25% of Rebellion 2017

I'm sure my regular readers are waiting eagerly for my review of this year's Rebellion Festival in Blackpool. Well, some might be.

Anyway, here it is.

This year, due to financial constraints and the fact that the line up every year was starting to make me feel like Bill Murray in that film with the only band missing being Phil and the Punxsutawneys, I originally decided I wasn't going to go at all. But then Bad Religion and Pennywise were added to a bill which held little appeal and as the official running order was revealed I realised I could do just the one day and see everything I was bothered about seeing.

My day started with me being dropped in Preston like I was in a shit version of 90s TV show Treasure Hunt. 45 minutes and some pre-mixed Jack and Coke with two Americans and a Spaniard later I was in Blackpool, the post-apocalyptic Vegas of the North.

I had four days to cram into one and I was on a mission.

Who cares that bottles of Black Sheep were £4.50 each and should have come with a share in the brewery? At least it could be soaked up with a tray of mash for “only” a fiver.

The first band I saw was Geoffrey Oicott, cricket-themed Yorkshiremen whose joke is actually starting to wear a little thin. But it was outdoors and the rain was holding off.

I ventured from stage to stage, catching minutes or in some case just seconds of as many bands as possible. Nothing much stuck out, mostly because I wasn't giving it enough time, but partly because so early in the day there were a number of garage bands who should have kept the door shut.

That might sound harsh, but I was only in pursuit of quality.

This was found with Darlington's In Evil Hour. They're always excellent and have been every time I've seen them since I first saw them on the New Band Stage five years ago. I bought my only CD of the day from them and I even slurred drunken nonsense at their drummer later in the day and we all know that people in bands love drunken knobheads using 20 words linked together as one long word to tell them they're great.

88 Fingers Louie might be named after a peripheral character from The Flintstones, a fact I told some guys who I'd met at the Descendents show in London a few weeks earlier which didn't impress them as they thought the name was related to a post-nightclub sex act in Hartlepool, but they were far from cartoon-like. Their first time in the UK in, was it 20 years? A bloody long time anyway. Musically they were excellent, but the vocals sadly sounded like some kind of echo chamber and it did spoil it somewhat.

Still the lasagne I then ate made up for it.

Then it was back outside for a bit of Barstool Preachers who I'd always wrongly assumed to be an acoustic act. One of them is apparently the son of one of them from Cock Sparrer, but we won't hold that against him. They turned out to be a fantastic new discovery.

Face To Face looked like they spent most of their time working in a Pimp My Ride-style auto place and sounded great. I would have stayed outside where it was getting progressively colder to watch Teenage Bottlerocket, but I needed the toilet and the outdoor 'suicide urinal' held little appeal.

Leftover Crack took me back to the ballroom and I wished they hadn't. The singer is known for generally being a bit out of it, but he really surpassed himself this time. He was sprawled on a keyboard while not singing and then he embarked on a 10 minute tirade which made absolutely no sense at all. I left to be involved in my own nonsensical tirades with Welsh and Swedish types in the smoking area.

Pennywise were like listening to a Best Of CD, although their fannying about with Black Flag and Minor Threat songs mid-set wasn't necessary at all. They closed with homoerotic, perhaps-a-bit-sexist anthem, Bro Hymn, for a mega Woah-oh singalong which spilled out of the venue afterwards. It was still kept going in the toilets where for some reason I ended up singing Barry Manilow's I Write The Songs (which he didn't actually write, the liar) with a total stranger.

And then it was Bad Religion.

Dr Greg Graffin is a great singer with zero stage presence and poor between song banter. Jay Bentley is older than me but acts like he's 20. That bloke they call The Serb who used to be in The Cult still looks out of place. Who's the drummer? He's new and way younger than everyone else, but certainly has a lot of enthusiasm. Brett Gurewitz can't even be arsed to tour with the band any more. Brian Baker always looks tired.

Despite all this it works. It works very well in fact.

An hour of Bad Religion songs is never enough and they managed to squeeze in around 20 songs. Notable exceptions? None that I can think of. The even played Generator properly rather than the bizarre 'festival version' they've been hawking around for the last few years. They played a blinder and it was the perfect ending to my one day Rebellion experience.

It was certainly a better way to remember the end than the 35 minute walk along the seafront into a force nine gale and then spectacularly failing to get a pizza because why would a takeaway be open after midnight on a Thursday night anyway?

I've already said I'm not going next year, but it's in the organisers' hands really.