The British summer weather isn’t always on our side (read: never on our side). Mostly festivals will be turned into mudslides and swamps, so for their inaugural year it makes sense for Stone Free Festival to move the party indoors. Imagine a condensed Download in the O2 arena. Vintage fans, all biker jackets and tour t-shirts mingle amongst mums & dads just popping out for a cheeky Nandos. The space is used well with the entrance featuring a mini-stage and a vinyl fair. Even the usually looked down upon indigo at The O2 is utilised.

But obviously it’s the arena that houses the main show and opening to a gentle start are good-old-boys, Blackberry Smoke, an American blues quartet with plenty of hippy hair and harmonies. Gentle as they are, it’s nothing we haven’t seen before, (The Blues – it does exactly what it says on the tin) and although enjoyable I am thankful for Euro-Metal group Apocalypitca flipping a switch and bringing the energy. Three blokes up front with cellos, riffing, soloing, hair whipping. They may lack a singer for the most part, but it doesn’t matter, the audience have that covered, especially during an epic rendition of Metallica’s ‘Master of Puppets’ – rendering the original nothing more than a CBBC theme tune.

This began a running theme of playing crowd pleasers that The Darkness were only too happy to continue. With wickedly fun new track ‘Barbarian’ (complete with haunting chorus) out the way as first order, six of the nine songs featured here are taken from their 2003 debut release ‘Permission To Land’ and sound as fresh and exciting as they did then, especially ‘Get Your Hands Off My Woman’ and the undeniable classic ‘I Believe In A Thing Called Love’. New drummer Rufus Tiger Taylor has eased comfortably into the group and Justin Hawkins, oddly looking younger than he did back in the day, is the perfect blend of leather jump suit clad glam-star and polite wise cracking English gent.

All the usual toys are present – swords, canes, gimps, snakes, blood – as Alice Cooper, the antithesis of safe ‘n’ clean modern rock, enters wrapped in a black cloak amid a wall of sparks. What is especially wonderful about this stage of The Coop’s career is his desire to pay homage to his origins, not just his own catalogue with deep cuts ‘Public Animal No.9’ and ‘Long Way To Go’ being given a welcomed outing (sounding great with his gravel filled vocals) but also his influences, his ‘dead drunk friends’ as he so lovingly labels them. Once he’s been dispensed of via guillotine, Alice emerges re-born to lead the audience in the Raise The Dead covers section – ‘Pin Ball Wizard’, ‘Fire’ and ‘Suffragette City’  – so far so cool. But when bass-man Chuck Garric moves centre stage, pauses then rips into the opening riff from ‘Ace Of Spades’ those in attendance lost their shit. These proceedings may be devoid of theatrics, aside from some gravestones denoting each original singer’s birth and death date, but that doesn’t phase the room – this is pure Kara-Alice-oke sing-a-long greatness. He’s having just as much fun as we are.

Elsewhere, his band of charismatic musicians prove why they are the coolest on the planet with extended solos  – Glenn Sobel’s drums during ‘Halo Of Flies’ and Nita Strauss’ guitar wailing us into ‘Poison’. Classics ’I’m Eighteen’, ‘School’s Out’ and ‘Elected’ energetically round out the night, the latter with a fake Clinton/Trump fight on stage. As they take their bows, with red, white and blue streamers blown across the standing section, I was left with a parting thought – don’t vote leave or remain, vote Alice.

Word and Photos:

Robert Gershinson

@ShootTalkPhotos