The Vibrators
The Hog and
Hosper, Pontypool.
30/03/12
 |
| Image credit - YRV* photography |
‘MARKY’S JUST
PASSED OUT ON THE BOG THE MAD OLD GIT’ bellows a swaying Farringdon clad lad.
Punk might not be dead, but its’ followers aren’t faring so well.
The year is
2012, and in a Welsh pub 50 miles south of somewhere, punk77 legends, The
Vibrators, are playing a selection of their 36 year old back catalogue, to a
moderately sized audience consisting of punks that never grew up.
Highlight of
the set comes in the form of the bands most notorious hit ‘Baby, Baby’ with
frontman Peter Honkamaki, who this evening has shown he is more than capable of
taking the egotistical frontman duties from Knox, howling in the unsuspected
crowd’s faces and saluting his Epiphone Thunderbird to the sky, simultaneously
knocking over the venue’s Christmas lighting décor. How’s that for anarchy in
the UK?
The set takes
a downward turn when the band showcases songs from their latest album ‘Under
the Radar’. Sweaty group photos are
taken, old punks stumble over their trashed Dr Martens to the bar and a
colossal sized gentleman, which could have well been a senior Vyvyan Basterd,
heckles ‘PLAY SOME OLD SONGS YOU FUCKING HIPPIES’.
Punk might not be dead, but I could probably drink
it under the table.
Critical Evaluation
As my review was on a gig of a punk band, plenty of mentions
to the bricolages of punk subculture are naturally in my review, such as
references to ‘Dr Martens’ and ‘Farringdon clad lads’. (Hebdidge quoting Ernst.
2008) The gig itself was exactly what a punk gig is expected to be like with its
“high energy…and abundance of audience participation” (O’Hara, 2000) so I tried
to convey this with aggressive adjectives such as ‘howling’ ‘saluting’ and ‘sweaty’,
to attempt to recreate the gigs atmosphere. Although I am pleased with my
review on a whole, I admit I did not think about my target audience when
writing it. The use of taboo language in my review rules out the possibility of
it being used in a mainstream magazine/webzine and the fact that the gig was a
small event in a small venue further rules out this possibility. The most appropriate
place for this review to be published is a blog, and alas, that is where it is.
HEBDIDGE, D. 2008. Subculture: The Meaning of Style.
London: Routeledge
O'Hara,
C (2000). The Philosophy of
Punk: More Than Noise!!. Birmingham: AK Press.
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