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Showing my Age part 1: The Pretenders, Obelisk Stage, 17th July 2009

Veteran rock queen Chrissie Hynde  – and, let’s face it, considering the number of line-up changes they’ve had over the years, The Pretenders are Chrissie Hynde just like Mark E. Smith is The Fall – played an energetic early-evening set at Latitude’s main Obelisk Arena on Friday.  As is the norm with bands with a certain number of miles on the clock, it was a crowd-pleasing, greatest hits package featuring classic tracks like Back on the Chain Gang, Talk of the Town and Kinks’ cover Stop Your Sobbing.

Then again, when you’ve got a back catalogue as strong as that who’s complaining?  At one point she playfully – and, perhaps knowingly – quipped that she’d thought about playing a load of new material just to perplex the audience.  She decided to perform the old stuff and let the audience download the new material.

It’s was nice to see that she’s as gutsy as ever.