Looking back on November 2009 (part 1)

In fine month of November 2009 my home town of Swindon was graced by a little wave of rock gods, Motörhead, one of my favourite bands, and Alice Cooper, who I’m seeing again at Sonisphere. Being the budding young rocker that I am, I went and saw both of them along with my motley crew (no relation to the Mötley Crüe) of metal heads.


The first of them playing was Motörhead, who were being supported by another two great bands, The Damned and Girlschool, as well as another lesser known band, Straight Lines, that were also pretty good even when compared with the others. Straight Lines were the first ones on stage with a performance that was full of energy but suffered from being in the shadow of the other support bands as well as Motörhead. This early on people were still getting in the mood, and getting people into that mood is what a warm up act’s job is.

Girlschool were next on, and as soon as that lady played the first bar on her beautiful, white dean flying V the crowd went wild! I will be honest and admit that I haven’t always been convinced by women in the rock industry, partly because of the way women present themselves in other branches of music. I had heard of Girlschool and hopped that could change my opinion on that and, boy, did they change my opinion! They are most definably a band I could go see again, on their own or supporting someone else. Their performance was only slightly damped for me by a fat, balding man shouting the very original lines of “get your tits out love” at Deirdre Cartright (lead guitar).

After a short interlude The Damned were on stage and were again a phenomenal success with the crowd. Immediately having a connection with us. Their punk rock sound went across the hall and livened everyone up. Both Captain Sensible (guitar) and Dave Vanian (vocals) had a real stage presence so not only their music was good but just watching them talk was entertaining, the line of “it’s quality not quantity with the Damned” when referring to the number of albums in recent years was a particular favourite of mine. Even what was going wrong was entertaining to watch, when Captain Sensible’s guitar was coming loose it was fun to watch a roadie run on stage and try and fix the problem with duct tape.

When the Damned had done their bit it was final time for Motörhead, the band all these people had come along for. One of the first things Lemmy did when he got on stage was turn all the amps up to full, I could feel each of the notes he played echoing in my chest. At this point adrenalin kicked in and me, my friends and all the rest of the crowd went mental. We pushed our way foreword as much as we could and the three of use that had made it that far started to headband, shout, and throw our fists in the air, everything you should do at a rock concert. At one point, during a solo, the drummer started producing tons of sticks that he hurled, over his shoulder and into the air. Twice my friend Chris clambered upon one of my other friends shoulders, something that got the attention of the band and (so we believe) resulted in a drum stick getting thrown our way towards the end of the gig. We all went home with ringing in our ears, sore throats and still pumped from the evening, it was an evening well spent!