Peace, institute. 26/6/13 Gig review.

Tomorrow Peace are playing the John Peel stage at Glastonbury, To prepare for the first Glastonbury gig of theirs Peace announced a one off warm up show on Tuesday, Tickets sold out in a few hours and by last night 100 or so people packed themselves into the Tiny Temple room at the Institute. No support acts, No light shows, All Peace did was come on stage and play hit after hit after hit. From the moment they came on stage and played Follow Baby the crowd went mental. At times there were near 5 people crowd-surfing at a time over a sea of denim, and one guy (who looked like Fred from Spector) actually managed to stand while crowdsurfing, surfing on two peoples hands like a professional surfer on water, for a good 5-ish seconds.
I tripped up on piss but managed to get up again without incident and I'm actually quite surprised that I kept upright for the rest of the gig.
Meanwhile Peace, kept on playing all the best songs, following, Follow baby with Wraith, Lovesick and bloodshake, only slowing things down for a slightly more laid back performance of 'Float Forever'
For me though a highlight was finally getting to hear 1998 live, the song that blew my mind when I heard it last year, sounds perfect live, IT got stretched to well over its 10 minutes and Harry swapped his guitar for a double necked Jimmy Page Gibson SG* half way through.
There was a good atmosphere and everyone there seemed genuinely friendly, happy and loving the music. People jumped about, danced and At times I could barely move because I'd been squashed between a few people at the front.
Before the encore Peace had already played California Daze and instead confusingly went for 'Scumbag' and then went off stage. Dom, got the crowd surfing again by playing the drum intro for Scumbag, a few times over, then jokingly said 'I don't know where the band have gone' and of course they joined a moment later to play the rest of the song.
We also got to hear Peace's re-working of AlunaGeorge's White Noise, which has been given a Nile Rogers style funky makeover and a cover of Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the wall (Part Two)**. The show closed with 'Higher Than the Sun' and the sweaty denim covered mass headed off to Snobs. I didn't go to Snobs as I had work the next day and the new friends I'd made at the gig had to get the train back to Walsall. 

Loads of people will have 3 great days of their lives at Glastonbury this year and I'm sadly not going to be with them. After the show Peace put on last night, they're probably going to slay the open air, and much bigger glasto crowd, I can at least say that I was at the awesome sweaty warm up show 2 nights before, which in some ways is probably even better. 
No gimmicks, No light shows, No support acts, Not much banter, Just a short set list of the best songs***.  It was one of the most mental gigs I've ever been to and i got to see how crowd-surfing works, (its more difficult than it looks) and nearly got kicked in the face a few times. 

It all proves is that not only are Peace one of the best bands of this generation, but also that Rock n' Roll is alive and well.

I just wish I had photo's


*I have no idea whether it was actually a Gibson, but you get the idea.
** The famous one, any Floyd fan knows that there are 3 parts, and that part two is way better when played after 'The best Day's of our Lives' but I'll let Peace off.
*** waste of paint and Delicious were not played

If you missed this then no worries, Peace are playing the 02 academy on Friday 13th December, and Shepards bush on the 6th.

UPDATE:  There is a very good little self review by Peace on The Fly.com* (who put the gig on) which includes this set list

‘Follow Baby‘
‘Wraith‘
‘Float Forever‘
something else
‘Bloodshake’
‘Toxic’
’1998‘
‘California Daze‘
one of the other ones (oh yeah ‘Lovesick‘)
We played ‘White Noise’ by Disclosure  in the encore."

* http://mamacolive.com/thefly/feature/interview/1019526/mumbling-is-fine-peace-review-their-own-gig/