Rock Zottegem Festival, Belgium
10th July 2010
John Lydon
Lu Edmonds: Guitar / Misc
Bruce Smith: Drums
Scott Firth: Bass / Keyboards
Set List:
Unknown in full
Notes:
PiL headline the first night of the festival.
Audio bootleg recorded
Gig Review
review by Mick C, April 2010
© 2010 Fodderstompf.com / Mick C
I was lucky enough to receive tickets for both Belgian dates as a birthday present and was looking forward to both immensely. The tiny town fo Zottegem (pronounced Tsottagem) proved to be easy enough to reach. A twenty five minute train journey from the city of Gent and we were there. The town itself is tiny and very picturesque.
I must say that festivals aren't really my bag and I wasn't so impressed with the rest of the lineup, the majority of which I paid no real attention to. I saw Novastars set though and vowed never to inflict such torture upon myself again.
One thing that surprised me was the amount of really crappy bootleg t-shirts on sale at the festival. The PiL t-shirts were especially dire; Ropey quality prints of a Pistols-era Rotten as well as actual Pistols t-shirts! What the fuck?
As the sun began to set the excitement began to build... PiL were playing on the main stage and I had made sure that I was as near to the front as possible. The security handed out water to the first few rows as Lu Edmonds' Blackstar amps and instruments were set up on stage.
PiL appeared at about 8:30pm or so, Lydon dressed in his priests attire (as in the Sun promo vid!) and the band hammered into This is Not a Love Song. The crowd loved it and PiL gave one hell of a strong performance... The US tour seemed to have given the band the chance to gel a lot and it seemed hard to believe that they'd been playing together for little over 7 months!
As the sun set firmly the band were illuminated in blue and red strobes and the whole scene looked fantastic!!!
I was situated close to the left PA stack, yet Scott Firth's bass still made my shirt tails flap! The crowd seemed to really dig the bass heavy numbers like Albatross, Poptones, Tie me... etc. And it was nice to see so many nice young girlies grooving along to these classics!
The set-list was of course shortened although the band still played pretty much what I wanted to hear. Religion seemed to go down especially well with the Belgian audience, which incidentally seemed to be a very young audience. I don't think I saw anybody who looked much over 40, which was surprising.
Anyway Religion seemed to electrify the crowd who chanted for the encores, which we got in the shape of Public image Rise and Open Up.
The set lasted approx 80-90 minutes which seemed really short after the last gig I'd seen in December, but I knew I would be seeing the band again tomorrow night in Liège and then again for a much extended set in Glasgow a fortnight later, so I was fairly content.
Hands down it's so far the best PiL gig I've seen.
© n/a