I first saw the Levellers getting on for ten years ago, on the Zeitgeist tour. I was at Sixth Form, I wore Dr Marten boots, jeans, black t-shirts and had round glasses and the worst haircut in the universe. I was angry and youthful and had that rebellious righteous-anarchist streak that middle class people acquire when they hit higher education. I spent the whole evening pogoing like a mad thing and getting all angry about injustice and the corruption of the state and things like that.

And then I came to University, and then got a job, a bit of a beer belly and a tendency to stand at the back of gigs nodding politely rather than cramming down the front in the mosh pit for the entire gig; basically, I got old and boring. Betrayed my youth, as it were.

But all is not lost: last night, I was 16 again.

Okay, so they’ve got a bit older and a bit rounder and the bass player is clearly thinning a bit on top even though he has dreadlocks down to his arse, but, other than that, the Levellers haven’t changed one bit: they’re still churning out turbo-charged sing-a-long punk-folk anthems for the crusty anarchists of the UK, and they can still put on a hell of a show, too. They’re staunchly resistant to any sort of musical fashion (heck, they even did a cover of “The Devil Went Down To Georgia” – that’s goddamned country music, people) and all the better for it: they know what they’re good at and they stick to it.

And they had to be good, too, because the supporting act was none other than Seth Lakeman, nominee for both the Mercury Music Prize and BBC Folk Singer of the Year. Heck, even if the Levellers had sucked, I’d have been happy to pay the £16 ticket price to see his short set alone: he is a truly talented young man (although I’d like him an awful lot more if the gaggle of girls I’d gone with hadn’t all melted into a pool of pure liquid desire the moment he stepped out onto stage; that does nothing for a man’s ego, I tell you – hey, I can play the guitar, too, you know).

Every muscle in my body still aches. I think this is part of the gig-going experience I’ve blocked out from when I was 16. Anyway, I don’t care. It was brilliant, and I’m happy knowing that even though I have a Jamie Cullum CD in my collection now, I can still spend two hours crammed in a moshpit being young and irresponsible and enjoying every goddamned minute of it.

Here’s to you, Dirty Davey.

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