darkmonasteria.de

We've heard some daft excuses for gigs being shut down in the past, but none quite as monumentally silly as claiming that the band's music "gees up the crowd". Yet this was the reason Wiltshire police gave this week for stopping Pete Doherty's band Babyshambles playing a headline show at Moonfest next weekend. In fact, the police went further, claiming to have carried out in-depth analysis on Babyshambles' music - something I have studiously avoided doing in my six years as a music journalist.

After no doubt long and complex discussions about the harmonic structure of Fuck Forever and Killamangiro, Wiltshire police came to the conclusion that Babyshambles deliberately "speed up and then slow down the music and create a whirlpool effect in the crowd". This whirlpool apparently has the side-effect of getting the crowd all overexcited. But isn't geeing up the crowd the point of every live show ever in the history of music? Has someone forgotten to tell me that it's actually 1953?