We arrived at the closing night of this year's Resolution Festival at the 100 Club to hear Bottlekids singer introducing them as coming from the arse end of nowhere or Chepstow if you prefer as we were at the cloakroom, they were soon shouting that they were good for it, whatever it might be.
I'll be guessing that the next song was Right To Breath a searing angry punk rant at the collapse of sanity around that phrase and all the violence involved when your Already Dead. We then got a blast of yeah yeah yeahs to sing and bounce along too. As they Welcomed us to the bands side, that's all about the small town isolation as they want to have fun and be able to go to a show but there's Nowt to do.
Next up and the best band tonight Menace as Noel Martin and the current Menace line up of Dave Jenkins, Simon Edwards and Peter Bradshaw get the 100 Club shouting One Two One Two at them in no time at all, as Noel tries to get that Monkey Off His Back once more, although his aching bones were more to do with falling off stage in Rome last week.
They are still Screwed Up just a bunch of Party Animals having a Sunday night knees up. They never want to fit in and always want to be Banned from C & A top notch bouncy good fun. Every passing year I think they are more than glad I'm Still Alive and they are still potent punk rock fun and going for it. They preach the Punk rock creed of My Life My Way, while encouraging half the audience up on stage to dance with them or to sing backing vocals as they do for the rest of the set.
As ever they want nothing to do with Politicians as Leave me Alone makes perfectly clear. Fuck you and Guilty and Full Of shit keeps the spleen nice and vented and the gnawing guitars and strident drumming enforces the point that If You Told The Truth nails to the wall, complete with backing vocals from random punks. They got an encore Noel finished things off by thanking us all as they played Insect Society.
Then it was time for 999 who have the bands usual line-up in recent years of Nicky Cash, Guy Days, Arturo Bassick, Stuart Meadows they opened as usual these days with Black Flowers For The Bride sounding in good form. Then as they started Inside Out things fell apart as first Nick's microphone stopped working and he was getting electric shocks from his guitar, after a short break while things got sort of sorted they tried again but without Nicks guitar, it was a bit off but okay.
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Hit Me had Nicky getting hit with a few more jolts of Electric as he stayed as just singer, He rabble roused and got us all going for Boys In The Gang as Arturo kept pulling ever more absurd faces.
Nick then risked strapping his guitar back on for recent song My Dad Trashed My Submarine a song of childhood trauma that still sticks to Nicky. The guitar was still shocking away so Nicky put it down for Feeling Alright With The Crew which was hardly the case as they battled bravely on for this performance some 46 years after they first played at the 100 club.
Lets Face It was a bit of a blur as Nicky did his best to get that guitar to play without shocking him. He put it down again from there normal cover of Sam The Sham's Lil Red Riding Hood that Guy really worked hard to play both guitar parts on. Lie Lie Lie was as usual dedicated to our political leaders with a good angry twin guitar attack.
As ever they stalked the stage for No Pity as Nicky as usual told us what he Didn't Wanna Know, this was a bit ragged and frenetic, but they still got the Titanic Reaction that song deserves. Don't You Know I Need You should have been dedicated to shock free equipment.
Nicky put his guitar back down for Emergency a song that sadly sounds all to current in the times we live in and had a good sing along from the audience. Nicky picked his guitar back up for the closing fusillade of Nasty Nasty and the crowd pleasing sing along too Homicide that guaranteed they left the stage to decent cheers.
They came back and encored with My Street Stinks that got everyone going one last time and then Nicky dedicated I'm Alive to original member Pablo LaBritain who was in the audience for this show. It went down well but due to the technical issues this set felt more ramshackle than it should have done.
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