(Photo Credit: Karis Raeburn)
A bit too far south for Roughneck Riot but not quite south enough to be the “Rainy Night in Soho” that The Rumjacks hero Shane MacGowan wrote about, this was still a great evening of Celtic-infused punk north of the river.
Roughneck Riot are a classic old school punk band (right down to mentioning Margaret Thatcher, who they all look much too young to have ever endured). They reminded me strongly of early Offspring. The bants were heavily skewed to their unfortunate fate of being born northern, but don’t let that put you off because the beats were strong and they got the crowd jumping. Considering that they had to skip the previous show on the tour as one of their members was unwell, they did a great job of getting us ready for The Rumjacks.
It’s been more than 5 years since I have seen The Rumjacks live and they have aged brilliantly. This tour is to promote their new album Dead Anthems (check it out, it’s great!) and they played a mix of older fan favourites with four or five new songs thrown in which Johnny McKelvey promised us were “not shit”. He was right too, the new stuff went down well with the pit and sounded strong mixed in with the old stuff live. "Cold Like This" was my favourite of the new ones and "Smash Them Bottles" is clearly going to become a staple of their live shows.
Shane was name checked (as he should be) and their tribute to him, "Some Legends Never Die" also went down a storm. They ended with "Light in My Shadow" and "I’ll Tell Me Ma" as an encore. The great man would have loved it and so did I.
The tour continues into mainland Europe until the end of March and the summer will see dates in Canada and the USA. Catch them if you can, I certainly don’t want to wait another five years to see them again.
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