The last hurrah. From the front line.

Nothing lasts forever. Neither the good times or the bad. Nor the worst of bands. Or the best. This is a funeral, then. This is not a wake. But a celebration of being alive. You've never been more alive than in the moment before you die.

A joyous, last celebration. One last blowout. Like a junky's last party before Rehab. Orbital went up. They scaled the heights. And what goes up must come down.

The greatest hits set they present us with is a constant stream of recognition. Each song is greeted like a longlost friend. I can just remember when the beats slip into place, the familiar keyboard stabs of old classics fall into your ears, and you think "Ohmygod, I forget they did this one... and this one...." . Lush. Impact. Halycon. The Box. Chime. Belfast. Satan. Doctor Who. They're all here. Presented in a headfuckadoodledo setting of shiny lights, strobes, weird background films, and relentless, euphoric beats. And giant strips of huge floating cardboard pill capsules rotate and turn, flip and spin with the lights. As if the music itself was a drug. And each song was just another dose. And this is the overdose. Just one fix.

Just lose it to the music. Just lose it to the beats.

And that's the problem with Greatest Hits sets. All the early songs, present and correct. But Orbital never went off the boil. They never went shit. They stayed at the top of their powers. The world just moved around them. Like an old friends, sometimes we drift away from each other. But being a last, nostalgic look back, Orbital neglect some of their later, greatest work. Style. Nothing Left. Funny Break. All conspicious by their sad absence. But it matters not. What matters is here and now. 

Yeah. Here we go. We're old, but you know what? We've still got it. Hell yeah. OK. I confess. We grew up. We grew old. We grew fat. We grew . We've made little sacrifices to get by. These days the 48 Hour Weekend is merely a description and not a manifesto. Yeah. We used to do this all night. We used to come out in the daylight, our eyes squinting like disco moles. Our veins poured open with beats and tap water. 6am wasn't the time we'd get up. 6am was the time we'd get down.

We used to think we'd dance forever. The endless day would become tomorrow. It's the day we see the kids and scowl at the bitch ex-wife in the car park. We used to do this for 9 hours. Nowadays we can't do it for more than ninety minutes.

And so we look at the clock. The time, Christ, is that the time? I'm knackered. Then again, I had to be up at 6 to get to work. I swore it'd never be like this. Commuting. I hope they finish soon. The last tube's at 12.30.

No doubt we will look back on the past as the Golden Years. No doubt we will say that nostalgia's not as good as it used to be.

No doubt we will always wish we were younger. But we are happy. Yes. We are old, and tired. We are fucked and in debt. But fuck it. Age did not tar them or degrade them. We have the memories of a sort : battered with holes of times and faded dreams. But we had them.

And whilst Rome falls, we dance the night away. And we know that this is the best we can get.  We lived a life worth living.

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