Babyshambles @ Yo-Yo, Welly Club

PETE Doherty embodies all that is great about music. When he finally arrived on stage at the Welly late Saturday night, he looked every inch like a rock messiah, the leather-jacketed regalia of Sid Vicious hanging off his back, the trademark straw hat, his pale ever-thinning torso on display and wearing a little death around the eyes.

Doe-eyed Doherty's chemical problems have been well documented but this man is no waster. Four-piece Babyshambles is Pete's sideshoot Libertines project, it's what's got him through the long days and nights since they told him he had to clean up his act. But on the strength of this Hull showing, one of the most exciting gigs I've ever attended, the demise of the Libertines would matter not.

Carlos Barat might disagree, but there's only one reason why people are so into the Libertines - the enigmatic frontman who started the evening off singing What Katie Did. What followed, was, quite simply, a masterclass in how to grab the attention of a sweaty, heaving roomful of people with high expectations and never let them down until you are crowd surfed away in a blaze of glory.

It's all far from the freakshow that many people suggested it might be. We didn't watch a man dying up on stage due to a drug problem that's supposedly spiralling out of control. No, Doherty certainly knows what he's doing. He's meant to be up there.

Watched closely by support band The Paddingtons, who enjoyed the evening so much that they danced away behind the main man for the entire duration, Doherty hurtled through a selection of his high-octane, euphoria inducing songs, including signature tune Babyshambles and The Libertines track I'm In Love With A Feeling. Even more so than The Libertines, the band sound like a mashed-up Clash heading into hell.

When he's not singing, Doherty looks incredibly fragile, making you realise how close he is to an Ian Curtis-style demise. Yet, inbetween blagging cigs and lager, he demonstrated that he truly cares about his audience - inviting them to join him on stage.

Cue one of the most chaotic, charged finales, as a stage invasion ensued. Yet somehow Doherty and his band not only survived in the cramped conditions but managed to belt through two more songs before this 21st century icon made a departure every bit as glorious as the rest of the gig

Another predictable episode of Casualty...

I DON'T want to keep having to harp on about the calibre of musicians that descend on the city of Hull but...here we go again.

So, Pete Doherty will be bringing his Babyshambles to the Welly. That's more like it. I had started to believe that we were locked in some kind of music-tinged Stepford Wives nightmare, with Lee from Blue pulling the strings and booking the Sugababes to play next year's Lord Mayor's Parade.

There may no longer be any real need for rock-folk to rehash the cliched rulebook that Brian Jones, Sid Vicious, Richie Edwards and their nihilistic like wrote but hell, the appearance of Mr Doherty, a veritable casualty even though his career is in its infancy, is very exciting.
Doherty's well-publicised drug-induced, will he-won't he clean up his act antics (he won't, by the way) have secured lots of press coverage for The Libertines since Up The Bracket was released last year.

But the tabloid soap opera Pete appears to love living in between trips to Thambkrabok monasteries and making court appearances shouldn't detract from the fact that the doe-eyed singer-guitarist-songsmith extraordinaire is a rarity these days - a musician that means it, that believes in the power of noisy chords, gutteral screams and ramming his bloody marvellous lyrics down people's throats.

He is, like razor blade wielding Richie before him and unlike spandex-clad Justin from The Darkness, 4 REAL. Pete's arrival at the Welly should, if there is any justice in the world of rock, be preceded by an ear-piercing fanfare. Pete should be handed the keys to the city (though, true to form, he'd no doubt sell the keys in order to pay for a variety of chemical substances). For he, more than anyone else currently playing music, is the saviour of all things sonic.

It will, of course, all end in tears. With the release of The Libertines second album just round the corner Pete should have the world in the palm of his hands. Instead, he's fighting a battle that seldom few win. I love The Libertines and, for that matter, Pete. I wish they'd let him back in the band, while there's still time. Death on the Stairs is the best song I've jumped around on a mattress to in years. Yet the writing's on the wall. Like Gazza when he dived in for that tackle in the FA Cup, thus starting a sad decline and a million pub discussions about what might have been, the minute Pete reached for the crack pipe he threw it all away.

Drugs might spark the odd moment of creativity but genius frazzles away and dies once it is dependent on junk. Still, that's the way it has to be. Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison...Pete Doherty. I hope I'm wrong...but see him while you can.