“Thuggery, Bit of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Thuggery”: Rebellion 2024 Day 1
If The Meffs fans are united... - ©dickslaughter.com
Upcoming acts at the Winter Gardens include David Essex, Shirley Ballas, and tributes to everyone from Elvis to Celine Dion. A 4-day punk festival inside the 5 acre, beautifully ornate Renaissance/art deco building that plays host to the kinds of act one would typically find performing on cruise liners (and Bowling For Soup), seems an unlikely prospect. And yet, here we are.
The Pink Diamond Revue - © 1MU
I was keen to see the first act of the day, The Pink Diamond Revue, having caught them at a tribute to punk legend Jordan in Brighton two years prior. They took to the Opera House on a stage larger than the floor space of my house. It should really be hosting a 60-piece orchestra, rather than a guitarist, drummer, and a mannequin. It is to frontman Tim Lane’s credit that his brand of electro-punk filled the space easily, even at 12:45 on a Thursday afternoon, likely before a single drop of Buckfast had been spilled. The use of samples recalls the likes of Pop Will Eat Itself and Big Audio Dynamite, and the production of mid-00’s electroclash acts like Peaches and ADULT., but the vibes were pure glam. Sequin jacket, zero-fucks attitude, and screaming guitars – a perfect start to the festival.
Over in the Empress Ballroom, the main stage of the festival with undoubtedly the Winter Gardens’ bounciest floor, London via Brazil’s Yur Mum sought to redefine drum and bass to their biggest audience to date. Drummer and co-vocalist Fabio Couto kept things moving nice and tight, but it was the voice of bassist Anelise Kunz that blew me away. This woman has lungs, and she delivered their lyrics, trying to make sense of a confusing and confused world, with immense force. If there was a South American influence in their sound, which apparently there is, it wasn’t clear to me – all I heard was a blast of fuzz-punk that rattled my bones in a very enjoyable way.
Animal of Anti Nowhere League - ©dickslaughter.com
in the air-conditioned yet dizzying disco ball-lit Literary stage, we took in a conversation with Animal of Anti Nowhere League. Promoting ‘We Don’t Serve Your Kind ‘Ere’, the audience were treated to a whistle-stop tour of a life of rock and roll excess, delivered by a man who sounds like Mike Reid on 60 a day. Taking in anecdotes about growing up in Tunbridge Wells, being glassed by his wife’s stalker, biker gangs and borstal – the whole talk and, I suspect, the book, was summed up by Animal as, “thuggery, thuggery, thuggery, rock and roll, thuggery.”
That phrase would prove prescient later in the week.
Back in the Ballroom, The Ramonas certainly got the crowd going, particularly with their version of ‘I Wanna Be Sedated’, but as with many tribute bands, I struggled to fully get behind it. The following band, The Meffs, I got completely. Though that may just be local pride, with the band being based in my hometown of Colchester, and lead singer Lily coming from the very town in which my bunker is situated. (I won’t tell you where this is, but I’ll give you a clue – one of their songs, ‘Clowns’, features the refrain, “Fuck Reform.”) The self-described “Britpunk” duo clearly have a huge following at Rebellion, judging by the number of t-shirts I saw around town, and their set of heavy riffs, LGBTQ+ messaging, and security-baiting double-crowd surfing, was a hit with the crowd, and with me.
Lily Hopkins of The Meffs - ©dickslaughter.com
Back on stage for the first time in over 30 years, Brigandage started more timidly than one would hope, but probably as much as would be expected given the decades passed. They hit their stride further on in the set, but this felt like a group that needed a few warm-up sets before taking to the massive Opera House stage. Credit where it’s due though – Michelle’s Sexy Hooligans clothing line is superb.
I only caught a couple of Subhumans songs, and while they sounded tight as ever after 44 years, I did have a wry chuckle as they played ‘This Is Not An Advert’. Given how many Subhumans t-shirts I saw around the festival, not to mention the dozens of stalls selling punk wares inside and outside the Winter Gardens, and the fact they sung that at a festival with a ticket face value of £220… I don’t know, it felt like an advert to me.
MVP of the day (and weekend?) was Carol Hodge. Regular readers of In Spite will already know Hodge from her work with Steve Ignorant, but her set upstairs in the Almost Acoustic room (a bizarre space that reminded me of Tim Rice interviewing Monty Python) almost seemed like the anti-Crass. Sat solo behind a keyboard, she delivered a beautiful set of piano ballads with a stunning voice that brought the phrase, “northern Amanda Palmer” to mind. Her cover of The Offspring’s Smash was a crowd favourite, as was anti-Thatcher song, ‘The Witch Is Dead’. I look forward to hearing her studio work, and to seeing her perform live again.
The Godfathers - © 1MU
Walking out to the theme tune to The Sweeney, The Godfathers set their stall out early – no-nonsense, nihilistic, London rock and roll from a group of seasoned pros, fronted by a Timothy Spall lookalike. Sandwiched between hits and a crowd-pleasing Beastie Boys cover, they performed the whole of 1988’s ‘Birth School Work Death’ start-to-finish, the album that cemented their reputation on both sides of the Atlantic. Though time has mellowed them, the rage of their music lives on. Great stuff.
Lydia Lunch appeared twice on stage today. First, she took to the Literary stage for an interview with John Robb. Frank, funny, contrary, and politically insightful, hearing stories of her youth that later would channel her desire to write and to, “make sense of women’s dark obsessions,” was a real treat for the audience, even if her delivery was world-weary. Down in the Opera House though, the size of the stage, the room, and the occasion, became a major issue. Her stream-of-consciousness prose poetry, delivered against a backdrop of ambient soundscapes, might fit a smaller venue with an audience receptive to her bleak, near-apocalyptic world view. In the middle of a punk rock festival, alone on a stage bigger than many rock venues, in front of an audience that just wanted to hear some rock and roll… in the words of The Stranglers, whose ‘Peaches’ had been on frequent rotation in the Opera House all day, “what a bummer.” I’ve seen Lunch be brilliant on stage before, with Big Sexy Noise and in a duo with Marc Hurtado paying tribute to Suicide. Here, however, I felt she flopped. A real shame.
A much better time was had at Club Casbah, where Dwarves brought a tonne of unearned swagger to the stage in one of the funniest sets of the festival. Braggadocious frontman Blag was often laugh-out-loud funny, with highlights of the banter including claims that they had invented pop-punk, apologising for a lack of songs about Margaret Thatcher, and boasts of his, “big dick swinging across Northern England, motherfuckers.” Though lacking the theatrics of their earlier live shows, the music lived up to the bravado, with hardcore riffs and lyrics of excess, and a sound as dangerous as the pit it created in the audience. “The greatest rock and roll band in the world?” It was true enough while they were on stage.
Jimmy Pursey of Sham 69 - ©dickslaughter.com
The day ended with Sham 69 in the Ballroom, and though nearly 50 years down the line, Jimmy Pursey still sold the youthful anger of ‘Tell Us The Truth’ and ‘That’s Life’. If there were deep cuts here, I didn’t spot them – this was all the hits, including ‘Angels With Dirty Faces’, ‘Borstal Breakout’, ‘George Davis Is Innocent’, ‘If The Kids Are United’, and of course a final encore of ‘Hurry Up Harry’. Ahead of the festival, this was one of the bands I was most excited to see, and they did not disappoint. While the whole band played their parts to perfection, Pursey, doused in more water than a rich Californian’s front garden, was the perfect showman. And at 69 years young, he looks better with his shirt off than I do. I’ve got some work to do.
