10 Days of Fire Festival in Šentvid pri Stični – Day Two (2009)

Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik

Location: hippodrome / Šentvid pri Stični / Slovenia
Concert date: 09.05.2009
Attendance: 2000
Ticket price: €0.00 (free entry)

So, the second day of the jubilee, 10th-in-a-row biker festival at the hippodrome in Šentvid pri Stični (for those of you at odds with geography, it’s pretty close to Ivančna Gorica) had arrived, run by the MK Fire Group motorcycle club. The event keeps growing in significance and size year after year. If last year the festival’s headliner colors were carried by the nostalgic evergreen Yugo-rockers Riblja Čorba, this year that job fell to the legendary British punks Anti Nowhere League. It was day two of the festival. Because of other obligations we had to skip Eksodus, the legendary Zagreb punks who were the first to warm up the stage, but we definitely didn’t miss Lene kosti, comebackers to the Slovenian metal scene, who proved to be a more than fitting warm-up for the legendary British punks.

Of all the gigs they’ve played since October 2008 and the band’s reunion, Lene kosti had surely never stood on a stage as big as the one waiting for them at this festival. This show was also interesting for two more reasons. It was the last one with an original member, drummer Igor Kremenšek, and the first with new bassist Gregor Brenko.

Lene kosti kicked off their invasion of the festival a little before ten in the evening. As expected, they stormed the stage with a song built on a simple riff but delivering just the right, much-needed seismic jolt, I Got The. Right from the start the band had the luck of an exceptionally good sound system, which you could feel especially in the pronounced “echo” effect that rode along with Krušič’s vocals.

Never mind that most of the crowd kept lazing around under the pole with the strippers, or cooling their heads with fortifying alcoholic brews under the tent, the front row soon filled up, while the rest of the curious crowd first watched the band from a somewhat greater and more cautious distance. Lene kosti didn’t hold back and from the very first moment swung into an enviable energetic gallop that the guys had no intention of easing off for three quarters of an hour. The “heroes”, the bikers, rockers, metalheads and the rest of the “rebel” riffraff, all of us watching the band from below the stage, were won over especially by their version of the Joan Baez classic Diamonds And Rust, which most people today probably know very well thanks to the first official cover, done back in the first half of the seventies by the authors of the modern metal bible, Judas Priest. Despite a superfluous D minor somewhere in the middle of the song and some early sound hiccups, Lene kosti pulled the classic off brilliantly, thanks to the extremely committed singing of Milan Krušič, who brought to the song exactly what every band wants when tackling a cover. He poured a piece of Lene kosti into it. Excellent singing, I’d even say unique, which gave the song a proper “Lazy bones” makeover. I hope Lene kosti keep this song in the setlist at their future gigs, too.

Next came the deadly Iron Dragon and the raging Warrior, and then the noise below the stage rose again as the band announced Russian Girl. To my left I heard a comment: “That’s their best-known track!” from a guy who’d squeezed his way up to the barrier. Sadly, right after Marco’s guitar intro, there was a loud “fart” of engine noise behind the stage, because some bikers evidently can’t stand the idea that music might steal attention from their revving, which only confirms the dim-wittedness and disrespect toward the performers, and toward all of us who actually came for the concert. So because of the engine noise in the background, Lene kosti got a bit lost at the start of Russian Girl, kicking the song off in counter-rhythm, but the wobble was fixed very quickly. The quintet built up an excellent gallop and a relentless grip of juicy boogie metal energy flux, commanded by the zealous Krušič, who led the band with great authority and talked to the crowd like a pro. The band drove their set home with Do Or Die, stretching the song out in the outro with a parody of Chuck Berry’s Johnny B. Goode, dictating the words: “Bye, bye, bye…”.

Hanging out with the revived band, whose next gig we’re already looking forward to on 18.05.2009 at Ljubljana’s Orto Bar, where they’ll also introduce their new drummer, for now still an unofficial member, Miha Nedoh (Forgotten Eden), was worth the “sin” (of showing up)! They presented a lineup that’s once again very driven and fired up. All they’re missing is new original material to stretch the shows, which hopefully will happen very soon. The guys are giving it everything. The guitar riffing is venomous, Brenko came through his baptism by fire with flying colors, and Krušič signaled with the opening “scream” in I Got The that he’s nowhere near out of breath and that he can still pull a high, explosive shriek on stage today, straight from the depths of his balls.

When the life of the notorious Sex Pistols bassist Simon John Ritchie, better known as Sid Vicious, ended from a heroin overdose on February 2, 1979, it seemed like one of the most legendary and notorious figures of British punk had died along with him. Blitz, The Exploited, One Way System, Anti-Nowhere League, Abrasive Wheels, English Dogs, Peter & the Test Tube Babies, Chaos UK, Partisans, Outcasts, UK Subs, The Clash never filled the papers as much, before or since, as Sex Pistols did back then. Even though they all had similarly long careers, the one who probably came closest was the Royal Tunbridge Wells foursome Anti Nowhere League. Their first single “Streets Of London” (originally by Ralph McTell), which heralded their debut album “We Are … The League” (1982), shot to the top of the British charts the moment it came out in 1981. But the praise didn’t last long, as the authorities soon banned it from the airwaves over its indecent lyrics. After a few lineup changes, recording in the former Yugoslavia, tours with UK Subs, The Exploited, Chelsea and others, and a second studio album, “The Perfect Crime”, the band split in 1987. The urge to play was reignited by Metallica, who covered their song “So What” in 1992. Animal, Johny, Nato and Shady, who started their journey way back in 1980 and released their first album two years later, thus returned to the concert stages, where they still swarm today. They served up a first-rate punk party for the bikers and other hangers-on in Šentvid pri Stični, too.

No doubt Anti Nowhere League were by far the most anticipated band of the evening, as, kicking off with “We Are The League”, they drew a sizable crowd of listeners and brutal dancers to the front of the stage. The song, released on their debut album, wasn’t the only one played from that record. What’s more, ANWL gave that album the most attention, playing everything except three tracks. So the songs came in the following order: “I Hate … People”, “Snowman”, “Animal”, “Let`s Break The Law”, “Woman” (the song was spiced up even further on stage by the strippers), “Streets Of London”, “Can`t Stand Rock`n`Roll” and “(We Will Not) Remember You”. The other albums were more or less pushed into the background, with only “Pig Iron”, “Fucked Up And Wasted” and “Burn `Em All” from the third album “Scum” (1997), “Dead Heroes” from the fifth, “Kings And Queens” (1997), and “The End Of The Day”, “Medication” and “My God`s Bigger Than Your God” from the latest, seventh album, “The Road To Rampton” (2007), getting a chance to ring out live. Although two albums, “The Perfect Crime” (1987) and “Out Of Control” (2000), got no attention at all, ANWL couldn’t skip one of their most recognizable tracks, “So What?”, which first appeared on the B-side of their first single “Streets Of London” (1981). The song is all the more recognizable thanks to Metallica, who made their version in the early nineties and later put it on the album “Garage Inc.”.

Anti Nowhere League wrapped up the roughly hour-and-a-half of genuine punk rock revelry with not one but two encores. The first return was marked, besides the already mentioned “My God`s Bigger Than Your God” and “Burn `Em All”, by “Fuck Around The Clock”, which was released as a single in 1989. In the second return the gathered crowd got two repeats, “We Are The League” first and “So What?” second. According to Johny Skullknuckles, Saturday’s show was one of those unforgettable ones, just like the day before in Rijeka, Croatia.

After Anti Nowhere League, the crowd quickly flocked back to the pole with the strippers and drooled away the break, while The Drinkers were already setting up the stage for their set. They jumped in at the last minute, since the Croatian band Asylum were forced to cancel their festival appearance right at the final moment. Sadly, we have to disappoint you this time, because we ran out of steam before The Drinkers too, and headed home toward our warm little beds, to close our tired little eyes and sway into a hard-earned, bloody good sleep. No doubt The Drinkers threw another unforgettable party, and we’ll make it up to them at the first opportunity with a proper concert report!

photos: Miha Mally

Setlist

EKSODUS LENE KOSTI ANTI NOWHERE LEAGUE THE DRINKERS LENE KOSTI setlist: 1. I Got The 2. Stones Of Death 3. Diamonds And Rust 4. Iron Dragon 5. Warrior 6. Russian Girl 7. Rock Power 8. Do Or Die ANTI NOWHERE LEAGUE setlist: 1. We Are The League 2. The End Of The Day 3. We Will Survive 4. I Hate … People 5. Snowman 6. Animal 7. Skull And Bones 8. Let`s Break The Law 9. So What 10. Dead Heroes 11. Medication 12. Woman 13. For You 14. Streets Of London 15. Pig Iron 16. Can`t Stand Rock`n`Roll 17. (We Will Not) Remember You 18. Fucked Up And Wasted — encore — 19. My God`s Bigger Than Your God 20. Fuck Around The Clock 21. Burn `Em All — encore — 22. We Are The League 23. So What

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