Bloc Party celebrate 20 years with huge Crystal Palace show heavy on early material

nme.com:

Bloc Party played a huge one-off show in London over the weekend to celebrate 20 years as a band. Find footage of the gig, fan reactions and the full setlist below.Kele Okereke and co.

took to the stage at Crystal Palace Park in London last night (July 7), for a one-off show that marked the 20th anniversary of their debut album ‘Silent Alarm’.It also marked their biggest headline show to date – performing to a 25,000-strong crowd for two hours, and featuring support from special guests Friendly Fires, The Mysterines, Connie Constance and The Hives.

For the latter, the slot marked a UK exclusive performance.“We’ve been having so much fun playing shows over the past year, so it makes sense to do something special for old and new fans, celebrating 20 years of Bloc Party,” explained frontman Okereke, announcing the show last year.“We heard from a lot of people that they couldn’t get tickets for the [2018/2019] ‘Silent Alarm’ gigs, so a one-off summer party playing that and the bangers feels like the right thing to do.”Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of the two-hour set was taken up by trucks from their seminal 2005 record, as well as more of their biggest hits from across their discography.While they played the vast majority of ‘Silent Alarm’, they didn’t break out the tracklist in chronological order – instead opening the set with fan-favourite ‘So Here We Are’ and embedding other songs within the 24-song tracklist.Others played from the album included ‘Banquet’, ‘Helicopter’, ‘Price Of Gasoline’, ‘Like Eating Glass’, ‘Blue Light’, ‘This Modern Love’ and ‘Positive Tension’.