Peter Doherty, Vertigo, Up The Bracket, What A Waster, Albion, Rhythm Factory 28.02.08

Peter Doherty Rhythm Factory 28.02.08 Vertigo, Up The Bracket, What A Waster, Albion from nearer dark on Vimeo.

The mass crowd singalong to Vertigo and continuing guitar lead weirdness provokes a broad grin and a mock hissy fit, and a "f-ckin' Rhythm Factory". And you can see how nuts everyone was going at the start of Up The Bracket by the amount of exciting ceiling footage. Oh, it was a brilliant night, it really was. And it's quite a nice characterful ceiling, really. And at least the audio doesn't vanish when Peter does. And there are occasionally two shadow men on the wall behind him, which is rather nice. And What A Waster - looks like I was getting knocked for six rather a lot there, but it was so worth it. And Albion - fascinating fact: there's a teacup being held aloft, which belonged to one of Red Roots, who were supporting, and the guy who's holding it up is called Lascaux Man. And that, and the high-pitched "Liverpyool!" aside - Albion is still one of the most beautiful songs ever written.

This was the third night of that particular stint at the Rhythm Factory, and it was pretty much right after the European dates finished, which were either side of the Arena tour and that other run of Rhythm Factory dates in December where everyone got flu, and Brixton was only a couple of weeks before this lot of RF dates, and there were other NME dates around that, probably followed by the last set of Euro dates (yes, I could look it up, but I'm busy writing this), so you'd have forgiven Peter if he was feeling a bit knackered by the time of this show, really, and wanted a bit of a quiet one. Except he's revelling in it, thoroughly enjoying it, and it's a brilliant night.