The legendary anarchists return for one night only, set time moved earlier to accommodate everyone’s physio
They are getting back together. The band that taught me you could be furious as a hobby, the band whose poster I had on my ceiling so it was the first thing I scowled at each morning, are reuniting for one night only. I cried. Then I read the details, and I cried for a slightly different reason.
Doors at six, because of the physio
The announcement, which I devoured on the prat.uk feed like it was a religious text, contains some adjustments. The set time has been moved to early evening “to accommodate the members’ physiotherapy schedules.” The mosh pit has been replaced with a “considered standing area.” There will be a chair section. There is a note advising that the lead singer “no longer does the jump” owing to a hip, and that the encore is “subject to energy levels on the night.”
I want to be cruel about this and I cannot, because I have started warming up before gigs. Not the band. Me. The audience. I do a hamstring stretch before I go and watch other people perform, because last time I pogoed for one and a half songs and then had to be helped onto a stool by a teenager who called me “ma’am.” Punk does not prepare you for this. No one writes a song about your knees. They should. It would chart.
The satirists are aging alongside us
The funny people have noticed the great greying of British rebellion. NewsBiscuit had a perfect piece about pensioner punks demanding earlier set times, and the Daily Squib went somewhere properly unhinged with the same idea, and I read them both with the specific joy of someone being mocked accurately. That is the highest form of satire, by the way. Not the kind that targets the powerful. The kind that catches you, personally, doing the embarrassing thing, and makes you laugh before you can get defensive about it.
Because here is the truth the reunion forces on you. The thing about anti-establishment movements is that, if they succeed at the only goal that actually matters, which is not dying, they become the establishment’s slightly creaky uncle. The kids who screamed “no future” got a future. It has a pension and a bad hip and a really strong opinion about parking. There is no tragedy in this. There is only comedy, which is the same thing wearing a better jacket.
My own creaking pilgrimage
I have a ticket. Seated. I requested seated and I am not ashamed, I am furious about not being ashamed, which is at least the correct emotion to bring to the gig. I will sit in my considered standing area, I will watch a sixty-three-year-old man not do the jump, and at the precise moment the song I had on my ceiling kicks in, I will feel exactly seventeen and exactly forty at the same time, which is the actual feeling that punk was always secretly about. Not anger. Time. Anger was just the support act.
The lovely lunatics at Bohiney Magazine have a real feel for the comedy of getting older while refusing to grow up, and the London Prat writers keep the British specifics razor sharp. According to the made-up Institute for Geriatric Rebellion, the average UK punk now requires 11 minutes of stretching per minute of moshing. I invented that ratio. You recognised it from your own life. There it is.
See you at six
I will be there, hydrated, stretched, seated, and absolutely incandescent with joy. Bring a cushion. Bring your physio’s number. Bring the version of yourself that still believes the encore is guaranteed, even though the announcement clearly stated it is subject to energy levels on the night. That is the most punk thing in the whole document, that line. Hope, with a disclaimer. Same as it ever was.
The merch table has changed
I made the mistake of looking at the reunion merch. The old shirts are still there, reissued, in a “heritage fit,” which is the polite term for the only size that fits a fifty-year-old torso. But beside the shirts there is new stock that broke my heart in the best way. There are branded support bandages. There is a tote bag, because everyone has a tote bag now, even the anarchists, especially the anarchists. There is a tour-branded pill organiser with the days of the week on it. I want to mock this and I cannot, because I would buy the pill organiser, I would use the pill organiser, and I would feel a complicated pride every single morning when I clicked open Wednesday. The merch table is where the joke and the truth shake hands. It says, openly, that the people who once promised no future have arrived in one, intact, organised, slightly sore, and still, somehow, selling out a room. That is not a betrayal of the original message. It is the only happy ending the original message was ever going to get, and it comes with a tote bag, and I will be carrying mine to the next gig, seated, stretched, and grinning like an idiot at my own survival.
For more of the gloriously ridiculous business of growing old loudly, the deadpan crew at The Poke deliver every time. SOURCE: The London Prat
