Everything Went Blackpool

I’m a bit late with this year’s review because, well, I had to spend a week piecing together the fragments of a drunken weekend like a 1,000-piece jigsaw with five pieces missing and where 90% of the remaining parts are near-identically-shaped pieces of blue sky.

Anyway, I started out by doing the least punk thing ever and booking into a Travelodge which cost as much as the previous three years’ hotel bills combined. It was opposite Blackpool’s rusty football stadium, but hotel management thoughtfully gave me a room at the back so I didn’t need to look at the tangerine nonsense and could hear their early morning deliveries and bin-emptying sessions with much better clarity.

And so, to the festival. Day one of Rebellion is always exciting. I was full of high expectations and, by the time I entered the venue, half a dozen pints of fine ale. The Murderburgers, who were the first band on my list, had selfishly started on time while I was still in the pub and I caught the final 30 seconds of their last song. Sounded good though. 

And then on to the Introducing Stage where my Norn Oirish mate Ricky had informed me there was a decent hardcore band playing. Incisions are a Manchester-based band. Although none of them are Mancunian. They were loud, fast, aggressive, shouty and everything you need on a Thursday afternoon. While drinking alcohol in the street shortly afterwards with Ricky and sum of his chums (sorry fellas, I can’t remember all your names), I actually met this band. I told the singer he was like a young Frank Carter which he seemed to enjoy a lot. They were really, really nice guys and were the polar opposite of their onstage personas. Oh, and one of them was from Barnsley – if you haven’t read my previous post about the Barnsley Effect, check this out. I learned about Wigan from the bassist (or was it the guitarist?) – yes really, but it was to do with pies – and he insisted on posing for a selfie with my Biohazard tattoo.

Having missed the Pukes, I made it back into the Winter Gardens for the Bar Stool Preachers who this year I had already managed to miss due to a running order mix up in London and being too drunk in Morecambe. They were excellent and if they don’t bring a smile to your face, you probably just don’t have a face. In Evil Hour continue to get better and better every time I see them, which considering I’ve seen them 10 times or more is quite impressive. Because they’re from my old stomping ground of Darlington doesn’t do them any harm and Gareth, if you’re reading, I have to make the Rise Against/AFI comparison once more, but only to both bands’ early work which is far superior to their recent commercial offerings.

Geoffrey Oicott have featured in pretty much every Rebellion I’ve ever been to and it’s fair to say that their cricket-based songs are starting to get a bit tired. Luckily, I was able to cut their set short with a visit to a Chinese all-you-can-eat buffet which rendered me incapable of drinking beer for the rest of the day. It was £20 well spent, but what kind of philistines serve duck and pancakes with no hoisin sauce? Jesus Christ!

US hardcore pensioners DI were the first band of my evening session. I’d never heard them before, I claimed, but it turned out I had thanks to Slayer’s cover of Richard Hung Himself on their much-derided covers album. And in any case, surely Richard hanged himself? Straight after this was American hardcore veterans Poison Idea who had cancelled at least three previous appearances at the festival. They sounded pretty tight, but the singer’s “jokes” about “the two-pronged guitar attack of Judas Priest” fell on a few hundred deaf ears.

Poison Idea had to be cut short because the Descendents were on at 11:25. If I counted correctly there were 28 songs in about an hour, including something from every album in their almost 40-year career. There were short, daft songs like Der Wienerschnitzel and I Like Food, as well as longer, more serious efforts like Who We Are and Without Love. They even incorporated a stage prop of a large mug which they drank out of before Coffee Mug, but clearly if they thought that was a large mug, they’ve never been to Sports Direct. Couldn’t sell out a telephone booth, sang Milo in their eponymous set-closer, but a thousand people who sang themselves hoarse would disagree.

Friday was always going to be a rough day after 12 hours of standing up on the Thursday and it started badly as our regular Wetherspoons meet-up was sullied by the fact that there was no draft beer available. Luckily, the Worzel Gummidge of publicans had seen fit to open another outlet right around the corner, so we made the short journey to the pub beneath the tower. How is it possible to sit beneath a gigantic metal structure and have no mobile phone reception though? There wasn’t a lot I was bothered about seeing, so I wandered from stage to stage catching songs, snippets of songs and in a lot of cases bands packing up their gear who had just finished. Rust were a band I’d been told about, my mate Gaz describing them as “hardcore oi”. They’d come all the way from Australia and sold out of merch during a mini-tour of Europe, so they had to be worth a look. Wrong. In two text messages I sent, I stated there were “not enough songs about barbecues and the inherent fire-risks thereof” and described them as “Yabby Creek-core nonsense” and “fucking shrimpy, woah-oh, Ramsey Street-core bastards”. There may or may not have been an I’ll-just-pop-back-to-the-hotel-for-a-shower-and-a-quick-lie-down situation which went awry shortly after this.

Saturday started with a beach walk to clear my head and a good few hours in the pub. It’s good to sit in a pub with your mates at a punk festival, discussing whether punk was invented by the Ramones or the Sex Pistols. Well, for what it’s worth I think the Ramones have the American smoothness of a cool pint of Shipyard IPA and the Sex Pistols are more like a warm pint of Greene King IPA that’s been spiked with homemade roofies. And in any case, the Sex Pistols were just a manufactured boy band, Malcom McLaren being like a tattily dressed Simon Cowell and Sid Vicious being a heroin-addicted Steve Brookstein. Or something. I don’t know. You say all sorts of weird shit down the pub, don’t you?

Italian ska band, Los Fastidios were one of two bands I wanted to see on the Saturday. They got a sweaty ballroom moving early in the afternoon and when the singer proposed to his girlfriend onstage, it was so hot that even my eyes were sweating. UK skasters Citizen Fish were the other one I had to see. They never disappoint. Their singer didn’t propose to anyone, but at least they played Write It All Down, which I hadn’t heard them do for a few years. After this, I checked out a few fringe events where a few shit bands were playing in shit pubs and people seemed more interested in my Nuclear Assault t-shirt than anything else that was happening.

The last day rolls around all too quick and Welsh mentalists Trigger McPoopshute were kicking it off at 1:15. I’d been talking to a couple of the guys from the band on Thursday and one of them said to me, “oh, I was just saying ‘I wonder if that mad fucker from Morecambe is coming’”. Well, I’d show them just how mad I wasn’t. They took to the stage in various vicar-based outfits (not sure one of the guitarists’ choice of stockings and suspenders was a good one), it being Sunday and all, and rattled through classics such as Skidmarks and Spencers and Telford Suicide Wank Palace. And then I discovered why it’s a bad idea to drink ice tea of the Long Island variety at lunchtime as I happily joined in a stage invasion and jumped around with some guy who weighed a lot more than he looked on my shoulders. In fairness, the stage was only about a foot high and there was no barrier, and the guy was in his late teens or early 20s and had the build of a Victorian chimney sweep – the mad bugger had suggested I sit on his shoulders at first, but that was never going to work.

And speaking of Welsh mentalists, Pizza Tramp were next up. They were hungover and the singer was drinking rum. They had no setlist. What could go wrong? Nothing at all really. They rattled through a random mix of songs while the singer ranted about things such as how hard it was to sample Taggart saying “there’s been a murder” to put on the start of their There’s Been a Murder song. Usually, they play several versions of I Hope You Fucking Die with alternative lyrics, but they mixed it up this time with around 10 versions of Long Songs Are Fucking Shit, including The M62 Is Fucking Shit and an excellent Songs With Bass Players In Them Are Fucking Shit where the bassist refused to play or sing. 

A sit down was needed, so it was off to the Opera House where I’m reasonably sure I saw a stage version of Hi De Hi in the 80s, to see Pete Bentham and the Dinner Ladies. Pete Bentham might look like Willie Carson, but he’s a funny and talented man. He had some important things to say about stuff – I don’t know what, I wasn’t paying attention. A friend of mine is one of the Dinner Ladies, which I thought was a simple job, but it mostly involves dancing like a lunatic to an actual choreographed routine with props on a stage with no fans to cool you down. Far too knackering.

A quick burger and then it was time to catch bits of as many bands as possible before the towel had to be thrown in. Possibly Irish, possibly American, all-girl, I-see-what-you-did-with-the-name-there specialists, Tequila Mockingbird were the absolute highlight of the 10 or so bands I caught snapshots of, not least because they were playing in the only room that wasn’t as hot as the surface of the sun.

And then I was on a train out of Blackpool North on Monday morning at 10:20, the town disappearing behind me like a badly polished turd floating off into the Irish Sea. This was the last Rebellion I’ll be doing for a couple of years due to the fact it’s starting to cost too much – I know that sounds daft after I willingly paid a lot more than usual for a hotel, but never mind. I might have seen fewer bands than in previous years, but it was an absolute blast with friends old and new and I wouldn’t change a minute of it. So in the meantime, Blackpool, it’s not goodbye, but tara chuck.

Oh, and if you enjoyed reading this, why not buy one of my books? There's literally hundreds of each of these sitting in a warehouse somewhere.

Cheers.