GIG NUMBER FIFTY-FIVE
Who
Pantomime Horse was the surprise opener and it was pretty effective, although Can't Get Enough would have been better. And then the moshpit turned into something truly awesome as Suede reeled off Animal Nitrate, Filmstar, Can't Get Enough and Metal Mickey one after another!! Just how incredible was that?? The moshpit was furious and I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Perfect and possibly even better than V99 at this point. Things were then appropriately slowed down for Everything Will Flow and By The Sea, before the band left the stage leaving Brett and his acoustic guitar. "Acoustic is bad!" was the perfectly placed heckle but all he did was play The Living Dead and it was awesome. One great song: now that's what an acoustic slot should be!! The band returned for Lost In TV before the dire She's In Fashion, which I can't be bothered to even pretend to like. People often criticise post-Bernard Butler Suede but that was the only awful song they ever released!! Next up was final single Attitude, which was surprisingly good and a nice departure. And then things were sped up again thanks to the glorious intro of So Young. Wonderful!
I finally got to hear New Generation played for the first time before the mosh reached its peak with the glorious Trash, followed by a perfect Beautiful Ones. What a gig! I'll even let them off the one bad song!! But if I'd had known what would had happened next I'd had left at this point. The question went through my mind - what could they play now. The Drowners? Stay Together? The Wild Ones? We Are The Pigs? Saturday Night? Lazy? Electricity? Killing Of A Flashboy? Beautiful Loser? POSITIVITY even? Suede returned to a new song which was dancey and interesting, followed by a strange comment about it being on their next album. This is supposed to be a final tour! But a new song is still only a new song so they should had then made up for it with some top-drawer material.
It was followed by the very old (and very long) The 2 Of Us. I was starting to get a bit bored now. Things then got really bad with the even longer, rather quiet (and simply not very good) The Asphalt World. Why oh why? It was the curfew now and I thought that there was time for a grand finale of The Wild Ones so that I could leave feeling happy, or even Saturday Night or We Are The Pigs. Instead we got Still Life. I couldn't believe it. Remembering that before this awful ending Suede had given us a great set, I still gave them a massive send-off. Suede remain one of the greatest bands of all time but this was no encore for them to close their career with. I never thought I'd say this, but they played far too many old songs! What the hell's wrong with NME, putting the idea into people's minds that Suede have been crap since Dog Man Star, which is merely their fourth best album? It seems even the band had started to believe it!! Oh well. The main set pushed 10/10, and the encore was a 6/10, and it's very sad to see Suede go.
Mark: 8.5/10
Suede
Support
Razorlight
Ambulance
Where
Manchester Academy
When
8th December 2003
Price
£17.50
Who with
No-one
Position
In the moshpit
Comments
Now this is a particularly hard one for me to review. In many ways Suede played one of the most blinding, astonishing gigs imaginable. But it was with feelings of intense disappointment that I left this show thanks to the most fuck-awful encore I've ever witnessed. But I'll try to keep things in perspective. The support acts were Ambulance and Razorlight. Both seemed pretty good but I was drunk at this point and chose to stand towards the back for most of them. There was a massive crowd who were far more up for Suede than on the A New Morning tour. No details stand out, but at the time I remarked Razorlight were "pretty rocking" and "we may be seeing more of them in the future" and have been proven correct! I then pushed my way into the epicentre of the moshpit, and was geared up by the awesome Race For The Prize courtesy of the DJ before smoke filled the stage and Suede made their entrance.
Setlist
Pantomime Horse
Animal Nitrate
Filmstar
Can't Get Enough
Metal Mickey
Everything Will Flow
By The Sea
The Living Dead
Lost In TV
She's In Fashion
Attitude
So Young
New Generation
Trash
Beautiful Ones
(a new song)
The 2 Of Us
The Asphalt World
Still Life
