Coke Live 'n Local 05

Despite not winning an acoustic guitar or an xBox, this was an event I'm glad I went to...

The fun started when we were queuing up. There were announcements over the loudspeakers informing us that bottled drinks had to be poured into cups - fair enough... explaining how to scan our tickets - ok... outlining what a barcode looked like - what?!?! They obviously don't think much of the youth of today!

Anyway, you know you're old when you get a perfunctory nod by security. That is, everyone apart from W, whose bag of Safeway groceries clearly made him look dangerous... the thing was, our Amish boy had even (partially) shaved recently!!!

Anyway, I better get onto the music. There were 5 bands, which I thought got progressively better, separated by interludes from DJ 'Make Some Noise!!!'.

The very young-looking The Gear were on first, and unfortunately the loudest cheers came when they announced they were playing their last song. They were followed by The Spazzys who I enjoyed more, but their voices were disappointingly drowned out by their guitars.

The most curious act of the night was definitely P Money. He did a surprisingly small amount of singing / rapping. Not only was his main hit pre-recorded, but the moment the kids went crazy was when he played original versions of Blur's Song 2 and Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit. Ah, I guess classics will always be classics...

This was proven again with Spiderbait, whose songs are actually very short. I loved Calypso and of course Buy Me a Pony, but the most popular was definitely Black Betty.

Finally the band the mosh pit were waiting for, The Living End. I loved the songs from 'our generation', as W puts it... I think Prisoner of Society and Second Solution are brilliant songs. Although I only realised tonight that Second Solution is actually about a guy on death row... I guess 'And what I wanna know is will I get death row' makes more sense than 'And what I wanna know is where I get to go'...

I think the scariest part of the night was realising that I was not that young anymore. When I was a teenager, I didn't necessarily immerse myself in the typical 'teenager' mentality. But rather than feeling relief and validation that most people my age now see the boys as abusive, the girls as badly-dressed, it just makes me feel old...

I guess that's what you get for going to a Coke-sponsored 'alcohol-free, drug-free' event.

Thanks for the ticket Fi!