphetamines with WKD in a field for five days without seeing a single band are in the vast majority. No matter how good the line-up, I find it hard to concentrate on the immense experience of the music past the near-uncontrollable urge to line the rest of the crowd up against a wall and shoot them with air guns.

   Enter the foreign festival. Enter Optimus Alive.

   Firstly, it’s unbelievably clean. Even on the third day, pre-Pearl Jam, on a Saturday, when the queues for the portaloos (which were really more like clever portable communal bathrooms) demanded a fifteen-minute wait, they were nothing less than spotless and full of clean toilet paper. Seeing Pearl Jam without having to attempt the notorious “hover” manoeuvre to avoid syphilis, was mind-blowing.

   Secondly, the people were awesome. I mean genuinely awesome. The people who you would seek out at parties. That no one was visibly paralytic and/or throwing glasses of their own urine over parts of the crowd was instantly a step up from previous British experiences. But everyone I met while there had brilliant stories of musical escapades to tell; Madrid to see Bon Jovi, Rome to see U2, a row of Deftones fans racing Manics fans to the main stage barrier. Great scenes.

   The atmosphere is electric but never tips over into aggressiveness. Seeing siblings looking after their eleven-year-old brother near the back of the main stage whilst sipping pints of beer during Pearl Jam was particularly touching. At the front it was lairy but self-contained; even the mosh-pits were exhilarating rather than a desperate struggle to keep your femurs intact.

   It’s romantic, maybe naïve, to want British festivals to retain this sense of fun, this sense of wonder, without the cheap posturing and exhibitionism. But at least there’s always the chance to go overseas, which, when the combined cost of both the flight and weekend ticket comes to less than a Glastonbury or Reading/Leeds ticket alone, is a lot more affordable than you’d think.

   Lisbon, Germany, Spain, even Belgium. They all beat the British festivals in this Champions League.

Toulouse didn’t sell itself well. From the moment I arrived to about four hours before doors the rain poured solidly, almost mockingly. Also the venue, Le Bikini, doesn’t appear to live up to its glamorous title, being situated in the middle of a largely deserted industrial estate full of nothing but warehouses and a very conspicuous Mexican Grill. Also, this gig is cursed.

   No really, it is. The first time Kasabian were due to play here the gig was cancelled a week before the event for no publicised reason. The second time the gig was cancelled an hour before the event due to three members of the band suffering from seafood-induced food poisoning in Marseilles.

   So third time lucky then?

   Queuing was a solemn and short affair. Two hours before doors I was worrying whether the four people there would turn out to be the extent of the crowd; such was the conviction of the French that this gig was destined to never take place. But after the very shakiest of starts Toulouse produced the most wild, jovial, enthusiastically-singing crowd of the European tour. Where they all came from, I don’t know. Maybe they were all hiding in the warehouses?

   The band matched the crowd’s stellar form, despite Tommy’s…shirt. Also despite a set list that was cut annoyingly short compared to other dates, they still managed to fit in the expected (Empire, Underdog, Club Foot, Fire, and a stomping version of Vlad The Impaler that saw Serge on his back, writhing on the floor of the stage playing the outro) and the unexpected (the return of the mighty Reason “K-I-L-L!!!” Is Treason).

   Serge, usually inclined to stand away from his microphone with his head down and his customary “Don’t look at me. No, really, do not look at me” expression, spent most of the gig dancing, stamping, pouting, and on the floor. I suspect alcohol may have played a part but I am not complaining because, due to his burst of hyperactivity, he handed me his set list.

   Tommy was quieter than usual, but then most things would look subdued next to his…shirt. I jest. He was also on good terms with the front rows, grabbing people’s hands, winking and executing some very Roger Daltrey-esque whirls of his microphone.

   One suspects this is the last leg of the West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum tour, and this instantly begs the question, where now? “African groove”, “sexual groove” and “middle east” are the phrases that have appeared in the Press so far. But whether they come from Serge or from uninformed speculation has been unclear.

   For a fan it means the excruciating division of opinion: on the one hand too much success will spell the end of all this, the chats at stage door, the small venues, the barrier within touching distance of the stage, the winks, the smiles, the elements aside from the music that made us fall in love from the front row. With success come stadiums, high stages, miles of barrier, and a distance between the band and the fans that can hardly ever be reversed. On the other hand, to wish for a sub-standard album would be unthinkable.

   Whatever happens, at least we have the gigs like Toulouse. That’s enough for now.  

Once again, due to my habit of intentionally ignoring everything NME has to say with fingers in my ears and a loud, ‘Blah blah blah, The Skids, blah blah blah…’ I have been rather slow on the uptake with this band, but bear with me.

   I first stumbled across them supporting Florence & The Machine at Hammersmith Apollo.  They were preceded by an almost 50s-style scene with an outbreak of banshee screaming and one girl behind me, fanning herself in preparation for lead singer Jonathan Pierce to come onstage, exclaiming with no hint of irony, ‘Oh he’s so dreamy!’ By the time they came on my eyebrows had almost disappeared into my fringe in disbelief, especially when the legendary Johnny finally entered the stage, dressed like someone doing ‘dandy schoolboy’ in a satirical play with a haircut so retro I questioned whether it could be real.

   Once they started playing however, in a charming and raw style that bought to mind an optimistic and camp version of Joy Division, I not only started to like them, but I started to find Johnny inexplicably attractive within about three songs. By the end of their set I may have even flailed while saying, ‘Oh, I love him!’ On the one hand there’s his dancing, which alternates between an Ian Curtis-esque shuffle and a flourish of Adam Ant-style posturing. While part of you wants to dismiss him as a tragic indie car crash, a more overwhelming part of you knows that he’s cool enough to get away with it. On the other hand though there is his singing, which is undeniably strong, able to express both irony and charm.

   Then there is the issue of their stage door persona, a tripping point for any band, where an arrogant attitude or a snappy comment can put me off a band’s music for life. I saw his fringe before I saw him, and hoped that someone else would stop him considering I didn’t know his name at the time and I wanted a smoother opener than, ‘Guy from the drums!’  Luckily someone obliged and Johnny took a round of obligatory photos before I chipped in with a devastatingly cool, ‘Excuse me…’ I am glad to say that, despite the onstage strut, he was one of the most polite musicians I have ever met. Upon my camera breaking he insisted on waiting until we had got a photo I was happy with, even offering to fix it while his arm was still around me. Allow me a moment to sigh…

   After the gig I bought their recent EP, Summertime! It comes across as the polar opposite of their live sound, but that is no bad thing. Songs like Let’s Go Surfing, Make You Mine and Best Friend (from their Best Friend EP) sound like they were produced on a jaunty, aged 60s record. Live they sounded like a hyperactive 80s throwback, torn between punk and cheesy pop. Johnny’s energy is contained in a way that it can’t be onstage, but the effect is a blissful, upbeat and surprisingly original record.

   The real star of the show is the last track of the EP, I Felt Stupid. It’s a song that could have leapt straight from a musical, like Hairspray or Grease, only…decent. It’s almost unbearably charming, but so touching and sincere it’s hard not to succumb to visions of Johnny, in his rolled-up trousers and white socks, singing ‘I don’t know if it’s right or wrong but come stay with me, I wanna hear every beat of your heart’ to you across a US diner…or maybe that’s just me, but you get my point.

   The Drums are playing two nights at Heaven, London, in early June. Go. They’re lovely, captivating live, have two very strong EPs, and the tickets on Ebay are reasonably priced. Please, do go.

PS - Sorry for the extended break. It will never happen again, cross my heart…

Let’s get this straight. I am vehemently against new bands and prone to reading NME articles in WH Smith with a look of superior disgust on my face before walking home to a soundtrack of Oasis and David Bowie.

   However, once in a while, I stumble across someone who genuinely excites me, who can induce a strange Tourettes-like state whereby I recount the artist/band’s name plus a rambling stream of trivia at people I barely know.

   “Don’t you think Tom Clarke from The Enemy sounds like the love-child of Johnny Lydon and a young Paul Weller?”

   “That’s very nice, miss, but the newspaper is a pound…”

   You get the idea.

   So, Delphic. My first impression of them wasn’t the best, as the second support act before Kasabian at Myspace’s celebratory gig in Heaven, London. Their roadies took a monstrous hour and a half to set up their equipment, pushing Kasabian towards a 23:00 start that would cause me to miss my train. It wasn’t the band’s fault, but I was determined not to enjoy them. They could have come onstage dressed as Cuban revolutionaries on the shoulders of Joe Strummer and I still would have glared at them, silently, arms crossed across the barrier, and muttering about Kasabian all set. In much the same way that I wilfully ignore any band hyped by NME, I chose not to hear them.

   Fast-forward three months and a friend offered me a ticket to a gig of theirs not twenty minutes down the road. Pressured by her enthusiasm and the reasonable price I agreed and, with somewhat less enthusiasm, bought the album, Acolyte.

   It starts with Clarion Call. This opener, like the album itself, starts deceptively quiet before building into something so preposterously epic for a debut that it will have you jamming your head into the speakers, screaming, “More! Moooooore, I say!”

   There are echoes of New Order but no imitation, just pure electro-pop brilliance. Disregard the fact that one of the keyboard players looks like Gary Neville finding his true calling and focus on songs like This Momentary, that are almost hypnotic in their quality. Their vocalist and guitarist has a voice of appealing fragility, but capable of unexpected power, especially in Doubt and Submission.

   Doubt also demonstrates the simple intelligence of the lyrics. Without any of the clichés or laddish posturing that a lot of new bands succumb to, Doubt is a sincere and gentle attack of electro-beats and guitar.

   The real gem of the album however is the single, Halcyon. Halcyon is the sort of song with a chorus so catchy, so flawless, so painfully gorgeous, that I could be tempted to withdraw from society completely and sit, alone, ipod plugged into the wall with it on repeat for the rest of my life, rocking backwards and forwards with my hands over the earphones, salivating like a modern-day Gollum. When I heard Halcyon for the first time I forgot that other music existed for about three days, and it was only due to a technical fault and an accidental switch to Alabama 3 that I remembered, for the sake of my sanity and social appearance, that I would have to listen to other songs once in a while.

   Acolyte has managed to temporarily drag my cynical heart out of the 70s and, were it not for the narrow-minded attitude of Western civilisation, I would elope with one of its tracks and fulfil its every sexual need.

   I haven’t been to their gig yet, but I’m sure I’ll dance like a lunatic.

   Buy it. For the love of God, buy it.

John and Edward Grimes.

   No, really.

   You may think that I’ve finally lost my mind and turned to hallucinogenic drugs to get myself through life but, really, I haven’t. I’m being 100% serious. Or as serious as you can be when talking about these identical quiffed Irish invaders of the UK Charts.

   I’ll put it concisely: I adore Jedward, and this is my case as to why.

   After much moaning, raised eyebrows, sighs, and restrained cynicism, I agreed to take my little sister and cousin to see X Factor Live. It was, in my eyes, nothing more than a poor reason to miss Manchester United winning the Carling Cup Final and a blemish to my rock ’n’ roll credentials. I was prepared to listen to nothing but The Skids for a week as penance to reclaim my kudos.

   If anyone had told me that the endearingly tuneless twins John and Edward would steal the show I’d have dismissed them as someone who needed to quickly see the inside of a padded cell. But, putting aside my hatred of X Factor and its stranglehold on the music industry as we know it, they did.

   John and Edward, I realised, represent more of a two-fingered salute to X Factor than Rage Against The Machine’s Christmas Number One did. They are the contraband box of ecstasy pills in The Priory, the sly injection of chaos that turns a peaceful protest into a full-on riot. They sing passably, by no means well, but became bigger than the show that made them with nothing more than reckless optimism and a euphoric hyperactivity both onstage and off. Through a combination of national pride and public frustration with the generic manure that reality TV propels into our consciousness year after year, they have become stars. Not just pop stars doomed to live forever with the smoking brand of X Factor across their foreheads, but actual stars.

   To see them onstage is to have a seven-inch psychotic smile on your face and aching ribs for hours afterwards, because what you’re seeing isn’t a shopwork mannequin, it is two eighteen-year-old boys doing whatever the hell they want. From Under Pressure to Rock DJ to Ghostbusters, cavorting with water pistols and inflatable ghosts, one twin dancing slightly out of time with the other, talking in faux American accents, and dressed like the love-children of James Bond and Nicky Wire, they are undeniably joyous to witness.

   ”Have fun - that’s our plan at all times,” John recently said to Q Magazine. “When you look at some artists you can see there’s something missing when you look into their eye. They’re trudging through a performance. We’re thinking, Who’s let us on this stage? It’s just amaaaaazing. We’ll never lose the feeling that we’re the luckiest guys ever for being allowed near a stage.”

   Also, in a true rock ‘n’ roll initiation, they have Noel Gallagher’s mobile number and implied endorsement. “He’s been really supportive so we got his number and we’ve been texting him,” said Edward in the same interview. Now that is an exchange I would have paid money to see.

   They are rock ‘n’ roll. Those who complain that they can’t sing are missing the point. A non-believer friend remarked on their cover of Queen and David Bowie’s Under Pressure (that has shot to Number One in Ireland and Number Two in the UK) with a cold, “I bet Freddie Mercury is turning in his grave.”

   I’m not so sure. They may not have enough power between them to match even one of Freddie’s magnificent vocal chords, however they must represent everything positive that he once sang about. They are, in every sense, the champions. Hell, they are the Bohemian fucking Rhapsody.

   Freddie Mercury would not be turning in his grave to see these fellas doing what they so obviously love to do. He’d be dancing. 

“Apparently Ed O’Brien called me a wanker!” Nicky Wire explodes before the Manics’ glorious decade-spanning set draws to a close. “Fuck off back to boarding school you c***!” Almost twenty years into his career and he hasn’t lost his taste for an ill-advised fight, or an ill-advised amount of makeup. Less smokey-eyed and more deranged racoon, but still as full of anarchistic enthusiasm as he was at the beginning.

It feels like the beginning, in this venue that is the size of a glorified living room. It even starts at the beginning with the opening chords of rarely played Strip It Down from the band’s very first EP. One suspects that some of the venue mistook it for a new song. The next few were more recognisable though, Motorcycle Emptiness, Kevin Carter, Tsunami, From Despair To Where, interspersed with gems such as 2001’s gritty rock anthem Found That Soul, and lest we forget the first number one of this Millennium, Masses Against The Classes. James Dean Bradfield’s voice, that can fill 70,000 capacity stadiums, seems almost too big for the space. It’s a wonder there was any makeup left on the faces of the front row, so visceral was the attack of sound.

The only respite is provided by James’ brief acoustic interlude. A heart-rending rendition of another B-Side, Donkeys, and the familiar singalong that is The Everlasting gives just enough time for the front row to ease their bruised ribs, and for Nicky to change into something more comfortable. “Welsh tartan!” he exclaims on his return to the stage sporting a pink leopard-print mini skirt that an Essex hen night would be proud of. I jest. “You’ve still got the legs, Wire,” was James’ remark and I can only agree. 41 years old and he can still give female fans an inferiority complex. However as James begins to snarl into the mic again, You Love Us has never seemed more apt.   

The Manics, despite Nicky’s occasional pontificating about his politics degree (something that ironically can be attributed to absent member Richey Edwards, who Nicky has cited as being responsible for most of his essays…) and the band’s own fierce self-deprecation that has seen them throw commercial success back in the UK public’s face many times, have always been nothing if not 4real. While other bands merely hinted at, or sang about, revolution, the Manics endeavoured to create one. In a way, maybe they have. As well as an output of nine studio albums, one B-Sides collection, one Greatest Hits, and a scattering of EPs, the Manics can also count themselves responsible for the bookshelves and DVD collections of fans up and down the country and across the seas. JG Ballard, Sylvia Plath, Bret Easton Ellis, and Jack Lemmon sit alongside Public Enemy, Shirley Maclaine and the ever-present kohl-eyed spirit of Richey Edwards.

Never has a gig gone by without a tribute to their lost friend and tonight was no exception. No encore after A Design For Life, but of course they will be back. Back to the beginning and, hopefully, nowhere near the end. 

Seeing Kasabian’s name in lights outside the venue seemed wonderfully 1950s, but the French attitude towards queueing for gigs is very modern in comparison. Running appears to be actively encouraged, even in the case of stairs (or later in the tour a courtyard layered with a sheet of ice). I agree with this method of entry; it’s like natural selection. Those tough enough to withstand the front will get there, leaving a trail of sprawled bodies dressed as half-arsed imitations of Liam Gallagher behind them.

Speaking of bodies, before I move onto the irrefutable greatness of Kasabian, the impromtu support act, Parisian three-piece The Control Band, warrant a mention. Part funk-rock and part lap dance, the devastatingly sexual semi-clad singer had the venue and Kasabian’s crew beside themselves with excitement. How there wasn’t a major delay, with most of the crew and guitar techies (hell, even the driver had a reason to be onstage…) crowded around the lighting desk half-heartedly trying to appear as if they were working, I don’t know. They don’t have support bands like that in Britain…

Then “Aah, Julie Julie!” and the gig began in earnest. It became apparent very quickly, with the quick-fire delivery of Underdog, Where Did All The Love Go? and Swarfiga, that European crowds take a far more laid-back stance. I don’t think I was even touched by the second row all gig, let alone pushed. There was much jumping, helped by a childishly fun bouncy floor, but it was a self-contained, rather than aggressive, lairiness.

Tommy Meighan was on typical antagonistic form, swaggering about the stage like a world leader addressing his nation on cocaine. Guitarist Serge Pizzorno adopted his ‘head down and don’t look at me’ pose, broken only by a spate of uncharacteristically enthusiastic dancing during album track Take Aim and new single Vlad The Impaler. This stage of opposing personas, with Tommy and Serge flanked by the painfully cool impassiveness of Jay Mehler and the nervous head-bobbing of bassist Chris Edwards, cumulated with Tommy returning to the stage wearing the new World Cup 2010 England strip to a chorus of boos in their encore.

While the set meandered through more diverse songs of the past and present, from ID to Processed Beats, from Empire to Thick As Thieves, the encore was an unashamed singalong. Fire, with an extra chorus for good measure, followed by Vlad The Impaler, a song so laden with stomping attitude that it seems likely to explode away from the band as a seperate entity at any second, followed by the effortlessly catchy “la la la’s” of LSF.

The madness is spreading. “Paris you’re a fucking empire!” Tommy sneered, hands aloft. Paris was their empire. With such intelligent songs backed-up with such self-assured delivery, I imagine anywhere could be Kasabian’s empire.

No, I am not. Firstly, because considering the average age of their writers and target audience the sex wouldn’t even be legal. Secondly, because what was once the authority on the then-aspiring music genres of rap, reggae, punk rock, rock ‘n’ roll, metal, and pop, has shrivelled to a barely recognisable parody of its former self.
Flip to the reviews section and you’ll feel as though a gig, that could arguably have been as good as Woodstock, is being regaled to you by the gang of ASBO-touting monosyllabic teenagers at the end of the road who frighten old ladies and torture hamsters. It’s a desperate, fickle shouting contest garnished with many witty attempts at trying to drop a ‘Fuck’ into every paragraph. If it weren’t in print with the heading of NME, how many of you would let this rabble advise you on which albums to buy? Which gigs to go to?
“Alex Turner’s jeans are well tight ‘n’ they’ll blow your fucking head off!” “Cool, what was the music like?” “…Music?”
Music! Because that, at the end of the day, is what music magazines should be about, whether it is rock, pop or Irish New Wave reggae. That’s what this blog is for. There are many bands out there worth seeing and many albums worth buying, and I’d like to tell people about them.
I may not be the authority, but I’m fairly certain I could vomit something onto a blank page more literate, more comprehensive and more witty than the NME with my hands tied behind my back while being flogged by a naked Peter Mandelson…and it would probably result in someone buying a marginally better album than Lil Wayne. Know who he is? The NME do. I bet his jeans are well tight.