Past back with a blast, blast from the past, etc, etc...
So there it was, the blast from the past. After the terrible performance of nu-punks the Distillers, old school punk came to save the day, in the form of the famous Iggy and his Stooges. In the weary debate of Old Punk Vs. New Punk, today's Download Scotland resulted in the points going to Old Punk, as Iggy and the Stooges' performance utterly annihilated the Distillers' lacklustre set.
At around about twenty past six, the minimalistic gear of the Stooges was completely set up, and the Stooges just walked onto the stage with no introductory samples, much unlike practically every single other band that played at Download Scotland. The Stooges didn't receive as much cheering as the other bands, but the amount of adults who had turned up to see the Stooges suddenly became a lot more prominent, obviously this was going to turn into a nostalgia trip for quite a few people.
The Stooges' catchy punk songs soon started rhythmic clapping breaking out all over the crowd, and Iggy's ever-flowing charisma and stage presence provided fuel for the masses. Jiving along to the guitar solos, ending songs by miming the hitting of cymbal and dancing on top of the bassist's amp were just a few of the things that Iggy did whilst the songs raged on. At one point, after throwing a mic stand across the stage, he jumped off the stage and down to just in front of the barrier, where some hard rocking shenanigans probably went on, until he reappeared at the other side, and climbed up the festival stage wall looking as if he was trying to destroy it. As he returned to the mic, he started asking the crowd to invade the stage. Everyone loved all this action, but unfortunately, nothing was really attempted...
As the Stooges' music raged on, you could see members of the other bands playing the festival standing at the back and clearly enjoying their performance as much as the crowd was. However, as the set drew close to forty minutes, the Stooges' songs started to wear thin and the length of their songs really pointed out the repetition - hearing a chorus for what must have been the twentieth time just isn't fun. Also, some sound engineering troubles started to crop up, with quite a large amount of microphone feedback bursting out of the massive festival speakers, annoying the crowd during the middle of songs.
This didn't put Iggy off however, and he continued to live in some kind of dream world and simply dance around the stage. The bassist was also clearly really getting into the music, visibly vibrating and windmilling as he played - although the guitarist simply stood there in his fashionable sunglasses for the entire performance, only moving out of the way to avoid Iggy from knocking him out with his extravagant microphone swinging. Their music was given a touch of versatility towards the end, as a saxophonist came on stage to jam for the last few songs, although it was quite difficult to hear exact what he was playing. Finally, as the Stooges ran through their last song, Iggy was hit by some projectile, and he started to insult who ever threw it, and eventually mooned them. Classic rockstar ego.