NOFX, Brighton Centre
After seeing the London leg of the tour at a huge venue I was itching to get myself down to the coast and lap up modern punk’s Godfathers at a more intimate venue. I say intimate, it was still pretty big; similar to Astoria in London I suppose. Anyways…
I missed the EPOXIES entirely due to the calamity of the night which was basically the venue not having a clue what they were doing and overly searching people as they came in, which is fair enough on it’s own merits but the manner it was carried out in was more than a little cumbersome.
I also basically missed the majority of the SWINGING UTTERS set as I felt like having a drink after being man handled on the door. The venue had 5 bars but only one was serving alcoholic beverages. It’s understandable that it was an over 14’s show, but when people were still getting asked for I.D. at the bar if they actually got through the queue you could only really wonder what the point was. So yeah, did I mention the queue to get to the one bar? Other than it taking about 20minutes to get a drink, the queue was being ‘tightly’ restrained by security and at one point there was a small riot where people had just had enough and barged through the barriers. Moral of the story, open all bars and I.D people if they try and buy alcohol at the bar. This is what they did at the Brixton show and there were no problems. Otherwise face the consequences which can appear to be a riot and a lot of pissed off people who spent most of the support bands set trying to get a drink.
So enough of the ranting, NOFX were fucking brilliant. Possibly five times better than the London show. Not that they were bad at Brixton, they were just so good tonight. They opened strangely with ‘Straight Edge’ and then ‘Fuck the Kids’ which launched them straight into ‘Linoleum’ by this time the whole crowd had erupted more violently than Mt. Vesuvius.
Musically they were a lot tighter than both times I’ve previously seen them and they just seemed to be going off a lot more. El Hefe was particularly on form tonight and was using the entire width of the stage to run about on. The banter between songs was more concise than Brixton but possibly funnier if not hilarious.
Although they played most of the classics; ‘Don’t Call me White’, ‘Bob’, ‘Perfect Government’ etc, a few unexpected tracks were thrown in; ‘The Longest Line’ was certainly not something I ever thought I’d see live, same goes with two personal favourites; ‘Lori Meyers’ and ‘Falling in Love’ which were a really nice touch. When you have back catalogue which spans as many albums as NOFX’s does, it’s inevitable that some tracks will be left at home; ‘Sticking’ in my Eye’ and ‘Leave it Alone’ were both absentees from a long set but it still bordered on that of perfection.
I was worried that the Rock Against Bush backdrop would be an indication of a lot of preaching between songs, but it was kept only to a couple of instances and even then it was carried off better than most bands can manage it. The only other anti-Bush attacks which they seem to be getting a lot of grief for latley were the alternate lyrics to ‘Murder the Government’ and the live favourite ‘Idiot Son of an Asshole’. The latter of which saw the majority of the crowd singing the chorus like it was the band’s biggest hit; I might be mistaken but they’ve not actually released this song. It kind of says something I guess.
If someone were to say to me NOFX are past it, and can’t play live anymore I think I’d actually laugh at them. It really doesn’t get any better than tonight’s performance and especially as it was the last night of the tour. The way they ended the set was just a prime example; El Hefe break dancing, rather well I have to add, mid song and then the song ending with Eric Melvin playing out on an accordion to a crowd who would have been happy enough to stay all night. Classic stuff.
Mike
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