Very few of you reading this will remember my first gig review on this site.
It was for the King Blues in Norwich. It was back in a time when I didn’t do many gigs, so to go out and see a band was a big thing. Back then, for me, The King Blues (TKB) were a big thing. It was as close to the original lineup as I can remember, with Jamie Jazz still part of the band. It got me writing about music, and while I’m not prolific, that continues today.
When we booked Norwich earlier in the year, it was perhaps out of nostalgia. My musical tastes have evolved; I still like punk and ska, but more Levellers-influenced. My Spotify playlist hasn’t had lots of TKB on it, but when Mr Music Man or Hold On Tight pops up on a playlist, I remember how good they were.
So, tickets purchased, off we went for a day shopping in Norwich, followed by a gig. The original date moved, so that became a gig and then shopping, but either way, it resulted in my first trip to the Waterfront venue, perfectly placed close to Norwich city centre and a hive of places to eat and pubs to enjoy. I love finding new venues, and the Waterfront is cracking, with a rich history.
They say ‘always support the support’, so for the reasonable price of £5 per pint, we were in situ for So Good. I didn’t put two and two together at first, not when the balaclava-clad band walked past and onto the stage. When the lead singer followed, I realised I’d seen her before on Instagram doing a Christmas song, which had driven me crazy.
Their show was alright, but not to my tastes. I’d describe it as bubblegum punk, but there were a few too many songs about genitals and masturbation for my liking. I’m a man who wants to smash the state, sure, but yelling ‘fuck Kier Starmer’ with little context doesn’t quite cut it, not when the closing song is a Christmas song about getting presents and greed. It may be ironic of course, and gone over my head.
What I would say is So Good put on a decent show, and while I wouldn’t go out of my way to see them/her again, I did chat post-gig and she was a lovely person, putting up with a drunk and, frankly, rude version of me.
Then, the main event. Even up to the point Itch came on stage, I felt nostalgia. In 2011, I saw them sandwiched between Kae Tempest’s Sound of Rum and Billy Bragg, and their set mattered. In 2015, they headlined in Norwich at the Arts Centre, and it was, at that point, the best gig I’d ever been to. Ten years on, I just felt like I was trying to grab a little bit of that, like when you visit the place you used to holiday when you were a kid.
When you do go to old holiday haunts, they’re never as good. As soon as Itch walked on stage, a little older, a little greyer around the edges, the nostalgia just disappeared. What If Punk Never Happened is older than my nephew, and yet somehow it feels as fresh as it did in 2011. Itch is a triple threat: he’s a front man for a band, a man capable of holding a crowd with a ukulele and a song, and captivating with spoken word. Opening with the 2008 classic, as he did ten years ago, dragged me in.
Once I was caught, I didn’t need to go back ten years, because the songs and lyrics are just as relevant as they were when I first sat down with Under The Fog in 2007. Itch is just as angry, and the enemy is the same. Fascism. Ruling classes. Workers kept down, desperate to rise up. The faces of the enemy change, but the nature of their threat does not.
I remember listening to Mr Music Man back in the day, Itch signing he’d still be ‘skanking in his pork pie hat’. That was 20 years ago, give or take, and there is no pork pie hat, but the set is still just as real, just as impactful, and, dare I say, just as good as it ever was.
For ‘old school motherfuckers’ like me, as we were branded on their Live at the Camden Roundhouse release, there was so much to love. We Ain’t Never Done was a great surprise, one of the most underrated tracks from their early stuff. It wasn’t about old stuff, though – we got hits from Save The World Get The Girl, Punk and Poetry, even the 2016 EP Off With Their Heads.
I also like that Itch interacts with the crowd, reciting some of Norwich’s anti-fascist history, including Oswald Mosley being chased out in the 30s. It just threaded that relevance through the gig once more, putting old hits right back into the modern-day world.
Halfway through, the band go off, and Itch stands there, uke in hand, and delivers stuff like Shooting Fascists and Underneath the Lampost Light, again, delivered with every bit of conviction that saw them become popular a decade or more prior. I forgot it was 2025, I forgot I was older, creaking at the knees and less able to hold my drink. Is that nostalgia? Maybe, but this wasn’t a hollow tribute to the heyday.
Instead, we got some new songs (Itch quipping that the words ‘we’re going to do a new one’ were the most hated in gig goers’ vocabulary). They weren’t shallow imitations of the old stuff either; instead, they felt fresh, new, but still essentially TKB.
Yes, for those who remember the time Radio One dared play TKB, they did give us a rendition of Headbutt. You gotta please the crowd as well as make your statement!
At the end of the gig, I didn’t want to go. I did quite like that the first song on the PA after Itch left the stage was Samantics, a nod to bands and acts I’ve seen recently, and that almost tied this into that ‘contemporary’ bracket. So often you’ll see a band you used to follow, and everything before and after dates them. By dropping Samanatics, purposefully or not, it just added to that air of relevancy.
Afterwards, it occurred to me that a lot of the band’s songs are timeless. Anger, resentment, dissatisfaction with the state of the world, that never ages. Societal issues evolve and shift, but as you get older, you begin to realise the two sides are always the same. They look different, they have different motifs and mottos, but their opposite ideals? They’re always the same.
That’s why bands like TKB are so important. Songs about genitals and masturbation will come and go, but songs about genuine anger, those peppered across Save The World, Get The Girl, Under the Fog, and even Long Live The Struggle, will always have relevance. They can be interpreted differently, but they will never not have a place on my playlist.
Make sure they have a place on yours.