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Review: 'Stone Free Festival at The O2 Arena Greenwich'
'Alice Cooper, The Darkness, Apocalypica,'   

-  Album: 'Blackberry Smoke, Therapy? Michael Monroe etc.'
-  Genre: 'Rock'

Our Rating:
With Alice Cooper, The Darkness, Apocalyptica, Blackberry Smoke, Therapy? Michael Monroe, The Virgin Mary's, RPM's, Jackamon, Jared James Nichols

This is the first festival of the year for me, although we are only going to the first day as apart from Wilko Johnson there isn't anything I want to see on the second day! This festival is all in the Millennium Dome and uses The Arena and Indigo as two main stages with a couple of other smaller stages and a record fair that is trying to sell Fotheringay albums for £250 and a Velvet Underground one for £400. The Festival also has the unusual game plan of all the bands on the second stage play in the afternoon before you go into the main arena in the evening so you can see all the acts on the two main stages.

We got in early enough to catch the tail end of the day's Opening act Jared James Nichols playing in Indigo. He is fronting a trio of long haired guys playing what sounds like some pretty monumental 70's style blues rock with a good dose of Boogie involved as if they listen to a lot of Allman Brothers and Spirit. The Closing version of Mississippi Queen was a lot of fun and they went down well with the still sparse crowd that appeared to be mainly Music Biz faces and hardened gig nuts.

Next on was Jackamon who are a female fronted 6 piece who play soul rock for want of a better description of the band's sound the woman has a great voice as long as she doesn't slip into her falsetto that is more like a caterwauling scream often of anger at the fact that she keeps getting dumped. Yes her getting dumped seems to be the bands sole lyrical concern as no matter what she does blokes seem to just dump her after they have got what they wanted.

Considering they only play 6 songs I was surprised that 3 of them seem to use the same basic tune and melody which makes them a touch limited. Personally I think she needs to become a full on histrionic Soul singer with a better band than she has at the moment, or some real help in developing the bands palette.

We then popped out to the new bands stage to catch about a song and a half of the RPM's a very young trio who sounded like they want to be a cross between Prefab Sprout and Aztec Camera and give them a few years and well dreams might come true, for me I'd rather go and watch the band change over in Indigo than listen to more than a song and half.

Next on were The Virgin Mary's a young trio who play power punk with some full on screaming shouting vocals that work really well, it helps they have some cool sounding songs and seemed to get the place going a bit. Most of the songs are about relationships but they combine it with some really good angry punk about the Chaos that You Sow and how they are Running for their lives. By the time they close with the very cool Just A Ride a song that could easily have been about the singer in Jackamon they appear to have won most of the room over, certainly no one walked out on them.

Next on was the first of the bands we had actually come to see Michael Monroe an act it seems strange to see in the middle of the afternoon. Still they opened with This Ain't No love Song with Michael as ever running all over the place and getting us all going. The Old Kings Road was a reminder for me of how I used to spend my Saturday afternoons and saw Sami Yaffa and Steve Conte high kicking in time with each other as they played the chorus.

Trick Of The Wrist was played at a furious pace that Michael seemed to want to increase. '78 kept the pace up and Karl Rosqvist's drumming was really driving the whole thing along. There was a slight incongruity hearing them play the Ballad Of the Lower East Side in such a corporate and clean environment as this but still it sounds great and we all sang along to the chorus as a roar of Hallelujah's went up for the Junkies Pimps and Queens.

They then went back to the Man With No Eyes for about the slowest song of the set and it still sounds great and led them into a great version of Malibu Beach Nightmare that had Sami Yaffa really kicking out on his bass.

Superpowered Superfly was dedicated to Ginger who wrote it for the band when he was a member and went down a storm before they played Dead Hearts On Denmark Street about the ongoing destruction of the London we love and written by Rich Jones the bands current rhythm Guitarist who was as expected in fine form. Nothing's Alright then blew through like a whirlwind and reminding us of the good old days of the 60's to the 90's but of course not sounding nostalgic.

As they were running out of time Michael gave us a choice of songs and the crowd voted for Tragedy and he ran all over the place while singing it as the band kept pumping it out before they closed with a brilliant version of Dead Jail Rock & Roll complete with some frantic Harmonica playing and then they were gone about an hour too soon for my liking, but certainly one of the highlights of the day.

Next up were festival favourites Therapy? Not sure I've ever seen them not at a festival, but they are always worth seeing like this, and unlike the last time I saw them this time I don't have to spend the first 5 songs trying to get into an over filled tent for the privilege. They open with the adrenal rush of Still Hurts that gets lots of us going as does a great version of Isolation that proves they are on good form.

Die Laughing is played at breakneck speed and I was surprised to see one or two people leaving a trend that continued through most of the rest of the set. Lonely, Cryin' Only has some good backing vocals from the bands hidden guitarist the guy that's too shy to be easily seen.

As ever they have us bouncing all over the place and work the crowd really well Tides really sounded great and as you'd expect Teethgrinder sounded pretty incredible but the high spot of the set came in Potato Junkie that was introduced as James Joyce Is Fucking My Sister of course he is! Anyway not only was it sounding great with most of us singing along to that chorus but in the middle it broke down and they went into Son Of a Gun by The Vaselines making me very happy indeed before one more sing a long chorus of James Joyce is fucking my sister damn she must be sore by now.

Knives and Nowhere flew by before they closed the set with a good bouncy version of Screemager that still sounds great live. Yes Therapy? are still well worth seeing at a festival.

It was now time to go into the main O2 arena for the rest of the festival, we found our seats about halfway down the arena with a good view of how empty the place still was by the time Blackberry Smoke came on to try to bore us all to death, damn they were turgid somnambulant southern rock with no boogie what so ever it was hard staying awake during their set.

Next on were Apocalyptica another stalwart festival band who always win over new fans and this set was no exception to the rule. They opened with a cool metal instrumental with the three cello's really shredding it before they went into a Long version of Master Of Puppets that had lots of the audience singing along to this instrumental cello metal.

They then brought out there vocalist and although he's perfectly good at what he does they are better without vocals no matter how hard he worked the room it was all about what they do with the cello's. Beautiful Miserable is a good message and the superfast bowing was great. About the best of the songs with vocals was I Don't Care which was the last song he sang on.

The first song back as an instrumental was introduced as Ready For Metal and was properly monumental with one of them playing his cello behind the back of his head and then rolling on the stage! They then told us all about their new video for Battery that is on the re-issue of the bands classic does Metallicca album for its 20th anniversary so instead of playing Battery instead they did a great version of Seek & Destroy that was just great to hear and yes we all sang the chorus for them.

They closed with what they described as a reward for listening to all the metal yes they played some Classical shit or in old school terms a classical medley that just proved what a great band they are. They will be touring for the Metallicca anniversary later in the year and all next year from the sound of it. Go see them!!

Next on was The Darkness a band I never wanted to see and having now seen them never want to see again! The opening song was a shambles they all sounded out of time with each other and Justin hit that falsetto wail that just grates. Growing On Me was the first song of theirs I recognized and it sounded ok but they are so cliched and so one dimensional and not for me.

The set plodded on with too much time wasted between songs on Justin playing guess the fans name, it was almost funny once but more than once just became boring. About as good as they got was on Get Your Hands Off My Woman to which most of us probably wanted to shout Why what you gonna do about it.

Just before the end of the set Justin moaned that they had to cut short their set as Apocalyptica had over run by 15 minutes! I was so thankful to Apocalyptica for that I may need to buy another one of their albums to thank them properly!

Either way The darkness did the decent thing and ended the set with yep you guessed it I Believe In A Thing Called Love the bands preposterous hit that normally sounds better being sung by hundreds of drunks in a bar than hearing them do it live, but yes it sounded ok and went down pretty well too.

Finally it was time for today's headline act who was playing in his 6th country in 10 days like your typical act in his 70's Alice Cooper is back to blow us all away. He opened singing beneath a shower of sparks on Black Widow and even though the Arena was just over half full he had us all eating out of the palm of his hand right from the start. No More Mr Nice Guy sounded great and as ever this was a well-staged show.

The three guitarists all raged on Under My Wheels that sounded pretty frantic. Public Animal #9 was the one song I totally didn't recognize and it sounded good to hear live with Alice parading around with his snake. Billion Dollar Babies had Alice waving his sword around like normal as he distributed his Dollars. Long Way to Go kept the pace up and with some cool theatrics as ever.

She's A weapon Of Mass Distraction totally packed a punch as he danced with his daughter. Poison had one of the biggest sing alongs of the night as just about everyone joined in the chorus. We then got a long drum solo as intro to Halo Of flies while Alice changed his trousers ready for the brilliant Feed My Frankenstein that featured a 20 ft tall Frankenstein marauding over the stage.

He then once again did away with poor old Cold Ethyl well of course he wanted to shag her corpse once more. Only Women Bleed was easily the slowest thing in the set but still sounds great even if it really sounds better with a woman singing it.

Then it was time for the judge and jury to declare Alice Guilty once more. The Ballad Of Dwight Fry still sounds great.
We then got to the tribute to Alice's fallen friends section that opened with a tombstone for Keith Moon being revealed as they played a great version of Pinball Wizard that was the first song to get anyone in the seats standing up to. Second tribute was to Jimi Hendrix as they tried to set the place alight on Fire. The third tombstone was for David Bowie and they did a great ballsy version of Suffragette City before the fourth and final tombstone was revealed as Lemmy and the bass player sung Ace Of Spades with Alice on Backing vocals.

I'm Eighteen then got blitzed through with most of us shouting the words out before they closed with School's Out that sounded as great as ever until it broke down and they gave us a couple of verses of another Brick In The Wall before one last chorus of Schools Out and they were gone.

They came back for an encore of Elected that featured a fight between Trump and Clinton as Alice sang about how he wants to get elected and this year of all years I think we would all vote for him. It was a good end to a pretty great set and a good days music.
  author: simonovitch

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