Yesterday, Sal and I joined Rob and Claire for an afternoon of Indie fun in Hammersmith at XFM’s Christmas charity gig, the Winter Wonderland, in aid of Shelter. After a few drinks, and a roast lunch, in the Old Ship by the river, we strolled over to the venue just after 5, in time to catch the first band, the winners of the breakfast show’s “School Rock” competition. They were only allowed to play the one song (the dubious cover of No Doubt’s Don’t Speak that had won them the competition), and were quickly ushered off to be replaced by the first of the evening’s “surprise” guests, Pete Docherty. I was really looking forward to this, as I have only ever seen The Libertines fronted by Carl Barat, but unfortunately just as The Libertines are nothing without Pete, so Pete is nothing without them: he stumbled onto the stage clearly somewhat the worse for wear, and began his set by complaining that “they” wouldn’t let the rest of his band play and threatening to start a sit down protest on stage. When he finally got round to playing some music, he massacred a few verses of Time For Heroes (previously one of my favourite Libertines songs) on his acoustic guitar, and tried to dive into the crowd before returning to the stage to half-heartedly go through the motions of Kilimanjaro (joined by the rest of Babyshambles, who had obviously been allowed onto the stage in an attempt to rescue proceedings). Shortly after that he announced to the crowd that they were off to a bar on the Holloway Road, adding: “it’s free to get in” (this to 5,000 people who had paid £20 to attend a Sunday afternoon charity gig that hadn’t started properly yet). With that has was forcibly removed from the stage by a roadie as things were rearranged for the first proper band, The Departure. Unfortunately they were a bit rubbish, and we (Sal) spent most of their set discussing how well endowed the singer appeared to be. I still think it was down to some kind of sock-based padding, but there you go.
Next up was the second “surprise” guest, Tim Wheeler from Ash (according to Christian O’Connell, he was playing on his own because the rest of the band “don’t care about the homeless”). Unlike the drug addled future of rock, Tim knows how to please a crowd, and did so by playing Shining Light and Girl From Mars, which still sounds fantastic even after all these years.
At this point things start to get a bit hazy, and I can’t quite remember the order the bands were on (I’m sorry, but we did get to the pub at 2…), but we definitely saw Kasabian and The Zutons, and they were both great–the latter proving to be much better than the poor man’s Coral I’d always thought them to be (if you’ll forgive the lazy regional stereotyping). The highlight of the night for me came next (after a brief stand-up set from the poor man’s Martin Wickenden, Jimmy Carr). Their singer might be a bit of an idiot, and Golden Touch their best song by miles, but Razorlight were fantastic, almost stealing the show from anthemic Britpop casualties Embrace, although Embrace did have giant balloons and fake snow, so probably a close call.
What a fantastic way to spend an afternoon.