thoughts n pictures

09 12 08
Sham 69 at the Nachtleben Frankfurt
First time for me to visit a Punkrock show at this venue, I wondered why so many people missed this show. The club was not even near to be sold out, but it got a nice mix of people there downstairs. Punks n Skins n Rockers at all ages came to see the classy Sham69, united kids as claimed in their most familiar song 'If the kids are united, they will never be devided' which the band played as the last encore.
But lets start with the beginning. As I walked in about 9:10 Monkey Suite, a lady-fronted local punk'n'roll band, were already on stage.
The band who already had a 'single of the month' and a top 20 indiecharts hit in the netherlands and germany performed their set with a little less empathy i had hoped for, i would have given my last shirt to open the mighty Sham69 with my garage band. At least the singer gave her very best, she screamed her words, whirled her purse and shook her back. Nice to listen to and nice to look at. The band promoted their recent selftitled cd, gave an homage to the early 80ties punk rock, and had a cool surf song as an encore.
After a 20 minutes changeover a quite histrionic intro yelled from the speakers to introduce the great Sham 69. They entered the stage and started to rock.
Almost as powerful as in their old days, they dragged the proned audience from the beginning on. Not only with 'hey little rich boy' at number 2, they loaded their set with all the old classics, just to name a few: rip off, ulster, i'm a man I'm a boy, tell us the truth, sunday morning nightmare, george davis is innocent, hersham boys.
It was really great to watch the old dogs having that much fun on stage, esp Dave Parsons seemed to have loads of lark swinging his guitar. After about an hour of playing old shool punk rock, dedicating songs (Tim V announced white riot to his old friend Joe Strummer), introducing the band (again the energetic Al Campbell of UK Subs on the bass) they left the stage and came back quickly after the crowd shouted for an encore.
As already mentioned they ended up with 'if the kids are united' and left us a night to remember.