Dubai Swear City: Mondays break onstage rules

Shaun Ryder turns the air blue during their headline show

United Kingdom | 07 November 2009

A Bez-less Happy Mondays brought day two of Dubai Sound City to a close with singer Shaun Ryder facing a fine for swearing onstage.

The Manchester group, who were without their iconic dancer Bez after he was denied entry into the country, capped a humid second day by mixing their classic tunes with some newer material.

‘Step On’, a track Shaun Ryder referred to as “Top of the Pops,” was epic, while encore ’24 Hour Party People’ proved popular enough to keep fans onsite right until the end.

“Where are we?” Ryder joked at one point, “Blackpool?” But it could be his pre-track chat that gets the group in trouble.

Swearing onstage is prohibited, and Ryder swore twice whilst talking to festival-goers, despite making the effort to change the words to some tracks to accommodate the law. “We had to change the words to that one ‘cause we can’t swear,” admitted Ryder, “you get two years or something.”

Earlier in the evening, Ocean Colour Scene got the biggest crowd of the day as they debuted new tracks ‘Magic Carpet Days’ and ‘My Name Is Saturday’ from their upcoming album.

But it was old favourites like ‘The Riverboat Song, ‘Hundred Mile High City’ and set closer ‘The Day We Caught The Train’ that had the Irish Village arena singing along.

The Courteeners also debuted a new song at the event, which got a rather muted response compared to tracks like ‘Not 19 Forever’, ‘Acrylic’ and ‘What Took You So Long’ with frontman Liam Frey also swearing onstage during ‘Fallowfield Hillbilly’.

In the late afternoon Gabrielle Cilmi gave lesson in how to produce a great live performance. She opened alone, singing a verse of Janis Joplin’s ‘Mercedes Benz’ before the band were allowed to join in.

“Are there any Aussies out there?” asked the teen singer, “you’ll know this one,” as the group ran into her hit single ‘Sweet About Me’. It was an authentic finale of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Whole Lotta Love’ that really got the crowd moving though.

Dubai Sound City 2010 concludes today (Saturday) with performances from Echo and the Bunnymen, Super Furry Animals and more.