Summer time – Sydney, Australia 2006. I’m being swamped with vivid flashbacks from the last time I saw Ian Brown play live, on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury Festival 2002. The Brits have collaborated and finally descended upon this fine and fertile continent, to brand this convict land down under with the extended name… the United Kingdom of British England. I hear geezer’s slagging off about the queue size as we wait impatiently in the rain for entry. Northern English accents dwell heavily down upon us at the bar while we all salivate for over priced cans of Tooheys New. I’m completely surrounded by Pommies all carrying the legacy of King Monkey Brown and memories of the Stone Roses pre-1996. And the collective anticipation for Brown’s arrival on stage is creating enough energy to power the whole venue.

I wasn’t expecting a comedy performance, but from the moment The Monkey strutted out onto the stage I couldn’t help but laughing. Not just a little chuckle, but a full winded deeply rooted belly laugh. And not just because he looks like a fashionable chimp. Sporting a trademark shiny blue Japanese style shell suit and dark wrap-around square shaped sunglasses, Brown preceded to soak up all the atmospheric energy and channel it into some amazingly ridiculous dance moves, through the split ends of a particularly dodgy but immaculately fashioned mullet haircut. Brown has been touring Australia with his band, playing the Falls Festival, but they seemed almost inconsequential in the opening tracks. With cockiness like no other and arrogance to boot, Brown took command of the hyped up crowd, delivered the opener and then cracked out with a joke about two lobsters in a bar.

From that moment on I felt a mixture of both humour and heartache. Watching Brown walk on the spot, desert crab dancing, hands in the air with fingers spread out wide like stars and making spheres of transcendences with his arms, plain and simply just cracked me up. He is an unlikely rock idol. Small and primate but oozing confidence and attitude. Nothing had changed since the last time I saw him play. The sound quality was loose albeit new band members, his vocals were off beat, out of tune and hardly on time, there was little communication on stage and in retrospect it seemed the main reason he was playing was for self-fulfilment through increased international recognition. Rinsing it hard and long and fast. This was of course, the Ian Brown show.

But the Metro Theatre crowd was highly anticipative and totally energetic. Stone Roses classics and new solo material made the floor bounce. Tracks including, Love Like a Fountain, Dolphins were Monkeys, F.E.A.R., Golden Gaze and Keep What Ya Got kept the punters jiving, jumping, singing along loudly at the tops of their voices. The Stone Roses’ songs I Wanna Be Adored and Waterfall though, had the greatest reception. Never has it been the case that I’ve felt the floorboards groove and creak quite so much on that Metro dance floor. It was packed. It didn’t matter that Ian Brown still seemed lost in the wilderness, it was a gathering of Brits together united, under the one roof and a celebration of the past, the present and, of course… football. For after all, what would have been of the concert without the flags, cheers and chants of ‘England England England… Ole, ole ole ole’.

Ian Brown has an unforgettable stage presence about him, confident, arrogant and comical. As well as this he has pieced together a fairly routine performance with some talented band members, which leaves everyone with smiles on their faces after the gig. Playing for just an hour and a half though and at eighty bucks a ticket leaves a lot to be accounted for. What will be the future for the King Monkey? If you missed this concert you have ample reason to be disappointed, but not to fret. Go out and buy the Greatest Hits album, turn it up loud, and enjoy. Dance on the spot like you are walking in the park on a fine summer day. The album is much the same as the live show anyways. And if you get the chance, look for Ian Brown when he visits these shores once again, just maybe he’ll be fashioning another inspirational Mancunian hairstyle, have a few more crack jokes and quite possibly, we hope… some new dance moves.