Are You With Them? Are You With Us? Pick a Side.
Bobby Vylan shows the Gammons where to kiss him at The Rebellion Festivals- Photo by @dickslaughter.com
Well, there is a new Bob Vylan album out Humble as the Sun and if you read my story for In Spite Magazine a year ago, Bob Vylan vs Jesus you would know who won. all I will say about the album is I like the positive direction the music is headed. So instead l wanted to find a real hardcore fan to do my writing for me. Someone whom I thought felt like I did when I first started chasing Iggy Pop around before I became Dick Slaughter Photo. Someone willing to hold a place on the rail for hours and then fight to keep it so they can be as close to the magic as possible again and again. I found that person. Every Bob Vylan gig in the UK I have been to they are front and center. That is them in the left corner of the lead-in photo in the rock and roll trance I couldn’t find the woman giving the bouncer the knee to the face. Please allow me to introduce
Didymus Holmes
The Empress Ballroom is at maximum capacity. The Blackpool venue, most closely associated with ballroom dancing sits in the middle of a complex, known as the Winter Gardens, right next door to the Opera House, and all of them are slap-bang in the middle of the annual takeover by punk, ska, two-tone, new wave and reggae acts from across the world known as the Rebellion Festivals.
Blackpool home of the Rebellion Festivals-Photo by @dickslaughter.com
Outside the Ballroom, there’s a bit of a queue to get in–a one-in, one-out policy. Most people lining up are expecting to not get inside, content with hearing a distorted echo of the set from the corridor they’re trapped in. But then suddenly, there’s a mass exodus, as dozens of first-generation punks storm out of the Ballroom, determined to slag off the band they just witnessed, so for those stuck in the corridor, they’re about to get a taste of Bob Vylan after all. Luckily for them, Bobby is ‘busy getting the gammons all sick now’.
Meet and greet with Bobby Vylan at Rebellion 2023- Photo by ©dickslaughter.com
I don’t witness any of this, of course. I’m too busy having fun down the front. It’s just heard about second hand. As the infamous Boomtown Rats set of 2015 will attest to, the old punks don’t like being insulted, and they take umbrage at a young, confident Black man discussing the sad reality that a lot of people who start out left-leaning in their youth start swinging violently towards the right wing as they get older. He’s correct, of course, but they can’t take stock and realize they’re now part of the bigoted establishment they once fought against.
Bobbie and Bobby Vylan at Rebellion 2023- Photo by ©dickslaughter.com
Bob Vylan don’t take prisoners. You’re either along for the ride, however uncomfortable that might make you feel about questioning your privilege, or there’s the door for you to bang your arse on as you leave. If you can’t handle someone pointing out the establishment is racist, homophobic, and transphobic; if you think a lyric about wiping your backside on a St George’s flag is a problem almost 50 years after Johnny Rotten sneered at the Jubilee – are you even a punk anyway?
Bobby Vylan at Rebellion 2023- Photo by ©dickslaughter.com
We don’t always remember the moment we first heard something that changes our perspective. Especially when you consume music near constantly. Every once in a while, though, an artist turns up who makes your heart skip a beat, your breathing stop for a moment while you come to terms with knowing your life will never be the same again.
Bobby Vylan at Rebellion 2023- Photo by ©dickslaughter.com
There’s a line in Bob Vylan’s recent single Hunger Games that reads: “The worst days of our lives will provide great entertainment”. Within the context of the song, this is more to do with living in a society where the TV talk show This Morning can happily make a gameshow out of people being unable to pay their utility bills. Nevertheless, there’s a duality to this lyric, because in our darkest times, sometimes the entertainment we consume can be the lifeline we need.
Bobby Vylan at Rebellion 2022- Photo by ©dickslaughter.com
When the video for “We Live Here” was casually dropped into my social media feeds in the spring of 2020, we were all locked in our homes, desperate to connect with the outside world even as it seemingly burnt to the ground. A lo-fi VHS quality survey of a grotty London suburb, interspersed with high-def shots of two beautiful men: one looking disinterested in everything around him, especially the camera; the other a dreadlocked, faux-fur coated wide-eyed prophet sporting a CRASS T-shirt speaking with blunt precision about exactly how shit it was to be a Black person in the UK, just as the whole world seemed to finally be waking up to the idea that Black Lives Matter.
Bobby Vylan in Los Angeles- Photo by ©dickslaughter.com
Rap and metal had once fused successfully in the early 2000s, but {hed} Planet Earth aside, the genre had been bogged down by cliched American white blokes thinking they were cool. But this was different. This was metal, but infused with punk, and laced with grime. Their music was immediate. Raw but polished to perfection. Words that smacked you around the head but riffs that made it feel like a glorious rollercoaster ride at the same time. It was unmistakably British, uncompromisingly challenging, and I had to know more.
Bobbie and Bobby Vylan in Los Angeles- Photo by ©dickslaughter.com
Within a few hours, I’d bought up everything I could buy – digitally and physically I’d learned that Bob Vylan comprised two men with pseudonyms: Bobby Vylan on vocals and guitars, Bobbie Vylan on percussion, and disinterested gazes into the middle distance. Going through a series of personal traumas, from bereavement to workplace bigotry myself, their music became a lifeline in the darkest of hours. Their politics aligned with mine, but they were also challenging my worldview and making me question myself, my place in the world, and how I could better make a stand for others who needed my help. And trapped in our houses, live entertainment was currently a thing of the past, I knew that as soon as gigs were a thing again, I had to see them live to experience this energy in the flesh.
Bobby Vylan in Los Angeles- Photo by ©dickslaughter.com
My first opportunity came in June 2021, when Bob Vylan headlined a Rock Against Racism show at Rough Trade, Nottingham. Packed into a tiny venue for the first time in a long time, witnessing history as this band, who had nothing but a drum kit, a microphone, and some backing tracks, slammed that crowd harder than any band I’d witnessed in at least 15 years. Before the end of the night, Bobby is dangling upside down from the lighting rig, the crowd is moshing and throwing themselves at one another, and over 12 months of Covid-induced frustrations are being unleashed. But it’s more than that – these songs are challenging the status quo, making an (admittedly mostly white) audience think about everything they take for granted and everything that’s taken from them.
Bobbie Vylan in Los Angeles- Photo by ©dickslaughter.com
At the end of the show, I decided to try and approach the pair. Bobby is swamped by people, but I spot Bobbie sitting quietly on the end of a sofa. As I go to say hi, he starts by telling me: “Bobby will be free in a minute.” I glance over at Bobby, then say something like: “You’re just as good as he is, so hiya!” We chat for a bit, and then eventually Bobby frees himself from the clutches of an overzealous female admirer and comes to say hi too. As I bid them both goodnight and set off back to my hotel, I can’t help but be struck by their gentleness and eloquence – a pair of genuinely nice guys who just happen to make music that punches you in the face.
Bobby And Bobbie Vylan with fans at Rebellion 2022- Photo By ©dickslaughter.com
The next time I see them, it’s support slots on The Offspring’s tour. I managed to blag two seats for the Manchester Arena show even though I was going to another gig that night, confusing the staff of the venue by leaving after the BV set. The following night, I’m in Leeds to see the whole shebang. And sure, The Offspring are great, and The Hives take the roof off the place, but it’s Bob Vylan who gets the most interesting reaction, as an audience of 30/40 somethings who like a bit of pop-punk get slammed by the blistering honesty of I Heard You Want You Country Back, Chat Shit Get Banged and We Live Here. There’s an uncomfortable air I can only attribute to white privilege. It’s oddly hilarious and depressing in equal measure, but it’s also balanced out by the people you can visibly see having their minds blown and loving it.
Bobby Vylan at the Electric Ballroom- Photo by ©dickslaughter.com
That’s the vibe I experienced at the band’s two Rebellion sets in 2022 and 2023, down at the front with the faithful Church of Vylan gang who have been recruited to the cause over the last few years. The UK tour of 2022 was all tightly packed intimate spaces. By the end of the year, it’s a celebration of chart and festival successes at the Electric Ballroom in Camden: the locals baffled by the giant flag drenched over the iconic venue’s signage for the night. Post Rebellion 2023 and those grumpy old fart walkouts, there’s another UK tour of bigger venues – I take in Leeds and Manchester, amazed but not surprised to see them pack out The Ritz, wondering if it’ll be the Apollo next.
Bobby Vylan at the Electric Ballroom- Photo by ©dickslaughter.com
In the middle of all this is the Top 20 Album The Price of Life, which expands their sound without losing their venom, and now as the summer of 2024 looms on the horizon, and the days get longer and lighter, it’s time for Album #3, Humble as the Sun. That biting satirical savvy isn’t waning, with every angle of the UK’s toxic culture being explored, dissected, and openly mocked (particular shout out to the fragile masculinity ode He’s a Man, which in a live context is used as an opportunity to let women and non-binary people take control of the pit without dickhead blokes getting in the way). But there’s also hope, positivity, and a little bit more of the charming personality the Bobs present when you get to speak to them. Bob Vylan Dream Big and that dream is now a reality, on their terms. And if they can do it, they feel, so can you.
Bobbie and Bobby Vylan at the Electric Ballroom- Photo by ©dickslaughter.com
I didn’t expect when I hit play on that music video back in 2020 to have seen this band nine times under three years, bought each album on multiple formats, and have every intention of supporting these magnificent buggers for the rest of my life or their careers, whichever is shorter. But wouldn’t life be boring if everything went exactly as you thought it was going to?
Jorge Felizardo Bob Vylan’s What is Going On? guy at the Electric Ballroom- Photo by ©dickslaughter.com
Sometimes you can’t quite explain it. That lightning-in-a-bottle moment that hits you like a ton of bricks but feels like a ton of feathers you just want to nestle in. Bob Vylan was one such moment. Bob Vylan are that moment. Long may they continue to be.
Oh, and don’t forget, the Queen killed Diana.
Lozzy, Bobby, Bobbie, and Didymus- Photo courtesy Didymus Holmes
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