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Punishment of Luxury Gateshead 6th July

Posted on July 7, 2008
Filed Under Gigs |

Last night I went to the smallest of venues the Three Tuns in Gateshead to see Punishment of Luxury. Considering the venue couldn’t have held more than about 90 people it’ll come as no surprise it was sold out and packed. Apart from the sardine factor the other problem was that the stage was about a foot high so it made it very difficult to see anything.

The debate leading up to the show was whether it would be Neville on vocals as he’d wanted nothing to do with the band since their demise and had since found religion and was reported to have been doing acoustic christian music in Norfolk for the past decade. I’m pleased to report it was very definitely the original line-up and there was no mention of religion during the show.

Anyway, the sound in the venue was superb. They opened with ‘Puppet Life’ which was a little slow. I put this down to a certain rustiness as they finished with it as well and that was a much better version.

After ‘Puppet Life’ we had ‘Funk Me’ and unsurprisingly most of the ‘Laughing Academy’ album but not all the greatest hits, no ‘Secrets’ or ‘Engine of Excess’ . The biggest cheers of the night were for ‘Jellyfish’, ‘Brainbomb’ and ‘Excess Bleeding Heart’, the low points were a song called ‘The Hermit’ that “was originally dropped but had now been brought back” and should have been left dropped and a new song called ‘The Fracture’ which of course no-one knew. If you’re going to do new material then put it on MySpace so at least people can hear it first.

I spoke to quite a few people after the show and everyone seemed to thouroughly enjoy it, even if the could see sod all.

The good news is that they announced they will be doing more gigs. I hope they do and that they choose a bigger venue.

Comments

One Response to “Punishment of Luxury Gateshead 6th July”

  1. greg on July 13th, 2008 8:28 pm

    thanks for the review.Crikey ! Punilux - I thought I was the only kid to like them in 79 and I still have 3 singles by em. I thought I was about the only person that heard of them until plymouth punk band The Bus Staion Loonies did a cover of Puppet Life about 9 months ago. It’s great to know they’ve reformed.

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