The Punk Site ‘Rebellion Festival 2017’ Preview, Part One

2016 saw the Rebellion Festival celebrate its 20th year alongside the 40th anniversary of punk with a spectacular sold-out event. Over four days at Blackpool’s Winter Gardens, iconic bands from every aspect of punk across the world shared stages with new and emerging talent, and the 2017 Rebellion Festival looks set to be no different. Returning to Winter Gardens in Blackpool from the 3rd to the 6th of August, the line-up is shaping up to be another punk genre defining event. The Punk Site is fortunate enough to be covering the Rebellion Festival again this year, as this is Europe’s largest punk festival and it boasts a bewildering array of bands, acts, art and temptations, we’re going to be looking ahead at what this years Rebellion Festival has to offer

The full line can be viewed here and tickets for the 2017 Rebellion Festival can be purchased here

The 2017 Rebellion Festival preview for Thursday 3rd August can be viewed below

As with any festival that has multiple stages, and with the Rebellion Festival inevitably boasting another strong line up, it’s never going to be possible to see everyone you want to catch, but these are the prospective highlights that we’ll be hoping to cover, although circumstances, chance meetings and unexpected discoveries may well change my plans. As ever the Introducing Stage offers a showcase to the up and coming bands and will remain my go to point to catch the up and coming bands that we’ll be covering in the future, as well as the Introducing Stage you have the Arena, Pavillion and Almost Acoustic stages, that offer diverse line ups featuring live acts from across three continents.

The main stages offer an impressive line up for the opening day, 88 Fingers Louie are playing the Empress Ballroom in support of the stunning comeback album, Thank You For Being A Friend, Evil Blizzard will be bringing their bass heavy insanity to an early evening set on the Casbah stage and are followed by the impressive trio of The Barstool Preachers, Face To Face and Teenage Bottlerocket which should take us nicely in the evening. To close the Thursday there is the stunning double headliner in the Empress Ballroom of Pennywise and Bad Religion, two massively influential bands who’s touring schedules rarely bring them this side of the Atlantic, although as this clashes with TV Smith, who is playing an entire set of his songs during his time with The Adverts, on the Casbah stage and Roddy Radiation And The Skabilly Rebels in the Opera House, there’s already some difficult choices to be made, and to take us into the early hours there’s a DJ set by one of the UK punk scene’s originators, Don Letts.

In addition to the seven stages that offer the musical attractions you also have the literary and spoken word shows, the Punk Art gallery and the numerous stalls, bars and of course the punks themselves, then you’ve got the prospect of an amazing opening day, and we’ll have a look at what Friday 4th August at the Rebellion Festival has in store next weeekend. If there are bands at this years Rebellion Festival you think we should be covering that I haven’t mentioned leave a reply to this article. Images from the 2016 Rebellion Festival courtesy of Dod Morrison and Gutterpunks.