The Libertines

This is probably my favourite band that I have never seen in concert. It was a strange experience, intense and tense, wild and unexpected. My biggest feeling was of being out of control. I got that feeling that is what rock concerts are for of an ecstatic loss of identity but it also felt strange and dangerous this time, like no one knew what they were doing here, like you could get hurt.

So Pete Doherty comes out and starts the gig by throwing his mike stand into the crowd. Starts the gig.  I mean this is a big end of the show trash the stage finishing move, but he starts like this, just so you know what kind of gig it's going to be.

I didn't get there crazy early, and I'm kinda too old to push to the front, so I was in the back of the initial press, which was a great spot, people were still jumping up and down and having a great time, but there was like maybe a foot of space between us.  I was centered right in front of the central microphone, which was awesome for me because that was in front of Carl Barat's mic, who is my favourite member of the band.

The Libertine's music is a mix of really intense, fast paced punk rock and thoughtful alt ballads, and they used this contrast masterfully to ratchet up and down the pressure of the crowd. Like right when we were about to riot, they would take it down a notch, and when we caught our breath, they'd take it up a notch. 

It was a long set, well a regular length main set and then their encore set was like six songs long instead of one or two which made it feel like a whole second act.

And the crowd, including me of course, knew nearly all words to nearly all songs, so it was an energy that could be brought to a boil really easily.

So I'm rocking back there and they're playing some songs definitely not on my favourites list, but still great and I'm jumping and singing. A mosh pit starts up and I stay behind it a bit but decide to mosh.

A few words about mosh pits. So they've got this reputation as an out of control street brawl, where people get punched in the face and stuff.  And maybe some of them are, but this has been my experience. Generally speaking there's like a bunch of giant burly shaved head neo Nazi looking people you'd find really threatening anywhere else, and they kind of form a protective ring. And then you've got a middle section where a bunch of people, from like 3-100 including some other muscley guys and some kind of wiry punks that got stuff started and you'd all be launching yourselves at each other off balance and crazy.  And the big people on the rim sort of shove the people who launch/ fall into them back into the centre and the wiry punks launch themselves all crazy and airbourne. Yes it's a largely male environs, but I'm there and you also get some little punk rock girls who ping pong ball themselves around this.

So injury is a possibility of course. I have been elbowed in the face before, I've lost a shoe, done the rest of the mosh pit hopping, and then couldn't find it after the gig. I've never gone down but I've come really close and had to be lifted up bodily. Jem's come out with a boot print on his face before. It's a chaotic scene, you are physically out of control, and a lot of times you launch yourself or are shoved so that you would fall down if you didn't fall into someone else, and that's kind of the whole point. The mosh pit is a community experience, and while it's a violent kind of cuddle, it feels like a hug. And like when someone falls, air opens up around them right away and someone pulls them up fast fast because that's dangerous, there's a lot of boots down there. And the biggest burliest guys, the ones who could really take you out, they're kind of the den mothers of the scene, they keep a kind of line between the pit and the people just standing around it, and pick up people who are falling and don't get hurt when people launch into them. And people are a little gentler shoving a smaller less muscley person than a bigger one.

And I have heard other people talk about the kind of pits where like it's just a fist fight and you want to fuck people up but it's ok, like a fight club orgy or something, but I've never been in one like that, never seen one, or anybody doing anything like that. I have almost passed out before in crowd press more than once, but like when I half fainted on this other girl she looked around for a sec like what's up with you drunko and then when she realised I was in strife, helped get me out of the press where I'd be safe.

Also I'd say because I came up in the mid-late 90's, it was kind of past the true era of crowd surfing. It was big in the Nirvana era, and some people got dropped on their heads, there were maybe even a couple of deaths, but suffice it to say that it got big and then around my teenage years there was a real crackdown, like people would be ejected from the venue if they did it. So people still did, and I was at one gig where the guy was trying to surf away from security so they didn't eject him like the world's cutest road chase. People still did it, but it would be like one or two times during a concert, not a big thing.

So this gig, the mosh pit was really weird and out of control. Not the orderly caring pod with roles and rules, but like an every man for himself kind of thrash dance crash. Like there was no barrier, that's the first thing, which did a lot to make it really chaotic because it was hard to tell if anyone in the pit wanted to be there, which is important when you're smashing into someone, and also it would move all over the place, be more intense in one section and then another. And there was no rhythm, because everyone was just crashing and thrash dancing in their own way so to stay up I would just grab onto a couple of rando dudes and ride them like a sail.  And like giant muscley dudes were ping ponging around like little girls and like crashing into people much smaller than them. It was chaos, like intense and a little scary, you had no idea what was going to happen.  I saw like four people lose their shoes and a guy go down and get back up again.  I lost track at some points of who I was and where I was and like for I Get Along (My second favourite song and played in their encore set, and like their most moshable crazy fast punk number) I wound up exiting the mosh pit to the side so I could watch the band because I could kind of not see or even hear them anymore over the madness. Straight up crazy.


And like people were crowd surfing continuously and wildly and everyone helping them up and then crashing them away. And the screams man my eardrums got blasted as much by the crowd as the speakers and you know they're not amplified.


Ok back to the Libertines themselves. They had a really mobile band presence, Carl would walk from the drums to his mike a lot, both would face away and towards the crowd at intervals, and they would go over to each other's mikes, a lot of movement from both Pete and Carl especially Carl, and you saw a bit why Pete was seen as more the front man because he was definitely better at intense mic faces and spent much less time with his back to the crowd.

They split lead vocalist a lot, but I don't think I realised how much. They trade off every song, every line, and it's a really shared effort, maybe more than any band I've ever seen. And they do this thing which is pretty famous, where they share a mic and are also sharing vocals, singing together or trading off, and they get so close, so close and whisper things to each other between songs, it's like they're making out. With the mic, with each other.

What you have to remember is that the Libertines are a love band, like the White Stripes, or Sonic Youth. What the band is really about, more than any one of them, more even than the music, is their love for each other.  I saw this album cover on a billboard in London in 2004 and was so drawn to it I bought it, and it still says everything you need to know about the band.

Their intimacy, their self destruction, their tenderness, their intensity. They are lovers and friends, and bandmates, and co writers and co singers and all those things are the same thing. (Btw there's no reason to believe that Pete Doherty and Carl Barat actually slept together but the irrelevance of that is part of the point.) They are darkly sexual and innocently tender at the same time. They share everything, even their tattoos.

So then also remember that this band being back together is like playing with your exes. Pete was a junkie and blew a lot of gigs, tours, relationships. He got kicked out of the band, but neither of them was as good apart. There is a spark missing from both Babyshambles and Dirty Pretty Things albums (a spark not missing from either Graham Coxon or Gorrilas albums because Blur was about something different) and that spark is their love. Their love, more than either of them, drove this music.

So now they're back together making out with microphones and group hugging with the whole four band and a roadie who I guess has been there from the start as well. And it's good, don't get me wrong it's good, but my guess is it's not what it was, because they used to be 20 year old men who were in love and now they're 40 year old men who get along. It's different.  But they still have something.

And about halfway through the first set, in the mosh pit and beyond I reached that feeling, that rock show feeling where you have a loss of personal identity, you stop the selfish and self involved posturing which low level buzzes tediously through our lives and you are in the music and in each other. And paired with that is this transcendant ecstasy. 

My top moment of the gig?  They played my favourite song as the closing of the first set The Good Old Days, and I lost my shit completely of course, it was sweet enough even live and then those crashing guitars which only reach their zenith live.

I got a souvenir, they were handing out set lists and I got a shredded scrap of one, kind of representative of this crazy chaotic, maybe a little broken show. Rock on Albion.