Berlin

Didn’t sleep all that much during the night, woke up a few times for a piss and my throat is starting to scratch. I had a mild pressure headache all day yesterday and now it’s moved on to the throat, so I guess I’m getting a cold or something. The moist, dusty room probably not helping. Still, glad I brought my sleeping bag. The other three guys must have been a bit chilly in the night. I wake up again around eight thirty and can’t back to sleep after that. The fact that I have to write to my seminar leader at uni and explain my absence today is playing on my mind a bit. I hate the fact that anything to do with school, or any type of authority leaves me feeling like a kid. Like I have a fear of being told off. Instead of just writing saying I’m away with my band and can’t make it I write that my daughter is sick and I have to stay home. I’m forty next year. Pathetic really.

I get up for a shower. There is no door and a huge cobweb hanging from the roof of it. Apart from that it’s a nice, warm shower. I don’t have a towel either but find a little polishing rag that is in a cleaning bucket in the hall and use that. We all begin to stir and ready ourselves to go downstairs for breakfast. I ask Johan how the sleeping bag he took from the pile on the floor was, “I tried not to think about it”, was his reply.

When we go downstairs Crust Frog is tidying up cables in the gig room and breakfast is waiting for us on the table. The coffee and rolls with assorted vegan pastes is most welcome. Feeling good today despite the sparse amount of sleep and my shoe which reeks of beer after getting drenched last night. We go pick up the car and then we make a trip over to the Buchenwald memorial museum which is the forest just outside of town. Froggy comes with us, he tells me he’s brought a lot of bands here.

I’ve never been to any of the concentration camp sites before, to say the feeling is heavy as we drive down the “Blood Road” leading through the forest up to the camp is an understatement. It’s hard to get your head around the sheer scale of the place, and the horror that has taken place here. The camp itself looks out over a huge valley, you can see for miles and miles, there is no possibility that the surrounding villages were blind to what happened here. We don’t talk much as we walk around the place, and Jon is holding back the tears as we look at the various reminders of horrifying murder. And to think Nazi’s are heiling on the streets again. Humankind certainly can get it horribly wrong, again and again it seems. As hard as it was to come here, I’m glad we did. It’s important that these places stand as a reminder of what happens when power turns the powerless against each other. Sad that that is relevant as much now as ever.

We drop Crust Frog back in town, his name still cracks me up, thank him for everything and head off to Berlin. The journey isn’t quite as bad for traffic today as it was on the way here, but it’s the exact same boring trip back as the way we came nonetheless. I must have played Berlin ten or eleven times throughout the years and I don’t think I’ve played the same venue twice. Tonight is no different. It’s a Jugendhaus place somewhere on the other side of Friedrichshain, right off of Karl Marx Allee hidden away behind some huge theatre. Behind the place is a wasteland with the S Bahn train running across on the other side of it. Really strange being in the middle of Berlin and finding a place this hidden and quiet. Our friend Eleanor from the band To What End? arrives a little while after we turn up, she’s been living here for nine years and she’s never heard of the place either. It’s a bit of a worry since it feels like a bit of a bigger club and the ticket price is set at 15 euros which feels pretty steep for a Victims show, at least from a crust punkers point of view. The guy booking us tonight, Tim, looks like a hardcore kid who doesn’t seem overly excited to have us here, but that’s maybe just his look, a bit dour you might say. He seems friendly enough, just doesn’t say much. We’ll see how this show turns out. I like the place itself though, there’s a pretty cosy little bar to the side of the gig room with worn out sofas and a beer garden outside, pity it’s not as warm as it was in Weimar last night.

The Ekranoplan guys were here when we got here, even if it’s only the second show of two we’re playing with them it’s still nice to be hang out with a familiar bunch of friendly faces. After dinner, which is not quite to the high standard of yesterday, a kind of soy meat mushroom soup with a shit load of marjoram in it, Andy, Johan and I go for walk to stretch the old legs. Jon hangs with Eleanor outside the venue where there are a few other people hanging out. We don’t really walk far, a few blocks down Karl Marx Allee and then turn back. With the venue being bigger tonight I don’t to miss Ekranoplan, not being sure how many people will come I feel it’s important to support them, plus I didn’t really get to see much of them last night.

The gig room is pretty big and wide and then the stage is tucked into the corner in a sort of deep alcove with the drum riser set way back. It’s like playing inside a box within the room and when Ekranoplan start playing I can’t see Adrian because I’m stood to the side. There are maybe fifty or so people in the room, it looks okay but not great. Quite a difference to last night. They play one song and then there is a big pause after it. The drummer, who seems like a right joker is walking about the stage pissing about and I can’t figure out if they were just soundchecking or what. Only after about three or four minutes do I realise that Adrian must have broken a string and by the time I’ve ran around to the side stage he’s already done fixing his guitar. I feel like a right wanker since he lent me his guitar yesterday and asked me if it would be okay to lend mine as backup tonight and I’ve just been stood there dreaming. Sorry boss.

I stand and watch the rest of their set from the side of the stage. It’s fucking eardrum splittingly loud on stage. I don’t know what the crack is but they have the two guitar stacks facing inwards across the stage. Adrian seems to be suffering a bit from it, constantly looking back at the drummer to gage where the song is at. The drummer can certainly fucking play that being said. Little ADHD kid banging the fuck out of them. When they’re done Gunnar the singer comes walking off stage past me, “Loud on stage!”, I say to him, he doesn’t even stop, just walks past, “Extremely fucking loud!” he says, shaking his head. Then Christian the bass player comes off next, “Good luck”, he says with the same head shake.

It seems like there are a lot of people hanging outside in the beer garden as we set up and a good mix of people too. We turn the guitar cabs to face the front, assuring the sound guy it will be ok, and lower the volume considerably. It’s a big system so should be ok. Andy is way back in the box of a stage though, I can just make out his grin through the haze of the big assed backlights. I’m a little surprised, as well as a little relieved that the place is pretty full by the time we start the show. Not that it’s the end of the world but it would have been a shame to play a duffer in Berlin on a Friday night when it’s always really good here for Victims when we book it ourselves. This is the first run of shows we’ve had our good friend Luc booking for us and I must admit I was a little worried that we’d get caught in the trap of going for guarantee fee in a bigger venue instead of guarantee good gig in a squat. But it seems to have turned out alright.

The show itself is a lot of fun. And no broken strings tonight. The stage is a lot bigger and there’s a lot more room for me to throw myself around like a tit on. That being said, I still manage to get tangled up in Johan’s bass at one point during the set. But it’s all good. The crowd really go for it during the show and there are a lot of happy faces when we’re done. This one guy comes up to me and tells me he’s really thankful to us for the show. We’d signed a t-shirt for him earlier, well it was for his girlfriend who he told us was a really big fan of the band but was in hospital and that it would mean a lot to her. I said to him that I hoped she was going to be okay but he shook his head and said, “I don’t know”. Fucking downer. But I’m glad we could do something at least, even if it’s something that little.

There is an early curfew on the venue and by the time we’re packed down and cooled down the house lights are already on. We chat with Eleanor over by the merch table where Jon has been stood selling since the end of the gig. She tells us that she was holding herself to the back of the crowd during the gig since she’s still a bit shaken up after landing with a concussion after some asshole hardcore dickhead clashed heads with her at a show a while back, but said she couldn’t hold it when we played This is the End and flew to the front. Back in the side stage room we find the Ekranoplan drummer in full on ADHD mode. He’s extremely happy and talking a lot and loudly. He’s nice but a little much for our old heads. Cracks me up though, he tells us how much he respects us and how much he appreciates how friendly we are despite being a “big band”. Again, I think they have the wrong impression of us. Then he starts saying how he saw Disfear for the first time a while back and how it was amazing, that despite being really old guys and they were obviously suffering on stage they still played really hard. We’re all pissing ourselves by this point. The next thing he gets out his iphone and starts playing us a song that he and his friend have made on the Garage Band music programme, some spoof glam rock band called Burning Lips. All the music on it is synthetic, proper glam rock shit. Then the vocals come in, kinda Axl style, and it’s he himself who is the vocalist. He starts singing along really loudly to it. It goes on for ages and we’re trying our best to politely laugh but then I notice Christian the bass player stood shaking his head, embarrassed as fuck, “It’s not good, it’s not good” he mutters.

We hang around chatting with the guys a while longer, Gunnar tells me how he saw Speedhorn in Rudolstadt years back and how he can’t believe I played in that band, that he some friends who are huge fans. Funny little world. We make vague plans about meeting up at some bar once we’ve checked into our hostel, and I’m pretty up for it since I’ve only had the one beer all day and could do with a quiet bar and some chat but I can sense that there’s not a realistic chance of it happening.

We take a cab over to the hostel which is about ten minutes away, a fucking jobbie inducing death ride which can’t be over quick enough. The hostel is just by the East Side Gallery, right next to the bridge. It looks pretty cool, it’s some old industrial warehouse that’s been reformed into a six storey hostel. We approach the door and find it locked. I peek inside and get a shock as I see some monster skinhead approaching us from the other side. He must be almost seven foot with arms like fucking tree trunks. Looks like a right fucking mongo. Jon whispers in my ear, “Check out the tat on his arm”. I steal a look and there it is, a bulldog and a Union Jack. Fucking great… Mongo opens the door, and without saying a word ushers us into the foyer. It’s quite the surprise to be then met by a really friendly young woman working on the check in. And amazingly check in takes all of ten seconds. I’ve never experienced that at an after gig hostel before, there is normally always fifteen minutes of pissing around as they try to find our name on the list.

Chuffed we leave the gear in the room and head back out in search of a bar. We don’t get far though. We sit at a falafel place right next door to the hostel. They have beer there of course, it’s Germany. I order a halloumi box which is halloumi, french fries and an shit load of salad and sauce. It’s disgusting really, but kind of good at the same time. As I expected though, by the time the food is done everyone is slowly fading. It is one thirty am I guess, pretty late for a bunch of old farts like ourselves. I text Adrian and tell him we’re not going to make it. He writes back sounding kind of disappointed but there’s no way I can do a party now. I only really wanted a quiet bar. Still, we take the remainder of our beer and walk over to the East Side Gallery and check it out for a bit. The city is still buzzing, loads of people everywhere, all of them drinking beer as they go. I contemplate over the fact it’s been a pretty strange day. Started with Buchenwald, ended with the Berlin Wall.

We head back to the hostel and decide on one more beer in the bar there. It’s calm anyway, just us here. Nice way to end the night though, although the beer is in reality completely unnecessary, all it does is weigh my eyes down. It’s nice sitting there chatting with the guys though. I love the fact that when we’re abroad we can use Swedish as a code language. Jon is talking about the scary as fuck security skinhead, he calls him Thule Kompis, which for those who get the reference is funny as fuck. We just happened to be talking about Nyköping and the whole Nazi skinhead scene there when the guys were younger. I never realised Nyköping was such a dirty scene. It seems the guys lost a lot of their punk friends to heroin or related suicides. They go through a list and tote it up to six or seven drug related deaths from their old scene. Fucking tragic.

I can barely finish the bottle of beer, tiredness has taken me over now. We head upstairs to the fourth floor where our dormitory is and fuck me, we bump into Thule Kompis, slowly trudging along the corridor in the dark. Jon almost has a fucking heart attack. He doesn’t see us though, he’s just slowly walking ahead of us and then fucks off into a room. If there was ever a fucker you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley it’s him.

Weimar

It’s four fifteen and the alarm just went off. I’m supposed to be leaving in thirty minutes, biking over to Johan’s where we’re getting picked up by a cab that is starting at Jon’s place, which will then take us to the airport for a seven am flight to Berlin. And it’s fucking pissing down. Proper fucking biblical proportions of rain hammering the ground. Time for Plan B. Even if it costs more with the extra pickup there’s no way I’m sitting on a plane with my kecks glued to my ass. I call Jon to tell him to pick me up on the way but the fucker doesn’t answer. Strange, not like him. I try again, and again, before I start getting a bit worried. His phone just keeps ringing. I know he usually sleeps pretty hard but he’s always bang on when he has the responsibility of first call. I call Johan and then the next thing Ana, Jon’s girlfriend, is texting me asking if I’ve heard from him. She’s in Holland picking up a van for some band and Jon had asked her to call and wake him, which takes the piss in it’s own right, but the sod not sleeping through now three of us ringing him is another matter altogether. Eventually his phone just dies and with not much else to do, I call another cab and Johan and I head out to Arlanda to meet Andy who’s taken the bus.

The three of us check in, we have Jon’s guitar with us and the guy at the desk let’s us check it in too. Would have been a major pain in the balls to have to leave Jon’s guitar at the airport, even if it is ugly. Already stressed for time, we make our way to security and my stomach convulses when I see the size of the queue, snaking it’s way along the entire terminal. Flight is boarding in half hour, we could be in trouble here. Luckily, I bump into some old guy who works at the airport and he tells us to head to Fast Track, which we do, and with that we’re through. I can imagine there are a lot of squeeky arses stood in that queue that we just waltzed past… Andy’s bag gets stopped on the way through and he enquires with the woman what the crack is with the queues, wondering if the machines are down or something. “It’s always like this on Thursdays”, she matter of factly replies. Note for future reference.

Whilst on route down to Berlin Jon texts us on Messenger, completely engulfed in panic and anxiety. Tells us he slept in. No shit. He’s frantically texting and then it’s him, we’re on the plane already. He asks us if he should book a new flight, I tell him I think that’s good idea. Poor bugger, I can only imagine the horror of waking up and realising your band mates are already up in the air. To his credit, he books himself on the next flight and we tell him we’ll wait for him at the airport. Only thing is he’s flying to the other place, Tegel, so we have to pick up the rental car and head over there, which is on the total opposite of the city and not the direction we’re going.

We had grand plans of arriving in Weimar today and spending the afternoon checking the place out, by all accounts it’s a very picturesque little town with lots of sightseeing opportunities, lots of museums etc, like the Nietzsche and Göthe museums, Franz Liszt school amongst them, but it’s looking like those plans are now fucked. Thing is, you can’t really be hard on Jon, he’s taking care of that himself. And the main thing is, after he royally fucked up, he got on with things. As long as the cunt doesn’t climb into the car stinking of booze we’ll go easy on him.

Jon arrives around one, we’ve been sat there for about an hour and a half. He’s pretty emotional but doesn’t seem to be hungover. He says he can’t understand how he slept through all his alarm clocks, and that he’d spoken to Ana at three am and asked her to wake him. Now I’m confused… I ask him if he woke up at three and spoke to Ana. No he tells me, he went to bed at three, he’d been to the Viagra Boys show. Unbelievable. That was a pretty expensive little lie in he had...

After first getting sucked into Berlin city by the rental car’s very confused GPS and then a couple of traffic jams on the old autobahn, we get in to Weimar around seven pm. Fucking knackered and dying for a cup of java. The place looks great anyway, an old squat with a bar and a small room in the back with a tight stage, looks like our very own Kafe 44 back home. There are already a bunch of punks outside who look happy to see us, if not a little shocked by the flashy car we’ve just rocked up in. I have to explain that it’s not ours. An older guy, with a very friendly smile on his coupon shakes my hand and tells me he’s the promoter for tonight. I don’t catch his name at first and have to ask him again, it’s Crustfrosch apparently. I ask him one more time, and he repeats again, “It means Crust Frog”. I like him immediately. We lug the gear in, which isn’t much, since we’re playing with a band called Ekranoplan both tonight and tomorrow in Berlin and they’ve been kind enough to lend us their backline. The mug of coffee is welcomely received and I gulp into it with vigour, only to be shocked by a mouthful or powder. I forgot about the old east european way of making coffee. Once the powder sinks to the bottom the coffee flies down the hatch and I’m feeling better.

The Ekranoplan guys arrive and we help them with the gear. The first guy I meet is wearing a Regimes t-shirt. “I like your shirt! That’s one of my best mates bands”. “Yes, Bloody Kev. Great guy,” he says. “Raging Speedhorn,” he continues. I smirk to myself, thinking about how Kev would be gutted to hear that’s the first band the guy associated with him. The guys in Ekranoplan seem like a really friendly bunch, and they’re very helpful with sorting their gear out for us, setting it all up for us to soundcheck. The bass player, a cheeky looking type, says it’s a big honour to play with us. Another guy from the squat is talking to Jon, asking us if we had a driver with us, and when Jon says that we’re driving ourselves the guy seems surprised. He then tells him he can’t believe we’re playing a place this small. I think he has the wrong impression of us.

Adrian from Ekranoplan is helping us out during soundcheck, guiding us through it, since old Froggy who is doing the sound seems to be looking at his phone more than the mixing desk. Every time we speak to him, he simply gives us a friendly smile. Anyway, it sounds good by the time we’re done. Adrian’s amp I’m lending is a Russian tank of a thing, called a Petersburg. Never heard of them before but it sounds great. After soundcheck we tuck into the food one of the punks from the squat has made for us, and it’s banging! Really good thai style potato and zucchini soup. I’m feeling so much better now, despite the tiredness. We set the merch up and people start buying straight away, Jon gets stuck there with it but he seems happy enough so the three of us head off for a stroll around Weimar. It really is a beautiful little town, and there seems to be some culture festival going on. We come across some beer garden, really cosy, and there is some three piece instrumental band who sound like a cross between Mogwai and Trans Am playing to a half interested spattering of spectators. We head inside and grab a seat. I still have to move the car to the parking place later but I’m happy enough to stay whilst Johan and Andy have a pint and watch the band for a bit. I’m making a new habit of not drinking before shows anyway, not drinking too much afterwards and all for that matter. The band are really good and it’s so nice to sit here and chill out, listening to something completely different for a bit before we head back to the squat.

We get back just as Ekranoplan have started playing but you can’t get in through the door to the small gig room, which is a good sign. I give it a try but can feel the heat of the place just from the small doorway and decide to leave it. I watch for a bit and then decide to go move the car. One of the squatters comes along with me and we walk back through town once the car is parked up and he tells me all about life in Weimar. I didn’t really know much about it before bar the connection with the old Weimar Republic and it being the place where Nietzsche died. It seems like there is a lot of art and culture happening here though. Cool place.

I get back to the squat and hang out at the merch table with Jon and some others, drinking bubbly water and munching away on Erdnuss Flips, which are a German joy to the tastebuds, like little peanut butter Wotsits. I’d asked Adrian earlier if I could lend his guitar as backup as I had planned to restring mine earlier but arriving late didn’t have the time. He has a nice Les Paul Studio he’s only too happy to lend me. I tell him that I’m sure having it there as a backup will safeguard me breaking any strings during the gig.

Andy asks Frog if he can get a beer somewhere and Frog runs off, returning shortly with a crate of beer. Andy looks at me and laughs, “Typical Germany, you ask for one beer and you get given a crate”. Besides that, there are already two full crates stacked up behind the merch tables which we hadn’t even seen. The thing is, they’re a little on the tepid side and I’m really hoping for a cold beer after we’re done playing. I try to ask Frog if the band flat upstairs where we’re sleeping has a fridge, but the language barrier is a little tough since he’s a little drunk and finds the English, at least my joke of an accent, a little tough. I’m holding a crate of beer in my hands and motioning to upstairs. Froggy nods and says, “Ok, yeah it’s fine” but he looks a little put out. I head upstairs with the crate but find no fridge to put them in. And then I realise that Frog must have thought that I wanted to take a crate to hamster away from the other bands. I feel like a right twat. I head back downstairs with the crate again and find Frog looking really confused now. Jon tells me what the German is for fridge and then Froggy twigs on, “Ahhh, no it’s ok, you can just take a bottle and swap it for a cold one from the bar later”.

The gig room is packed and moist with sweat as we start the show with Death Do Us Part. As it happens, a fucking string goes during the first verse of the first song… there is a bit of a break whilst I swap guitar and straps before we start the second song. I’d thought that I would have just put up with having the guitar higher up if I’d broke a string near the end of the set but there’s no way I can do a whole set playing like Bob Marley. A minute or so later I’m ready to go and we get back on with things. The stage is really tight and it’s hard to keep your feet at times, especially when the punks fall on to the stage every now and again. The atmosphere is great and it sounds banging on stage. It’s all going well, although I’m a little wary of breaking another string so hold back slightly, that and my back is twinging a bit. And then at one point I puke a bit of Erdnuss flip in my mouth. Not the most rock n’ roll way to go.. And then Jon breaks a string in the middle of the set. It’s really dark on his side of the stage and he doesn’t have any spare strings but Adrian has a bunch so whilst they fart around sorting that, and then Jon stands in the light in the middle of the stage restringing his guitar I start playing a couple of doomy notes whilst the sweat drips from my forehead and nose. Johan and Andy join in and we strum along for what feels like five minutes. When Jon is finally sorted he says, “This song appropriately is called We’re Fucked” and the crowd erupts.

I like the set we have at the minute. The front end of the set is speckled with songs from the latest albums and then a couple of brand new songs from the new album we haven’t recorded yet. But we end with five or six classics from the early records and it feels like the set ends with a real burst of energy, both from the crowd and us. When we finish with This is the End a bunch of punks jump up onto the tiny stage and take over the vocals for the chorus, Johan taking a step back with a big smile on his face. Great feeling. The punks won’t let us leave the stage when we’re done and so we stay up for one more. Jon thanks the crowd dearly and then says, “This is our Wind of Change”, before going into the guitar intro of Killing. It’s a great way to end things. And the punks let us leave when we’re done this time.

Jon heads straight to the merch table whilst we pack up. Andy looks chuffed as fuck, “I’ve been thinking a few times during this long fucking day, thinking it’s not worth it, but then you play a gig like that and you remember exactly why we’re doing this”. I couldn’t agree more. We sit around on the stage chatting to a few punks for a while and then Froggy arrives with an ice bucket and a couple of bottles of bright green booze called Peppe, or something. It’s alcoholic mouth wash basically. Apparently we “have” to drink it. I don’t want to be rude but this is not the cold after beer gig I’ve been looking forward to all night. But what the hell, when in Weimar. I only have the one though. Andy and Johan are up for a second though, and a third.

We hang out in the bar for a couple of hours afterwards, the place is still pretty full and there’s loads of chat and banter. My friend and neighbour Johan Walin had told me in the week that he’d played at this squat with both Bombstrike and General Surgery and that it was a pretty cool place. I’m chatting to Frog who keeps looking at me with a drunk smile on his face and asking me if we had a good time and then wrapping his arm around my shoulder. I tell him my friend from home played here, must have been around 2006 or so. “Bombstrike?” Frog guesses immediately. Yeah! I say, “Very crazy people..” Frog smiles. I’ve never really known Walin as crazy… I’ll have to ask him what that was all about when I get home.

It’s one am and two bottles of Weimar’s finest when the gig high starts wearing off and tiredness starts hitting like a brick wall. I can see Johan is flaking too, he’s had a few glasses of the mouthwash booze and all. Originally we were supposed to sleep somewhere else but having heard about the band flat upstairs I’d told Frog we’d like to sleep here, which was fine. The Rock n’ Roll flat Frog called it. It looks like a hundred other sleeping rooms we’ve slept in at squats all over Europe. Bunk beds and dirty wooden floors. I’m glad we’re staying here though, otherwise we’d have run the risk of being kept up listening to loud crust music with drunk punks until the early hours. And I couldn’t have dealt with that tonight, we’ve been on the go for almost twenty four hours as it is.

We head upstairs and I climb into the middle bunk of three. The top bunk is really fucking high up, must be about twelve, thirteen foot or so. Fucking die if you rolled out of that in your sleep. Amazingly, I’m the only one of the four of us who has brought a sleeping bag. The one that Johan and Andy bought me as a birthday present as a laugh earlier this year. Chuffed as fuck with it now. There is definitely a cool draught in the room somewhere. As well as a slight whiff of puke.

Rehearsing

I know I sounded like an asshole just saying it to Jen as the St Pancras to Corby train approached the outskirts of my home town, “Every time I come back here I’m filled with a mixed bag of feelings. On the one hand there is excitement about seeing people I love and care about, on the other there is a feeling of trepidation, like a knot in my stomach”. Jen batted that comment away as nonsense not even to be entertained, as she rightly does with a great deal of the things I say, but I knew she wouldn’t understand. My joyful memories of childhood and early adolescence are countered with strength by experiences of teenage angst and violence, of constantly running the risk of being jumped purely for making eye contact with someone looking to make their mark, of sitting on the agency bus and the hell of the food factories, of making sure to avoid the glue sniffers when walking through the woods and the chaotic jungle that was senior school. Of course, this environment led me to find an escape, a release, in the guise of music.

One of the things I do still love about my hometown is my dad’s local pub, the Rockingham Arms, or the Rock as it’s known to the town’s inhabitants. The people in this place, mostly men, mostly Scottish, mostly alcoholic, are a scriptwriter's dream. I’ll never forget my friend Anders reaction when he was in town visiting. I wasn’t there then, but my mate Snitch took him to the Rock on a Saturday lunchtime and when I texted and asked him how it was he replied, “Well the first thing I saw upon entering was some old guy in a wheelchair at the bar, pissed as a fart, drinking his pint through a straw. Amazing place!” I never miss the Rock when I’m back visiting. It’s always good to catch up with dad and his gang of mates, as well as some of the other profiles in there. It’s always the same faces. When I was back this time, Crawley, one of the pub’s more permanent customers, caught my eye through the hole in the wall between the bar and the lounge where my dad sits. I say he caught my eye, it’s hard to tell sometimes. He was looking straight at me with a huge smile on his face, but that’s how he looks constantly, and the fact is he could just have well been sleeping with his eyes open. The old boy exists in a perpetual state of being fucked. Whilst considering whether to break the staring game and give him a shout he gives me the big thumb, “Alright Gareth boy!” And with that he comes shuffling through to the bar, laughing as he goes. Randomly Crawley starts mumbling something about the old days, about the racket we used to make with the band in the garage. He lives around the corner from dad and we used to practice with our first band in the garage sometimes when mum and dad were at work. Crawley is gleefully recounting listening to us, “Sounded like a right load of shite but it turned out alright for you anyway didn’t it?” he laughs whilst clapping my back. I’d totally forgotten about practising in mum and dad’s garage. As Crawley turned his attention to my dad who was waiting for the pint I’d just bought him, I started to think about all the places we’ve practiced over the years whilst Crawley and dad stood taking the piss out of each other, slagging each other off. Corbyites have an uncanny habbit of using the word "cunt" as a term of endearment. As this was going on I began racking up in my mind all the places we’ve rehearsed…

Our first band Morphene was never really a band. Not in the sense that we ever actually threatened to do anything with it. Our drummer Beany only actually got around to buying a drum kit for the last couple of months of the band’s short existence. For the most part he sat drumming on his thighs. We rehearsed both in my parent’s garage, with our 30 watt amps and Beany’s legs, plonking out rudimentary metal riffs in the middle of the afternoon whilst most of the neighbours were at work, barring Crawley apparently, and on occasion my dad, who had a very independent, flexible work schedule at the post office. On occasion he’d pop in for a cup of tea in the middle of his shift and look in on us banging away in the garage. It must have been a right din, three kids learning to play as we went along, but my dad’s face always had a chuffed smile on it. When our other guitarist, Chalmers, this awkward computer geek from school, got himself a Marshall JCM 900 stack, that never once left his house, we began practicing in his parent’s living room instead. Chalmers parents were a wonderfully odd couple, Pat and Fred. They were quite a bit older than everyone else’s parents, at least they seemed it anyway. Fred was this grey haired Scot who always spoke with a strained voice, like he was desperately frustrated all the time, and Pat looked like a fifties housewife and had a marvelously comical monotonal drole of an accent, something Chalmers himself had inherited and which led to the rest of us brutally taking the piss out of him. Pat and Fred were a pair of gems though, always really kind, and helped us out a lot. Whenever we were round Chalmers place the first thing Pat would do was sort us out with tea and biscuits. If we knocked on the door and Chalmers wasn’t home she’d still invite us in for a brew and it got to the point where me and Beany would go around knowing full well that Chalmers was out. I’m not so sure Pat swallowed our mock disappointment at having missed Chalmers..

Anyway, every Sunday Pat and Fred fucked off to Towcester to visit Pat’s mum and when they were away they let us practice in their living room. Me and Slaven, the bass player, with our tiny Gorilla amps and Chalmers with his big fucking stack. Slaven used to tape a kids karaoke machine mic to the wall and sing through that. Beany would either be slamming away on his thighs or rummaging through the kitchen cupboards looking for food, claiming his diabetes was playing up. Chalmers, who had been by far the most serious of us all at school with his grades, would be panicking as we ate the kitchen bare, but it didn’t take long for us to turn Chalmers. Once we all found booze, some time around thirteen, fourteen years old, Chalmers embraced it more than any of us and there and then his life started taking a different path. Before long we were pushing the boundaries further than Chalmers mum’s biscuits. On one occasion we tried experimenting with getting high. Booze was one thing, it was easy enough to get our hands on at the weekends through Beany’s older sister, or our friend Adam, who although was our age had a fully grown beard. But we were a bunch of long haired high school nobodys and as far removed from the weed scene in Corby as you could possibly be. One Sunday whilst practicing at Chalmers house we figured we’d try smoking Pat’s thyme plant, since it was green and a herb. We convinced ourselves this was going to be amazing and I remember the excitement of doing something really bad, something my parents would kill me for if they found out about it. Within ten minutes of smoking the thyme we were all clutching our foreheads in agony. The pain of the thyme headache put me off trying smoking again in a hurry.

Beany finally got himself a drum kit around the time we became aware there was actually a couple of rehearsal spaces available in town. One was at a community centre called the Connaughty Centre, where on Tuesday nights you could hire one of the many rooms there cheap. There were loads of bands practicing there, a couple in smaller carpeted rooms that actually looked like rehearsal spaces, others either in the big hall on the high wooden stage or in the foyer around the pool table. I practiced there with every band I played in in Corby between fourteen and eighteen, Speedhorn actually wrote a lot of the first album there. As a young kid I’d trained with the football team in the big sportshall out the back and now I was here on Tuesday nights playing with bands. This place meant a lot to all of us. Had to pay for the fucking biscuits and pop from the kiosk though, which was one negative compared to Pat and Fred’s.

The Connuaghty Centre is where I first met Frank. I’ll never forget taking a break from practice and hanging out by the pool table when I heard someone playing guitar, like really fucking playing guitar. I looked up to the second level of the foyer and saw this big tall kid with shortly cropped hair and a broad smile across a big baby like face. We all went up to look at him playing Hendrix solos and shit. I was in awe of him and also embarrassed by how bad he made us all sound. I soon found out that he was just as good, maybe even better on drums. I never would have thought then that he’d end up being the drummer in two other bands I had, Sect and Soul Cellar. Ridiculous really that despite being by far and away the most talented musician of all of us in Speedhorn, all he did in that band was scream.

The other place to rehearse in Corby was a couple of rooms at a professional recording studio called Premier Studios, which was at the back of this big nightclub called Bip’s, which was owned by my dad’s mate and local entrepreneur Bip. Bip’s brother Iain, was a guitarist and had been in this cheesy seventies rock band called Energy. By all accounts they’d done pretty well, releasing the odd single and album back in the day. Iain was a really nice guy and decent recording engineer. We would end up recording the two Speedhorn demos there before the first album, as well as demos with Sect and Soul Cellar. The practice rooms there were great for a while, although we complained like fuck about the price, being that it was twenty quid for four hours. It did come with a PA, amps and drums though. But still, we were narked about the price and used to bemoan the fact there was no other places in town providing competition to Iain. For some reason, Leon, the bass player in Sect and the leader of that band, christened him Nob Iain, and although we would all grow up recording with Iain and become good friends, the name stuck, at least behind his back. I think Leon took umbrage with him on one occasion where we cancelled a session late and Iain still charged us. Was kind of the vibe there. The thing I loved about Iain though was his friendly laugh, easy going manner and the fact that whilst everyone else called us “Speedhorn”, Iain was the only person who referred to us as “Raging”, in that slightly cheesy style befitting of someone who played in a band called Energy.

As is the standard in that town we came from, we did take the fucking piss though. There was always some conniving fucker in the band that booked the room and put it in someone else’s name. Gordon did this all the time, usually booking it in Little Dave or Daz’s name, knowing that if anything happened to the room or we had to cancel it would be them getting the call from Nob Iain. I remember this one Saturday night I was sat at my parent’s house, it was late, around 10 o’clock. It was pretty unusual for me to be home on my todd on a Saturday night at that age but nonetheless I was just sat on the sofa watching tv and pretty content with how my night was panning out. Then I get a call from Snitch telling me to come down to the practice room, they’re practicing with their joke band Richard T. King and the Minstrels, which was Snitch as a 70’s porn Elvis impersonator and Gordon, Little Dave, Jay and other Speedhorn/Scurge members as his backing band. I had to be convinced to get off my arse but Snitch said they were having a party and there was plenty of booze. What the hell, I thought, it’s only a fifteen minute walk. When I got there they were stood around jamming but I could tell they were all pretty minced. Within two hours I’d gotten completely fucked along with the rest of them, and the last thing I remember is stumbling around with a guitar and then myself and maybe one other smashing guitars through the polystyrene ceiling panels. The place was completely trashed. Nob Iain was on the fucking rampage the day after. Of course, Gordon had booked it in Little Dave’s name and was hiding low. We ended up back down there the next day tidying the room up and paying a symbolic amount of money for damages. Iain’s wife happened to be there and she was disgusted with us.

It was a pain in the ass, having to lug your gear back forth to the practice room for a four hour session, especially later on when I was flying in from Sweden, often direct after my shift in the bar on the dawn flight, and then I’d be the first twat there, beating others in the band who lived five minutes away, sometimes the fuckers would just fuck practice off altogether, which would really fry my piss. I guess they had their lives going on as well but at the time I took it as them marking the fact they felt betrayed I’d left Corby. We were like that. Speedhorn were always fucking fighting, it was truly tiresome, if not on occasion entertaining. I remember one time we were practicing at the Connuaghty Centre and John and Frank had an argument right off the bat. John stormed out, telling us he’d had it. We just carried on and practiced for another hour or so and when we finished up and went out for a breather John was sat outside on the wall shaking his head, “I can’t believe you just carried on without me!” Lesson right there. We’d made it clear to everyone in the six piece band that there was no leader and everyone was dispensable. That attitude worked for and against us.

Speedhorn were never happier though, in fact, I was never happier rehearsing, than the couple of years or so we had a rehearsal space we could call home. Kind of. Frank was a car mechanic and his dad had a breakdown/recovery business and for a while we rehearsed at the their car yard. There were broken cars everywhere, a pretty large garage where the Reagan’s worked on cars during the day and a beautiful German Shepherd called Thumper, who was the night watch dog. We named the song from the first album after him, everyone loved him. We wrote songs from the first three albums at the yard and had some great times. It wasn’t only our rehearsal space, it was our base, where we’d all hang out most nights of the week. Frank’s dad Stan was a mean looking old Scot though and we were all fucking terrified of him. I’ll never forget his face when he turned up one Sunday afternoon and not only were we practicing in the garage without telling him, Frank was stood there with a bass high up on his chest, fucking around slapping the strings with a big joint in his mouth. I wish I had a picture of Frank’s face when he turned around to see Stan stood there with a face of thunder. I’ll never forget Stan’s pained voice, “What kinda kids huv ah raised?!” Frank’s younger sister had just gotten pregnant.. Guess it was a tough time for old Stan.

Stan, to his credit, didn’t evict us from the yard though. He would never let on, and he told us constantly that we were shite, but that was just tough love I reckon. Nevertheless, we came to a new arrangement with him. He’d gotten hold of a couple of static caravans and they were sat down the yard, we could have one of them for a practice space. It was perfect. We hollowed out most of one of the caravans and set up all our gear in there and the other caravan we had as a chill out space. In retrospect it was a pretty tiny space to practice in, and with full stacks and Gordon’s 24 in ride cymbal it’s amazing we’re not all deaf today. It sounded like a fucking tornado in there. The chill out caravan was as you can imagine, a couple of rooms with a bed in one and a sofa in the other, completely engulfed in hippie smoke. Our friend Raymond and his cousin Barry were regulars down there and they used to roll up whilst we rehearsed. Those two were our first real crew members. Those nights were the happiest I remember in Speedhorn. No pressure from any record labels, just hanging out and writing songs and getting wasted. I don’t even know where Raymond and Barry are these days.

Before we had that home we had tried to find others, desperate to defy Iain and what we thought were his extortionate prices. We even practiced a couple of times in Gordon’s bedroom at his mum and dad’s house, which is unbelievable looking back at it. They had this three bedroom house at the end of a terraced row. Their garden was also full of dogs and old cars and general scrap, Gordon’s dad Moggy was friends with Stan. The living room was a trip too, three or four parrots, one of them used to say “cunt” all the time, the other one used to impersonate the telephone ring, they had an old pinball machine in the corner too. Place was a mad house. The parrot swore because I guess cunt was the most commonly used word in their house. It was shocking to me to hear Gordon and his mum calling each other daft cunts and the like. They were a right bunch of hillbillies, I loved them to death though. Even then it struck me as bonkers that we were up in Gordon’s bedroom with three full stack amps and his big drum kit, playing full blast in the middle of the day whilst Gordon’s mum Isobel was downstairs watching tv. I remember asking her if their neighbours weren’t gonna go mad and she replied, “Ah fuck em”, totally not interested. Amazing.

The yard is the place I remember with most fondness though. It was pretty unusual in the UK to have your own space, places like Iain’s were the standard. And we used a few different spaces over the years, both in Kettering and Northampton as the band members changed. I remember even writing songs from the last album in a room at the old Tech College building in Corby, which was weird because only a few years before I’d been a very depressed student there. Moving to Sweden I was shocked to find that pretty much every band I knew in Stockholm had their own space. Just the luxury of being able to leave your gear set up so that when you arrived you just turned on and played. It was like another world.

Battle of Santiago had a space out in Bromma, a really small room in a building that the drummer Tompa’s family owned or something. Their friend Kasper had a recording studio there and his cheesy pop/rock band rehearsed there. We had a small room to there too. That was a pretty cool set up, although we had to work around the studio. And Tompa. The fucker was always late and totally nonchalant with it. I remember him calling Erik one time, “I might be somewhat late to practice”. He was already late and the rest of us were waiting for him. Erik asked him if something had happened. “Nah, I just ordered a pint at Retro. But I’ll be on my way soon”. Erik was fuming when he hung up, “The wanker doesn’t even respect us enough to make up an excuse!”

Santiago would later move into Victims old place, which for a while was one of the best places I’d ever rehearsed. It was in an old bomb shelter, underneath a park in the middle of the city centre, right next to a great pub. It was a long tunnel shaped space underground sectioned off into four parts. I practiced with Victims in the first section and Santiago, sometimes DB, in the third. Victims had been there for a long time and it was there I first tried out with them, but the place suffered a lot with humidity, even in the summer it was wet and cold down there, and when someone’s guitar got fucked due to the damp we ended up moving out. Erik Santiago still rehearses there with his band Mary’s Kids though and they put shows on there now and again. I remember when we did the Santiago record with Stig Larsson we rehearsed with him there. Stig likes to fucking talk, doesn’t require anyone to listen, and Erik, being a bit stressed about meeting his girlfriend’s family for the first time after rehearsal wanted to get things moving along. He’d said to me on the way that whatever happens we can’t let Stig start babbling. But when we got there Stig was already reciting a poem, not one he was doing as part of the set we were playing with him mind, and Patrik and Olle were stoned off their tits, eyes closed, absorbing every word. “Ah fuck sakes!” mumbled Erik as we arrived. Erik snapped everyone out of it and got us into gear so we could whizz through the set. Stig, a bit disgruntled, shuffled into the main practice space and we got on with things. Erik pissed off as soon as the set was done but I stuck around for a bit, sensing some fun was to be had. Before you know it Stig is stood there again, eyes closed, reciting another poem. Patrik, totally engulfed in the genius of Stig and the copious amounts of weed he’d smoked, stood with his guitar, rocking back and forth with his eyes also closed. Next thing Patrik sways a little too far and falls flat into Tompa’s drum kit. Tompa’s is well pissed off, as is Stig, feeling that the moment has been ruined. It’s an almighty task stifling the laugh inside.

We moved three times in as many years with the Victims/DB collective. First we moved to a place in Hammarby Sjöstad, in the old industrial part of the city that is now full of Sim City looking flats and expensive as shit. Johan had a hook up through his job there and the place worked out pretty well for a while, it was where we had our first ever rehearsals with DB. Unfortunately the place flooded during a particularly wet autumn day and we found the place drenched in a few inches of water. Thankfully the only damage incurred was to one vinyl record floating around the room. So we moved out of there.

The next place was an old storage room underneath the ground of the inner courtyard of a housing complex in Vasastan. The room was huge and right in the middle of the city, it felt too good to be true. An old woman had actually contacted us through Blocket and said they had a space, someone had used it as a studio before apparently. It took a lot of a work, and along with members of Johan’s other band Swarm, and another band that was going to rehearse in a small room beside ours, we collectively built the room into a practice studio. I remember smirking when Andy turned up in his builder slacks complete with tool belt and Mackan from Swarm laughing, calling him Industri Andy. When we moved in and started rehearsing it was the middle of winter and there was a thick layer of snow on the ground. When the snow melted so did a lot of the sound insulation and before long we were told to fuck off. Shame, it was the biggest room I’d ever practiced in. Almost too big really.

And now we are where we are today. Uffe from Swarm/Entombed had a hook up with a place in Hökarängen, some kind of cultural/art collective that was taking over a big house there. Our room in the basement is pretty small but it’s cosy and I like it. Above us there are various rooms where different artists and musicians have small studios, there is a stage room on the top floor where they have kids theatre and dance etc. It’s the longest we’ve been anywhere for a while. We’re around twelve or thirteen people and amongst us there are four or five bands. I really like that. It’s great having your own space to practice. I still remember being blown away by Misdemeanor’s huge practice room the first time Jen took me there. No wonder there are so many active bands and musicians in Sweden when this is the set up. Not only do bands have their own spaces but you can even get grant money where you can claim back on some of the rent you pay. When we rehearse in the UK with DB I realise how lucky we are here. To be fair, the place in Deptford owned by John Conflict is great. The rooms are a good size, it’s just round the corner from the Waiting Room and you get to hang out with John and Sarah Conflict, which is worth it on it’s own. It’s about as good a set us as you can get without having your own place. One thing though, moving practice rooms is a huge pain in the tits. It seems Andy and Johan are constantly on the lookout for somewhere better. I’m hoping that nowhere better comes up. But that’s just because I’m a lazy bastard.

Victims Turns Twenty

This year Victims turns 20 years old. We’re not quite the Rolling Stones but 20 years feels like a lifetime in punk rock terms. I guess there are a lot of old bands reforming and playing again, and that’s what it is, I have no real opinion on it either way, but to have been playing together, consistently writing records and touring for twenty years is quite an accomplishment. Fucking amazing really.

26th. April 1997 was the date of the first ever Victims show. The place? Oxelösund, which I’ve since learnt is a small town just outside of Nyköping, the place where the guys, Andy and Johan, Victims two remaining founding pillars, call home. In April 1997 I was nineteen years old and living in Corby, playing in a metalcore band called Soul Cellar, three of whose members would later form Raging Speedhorn, myself included. But that was still a year away. It’s a bit of a perspective fucker for me when I think about the fact that I’ve been playing in Victims since 2009, which is now eight years ago. I played in Speedhorn from start to original finish for ten years. And even though it is now almost ten years ago since we split up, those ten years still feel like the defining decade in my life. They still form a massive part of my identity. What’s weird as shit now is reflecting over the fact that I’ve been playing in Victims almost the same amount of time and yet it doesn’t feel anywhere near as long. Sure, Speedhorn felt like a fucking lifetime, it was intense and often as draining as it was fun. Eight years of Victims have flown by though, and I still feel like the new guy a lot of the time. Ronnie Wood syndrome I call it.

Maybe it’s the fact that there is a large part of Victims history that I’m not a part of. I still refer to the records from those years as “yours” and not “ours”. And they’re still my favourite records. I’m very much a part of the writing these days, with each record I feel it’s more “we” than “you”. The fact is, I’m eternally grateful to be playing in this band and have huge respect for Johan, Andy and Jon, who has as much Victims DNA running through him as anyone. If it wasn’t for the fact that I started playing with Victims almost directly after Speedhorn split up, there is every chance I would have quit playing music a long time ago. As it is, I’m closing in on twenty six years of playing in bands. I formed Morphene in 1991 at thirteen years old, I’ve haven’t not been in a band since.

And to think when Speedhorn split up in 2008 I was convinced I was taking a break. Johan and I were both working at Debaser, this great music venue in the middle of Stockholm, right by the water near the Old Town. I saw hundreds of great bands during my five years there washing dishes, hanging jackets in the wardrobe and eventually working behind the bar, all the time honing my Swedish languauge skills, conversing with drunk people. Johan was the in-house sound engineer and the main man. He’s always the main man. He has that pondus about him, just carries respect. I was taken aback when on my first day, he came up to me and said, “Hey, you’re in Raging Speedhorn right? Great band!” in front of the rest of the staff and the bosses. I don’t know if he meant it as a welcoming present, giving me a bit of slack with the rest of the staff and easing the burden of not speaking Swedish at that present point? I don’t know. Maybe he just actually liked Speedhorn. But my first day at work felt a lot less daunting after that. It was like going to your first day at senior school and one of the older guys from fifth year comes up to you and tells you they’d look after you since they knew your older cousin, and in hindsight obviously fancied her. Kind of like that. Not to put too diffuse a metaphor on it. Anyway, from that moment on I knew I was going to get on just fine at Debaser and I knew that Johan and I were going to be good friends.

So when he started talking to me about the possibility of playing second guitar in Victims I was obviously delighted. Not only were they a great band, but they were active and toured all over the place. The only problem was I was still pretty busy with Speedhorn, although I knew that was slowly coming to an end. We said we’d keep it in mind, maybe try it out some time in the future. As time went by Speedhorn and Victims actually toured together in Scandinavia, and it was during those shows I knew I really wanted to join Victims. Although at the time they were really just finding their feet as a three piece and I was starting to wonder if my chance at joining them hadn’t passed. They were fucking brutal as a three piece.

And so it was. Speedhorn split up in late 2008 and I was immediately on Johan’s case about practicing with them. And I did feel that I had to push it a bit because they didn’t seem quite as sure anymore. After some badgering from my side though we set up a practice. Johan gave me a compact disc of their latest setlist for me to try and work out on guitar and practice to at home before we jammed. I was immediately on the back foot since the only song I’d managed to learn so far, No Reason, from the Killer album, wasn’t on there. That was the slower, more rocking song on the album. Later on at practice when I suggested playing that song Andy just laughed, “What song is that?!”. When I explained which one it was his laugh took a slightly more scathing tone, “Fuck no, that song is rubbish!” I would soon learn that Andy has a disregard for many of the songs from the back catalogue, much to my amazement. Anyway, I managed to work out some of the songs from the setlist cd but it was a bit of a struggle. I was having a hard time with the speed of some of the playing, it was at that time way faster than anything I’d been plodding along with during the previous sixteen years. The thing is, the songs were even fucking faster in the practice room, twice the speed some of them, and then live they went up a notch again. Halfway through my first show with the guys, at Kafe 44 with Mob 47, my forearm was so strained it was cramping and I thought I was going to pass out. Felt like a right prick. Thankfully it got better and I adapted. And funnily enough, those songs have since slowed down a bit and playing with Victims now feels completely natural. Must be an age thing.

Anyway, after a couple of pracitces the guys told me that they had an East Coast States toured booked in a few months time and did I want to come along. I couldn’t fucking believe it! On a few occasions over the months following Andy and I chatted about me being in the band, and he told me more than once that it wasn’t just the fact that they really needed a second guitar player, it was more to do with the fact that it was just nice having me around. In hingdisght I guess Andy and Johan were happy for someone new in the band to ease the strain of trying to keep up with Jon. And for a while I did. Those first few tours I cherished every moment of riding the Jon party train and documenting every hillarious moment of it whilst out on tour.

Last year we released the second album with me on it, Sirens, it took about five years to write. It’s not Metallica’s black album or anything, it just took a long time to write because we’ve all been producing kids and almost seamlessly overlapping each other with periods of paternity leave. Sirens is solid enough but the result of having certain songs on the album that are five years old is that you’re bored of them before they’re even released. Uncharacteristically, we’ve now finished writing a new record, well a twelve inch at least, not even a year after the release of Sirens. I think it’s by far the best stuff we’ve written since I’ve been with the guys. It’s a bit different, Johan has started writing riffs for pretty much the first time in the band’s history and now that particular genie has been released from the bottle there is no putting it back in. He’s gone mad, writing songs all over the place. Johan’s “The Wall” I’ve been calling this new record. Although, as always, we’ve all been very involved in putting it together.

Whatever this new record is going to be called, I think it’s going to be by far the furthest step away from Neverendinglasting that the band (we’ve) written. Not that we’ve written a Mr. Bungle record or anything, it’s still Victims, but a little different. I had to laugh when we started talking about new material. Andy was very firm with the idea that he wanted us to “think outside the box”, that he didn’t care about writing stuff that people want to hear, that it has to first and foremost be interesting to us. Sure enough, Johan wrote his first riffs for the first song on the record and it was pretty different. “Woah”, I thought, “We’re onto something a bit out there with this”. And then Andy started banging a d-beat over it. And so it was thus. Probably still inside the box, just that the box has been stretched a bit. The song turned out fucking great anyway.

I still love Neverendinglasting though, I still love all the early Victims records. I’m probably the only one in the band that even listens to those records. And it’s always me harping on about playing songs from the first couple of records live, which almost always are dismissed out of hand by Andy and smirked at by Johan. Which isn’t that weird I guess. It’s not always that fun playing songs that are twenty years old. I don’t listen to any of my old albums. You live with them intensely before you release them into the world and then you’re done with them. Anyway, to celebrate twenty years of being a band we’re playing a show in August, and maybe, just maybe then, we’ll get to play some of those old crackers.

Like I say, there is a lot of Victims history before my time in the band, and I’ve heard some great stories in and around the van and the guys over the last eight years. The first time they played outside of Sweden and Johan was really nervous, he still gets pretty nervous sometimes, but he’s not always been the most comfortable talking between songs, Jon normally takes that roll. Anyway, he was so nervous that on entering the stage and taking the mic he said “Hi, we’re Sweden from Victims!” much to the delight of the Skitsytem guys who were touring with them. Johan kept quiet on stage for a while after that.

Andy and food have been the source of amusement now and again, none more so than the first time the guys played the UK and were treated to the famous “punk stew”, which back in the day was particularly rank a lot of the time in the UK. UK food has always been a source of piss taking for most of the rest of the world. Whatever it was they were served at this particular gig in Leeds though Andy couldn’t bring himself to eat it. Not being the best with the English language at the time Andy walked with the paper plate of slop and held it out to the punk who had served it to him, “I’m sorry”, he said sounding genuinely sad, not able to find any other words. The punk though obviously didn’t understand what was happening and the two of them just stood there looking at each other for a while. This is one of Johan’s favourite stories.

My favourite story though is of Jon. Who else? The first time Victims toured the States, back in 2006, Jon broke his leg after the first show whilst fucking around with this friend of his in the car park after the show. They were play wresting and she ending up falling on Jon and snapping his ankle, or foot or something. The story of the hospital visit itself is pretty fucking brutal. Jon said that he was lying in this room with his foot pointing the wrong way, and eventually a doctor turns up. After a bit of preparation the doctor looks solemly at him and says, “John, this is gonna hurt”. He then yanks his foot back into it’s correct position as Jon screams in agony. For the pain Jon was given some pretty saucy medication and his leg was put in a cast. Jon is a fucking hero though and he did the rest of the tour, playing people’s basements for the most part, sat in a wheelchair, playing guitar and banging his head. The guys only had to cancel one show, and they did one other show without Jon before he was ready to join back up them. That show was in Richmond, and they did that as a three piece with Little Andy on guitar and no bass. It was at a roller rink and Baroness were the support band. The absolute cherry on top of this story is though that Jon had an alergic reaction to the pain medication he was which resulted in his lips puffing up like a fucking balloon! I’ve seen the pics and he looked like a Hollywood botox effort gone horendously wrong. I can only imagine the first show they played with him after the accident, Johan rolling Jon into the gig space in his wheelchair, plaster cast leg pointing the way forwards and insanely big lips hindering Jon from talking properly. “Hi, we’re Victims!”

“No shit”...

Nottingham

Woke up to Luc moaning at me about my phone, saying it had been buzzing and plinging all night. I’d left it charging on the table and hadn’t turned the sound off. I could have volleyed back with a complaint about his talking in his sleep but didn’t bother. I guess he can’t turn the sound off on that though...Still, it’s like sleeping next to a fucking serial killer. Buffalo Bill in the bed beside me. Don’t even want to know what he was dreaming about.

It’s nice with the lie in this morning. The train to Notts is at 1pm and we don’t have to leave the hotel until 12. Dancer. The lobby is still full of lads as we check out, different lads though. Same shite banter coming out of them though. They must advertise this place as lad friendly or something. There are a bunch of old Geordie boys checking out as well, we’d met the same crowd in the hallway last night, they’d spotted us carrying the guitars and lept on it immediately, “Oooh boys we’re ganna be rocking the night!” and “Sorry lads, ain’t got nae change on me”. Brilliant stuff. Kev just leaves the keys on the desk and we fuck off out of there. We find a pretty nice cafe on the way to the station, with some friendly woman serving us. She asks if we’re in a band and where we’re from and all and she’s really chatty with us the whole time we’re there. The food is decent too, I have avocado smash on toasted sourdough bread and a cappuccino. I’m feeling good again this morning. I could get used to this no hangover on tour lark.

The train to Nottingham takes around two hours and Kev tells us that our old mate Steve Heresy, who plays with Endless Grinning Skulls who we have the pleasure of playing with tonight, has booked us a table at the amazing Annie’s Burger Shack, which is a proper luxury since it’s almost impossible to get a booking at this late notice. Steve works there though and could sort us out. Thing is, as Kev tells us we have a table sorted it springs to mind that Henry, another friend involved in the show tonight, made really nice food for Victims last time we played, and literally not a minute later Henry texts Kev and tells him that he’s made food. Feel a bit bad about that. We apologise and assure him that the food will be eaten during the evening, no problem on that score.

We head straight to Annie’s from the station. The food here is fucking top. One of the best veggie burgers you’ll ever eat. Me and Vik have a Motörhead themed meal with a Lemmy Burger and a Road Crew Pale Ale, which has something to do with the Motörhead brand. Ace just sitting here relaxing with some good scran for a while. When we’re done we head down the road to drop the stuff off at the venue and I’m trying to decide what to do with the afternoon before things kick off tonight. I have a bunch of friends from Corby coming, Snitch and Bean, two of my oldest mates who I get to see not nearly enough these days, but also a few old friends from school who have been in touch and said they were coming. Will be really fun to see them. It’s literally been about twenty years and this is totally not their scene, it will probably freak them out a bit, but they’re great people and I’m looking forward to seeing them. I’m walking alongside Kev and he’s going on about Sean Duggan’s new pub, saying that he feels that he has to pop by and see him. Kev and Sean played in Hard to Swallow together and Sean thinks the world of Kev. He’s a bit fucking mental though and there’s always a danger of being intimidated into drinking booze when you go to his. He’s a difficult man to say no to. Kev asks me if I fancy a walk over there. I’m kinda doing my best to abstain from the event to be honest but Kev is doing his best to convince me. It’ll only be the one, and all that. I tell Kev I think I might just go for a walk about for a bit and then the truth comes out, “Come on Gaz, I need you there with me to keep me from getting fucked”. What can I do?

We drop the gear off, shoot the breeze with Boulty for a bit who is hanging like a soggy sock, says he had a bit of a bad’un last night and was up early recording a band this morning. He’s slowly getting things in order so we leave him to it and tell him we’ll be back in a bit. Andy EGS has some artwork up at this pub called the King Billy just down the road, part of an exhibition with some others that we’d like to check out, so we decide to head by there on the way back from Sean’s pub. When we locate Sean’s pub and aim towards it we spot him stood outside with a big smile on his face, waiting for Kev. We exchange pleasantries at the door and then head in and the first thing Sean does is bark an order at his bartender for five shots of Jager. I immediately decline the kind offer, although I have to stand my ground and politely say no a couple of times, but the others sheepily take the shot on order. Luc and Vik stand there banging on about how actually, Jagermeister is really good for the old digestion and it was actually just what they needed after the big meal. My arse.

Once that’s all done we sit take a table and a drink with Sean and face a barrage of old tales and anecdotes for the next forty minutes. Some of the old Nottingham stories from back in the 90’s, when a huge crowd of punks basically occupied an entire house of flats, are beyond fucking belief. We sit there pissing ourselves laughing as Sean and Kev recount the madness. One of my favourites being the one where they had a party in the backyard and they’d tied a tarpaulin sheet up as a roof from the rain, attached to the yard walls and house windows. Keväs old best mate, Bobby Vimto, jumped from a third storey window onto the sheet and took the fucker straight down, bringing a window and the entire window frame out of the wall with it. There was another one about Hard to Swallow being on tour in Europe and Gords had diagnosed himself with cancer, saying he had a hole in his throat. Sean being the only one with a vague grip on German took care of the situation and went with Gords to sort him out at the dentist. After forty minutes of this stuff we have to leave, although not before Sean tries to force another pint down Kev. Kev looks at me for support and insists that we have to go, gotta get back for soundcheck. As if.

We head to the King Billy to check out Andy’s artwork and bump into the very man himself and Henry, who is wearing a cracking pair of love heart shaped sunglasses and a cheeky smile. It’s great to see the boys, always is. Wonderful people. They’re just on their way back up to the venue though. We tell them we’ll be up in a bit and head inside. The stuff is all upstairs on the walls of the pool room, and some other stuff in a smaller room beside where they have a dartboard. There are a pair of old couples in there playing arrows though and they look at us like the circus just came to town.

We decide to play some pool. Vik helps himself to an IPA, 7% job. Don’t know where he puts the stuff away. When he orders it the old boy at the bar feels the need to warn him about the price. “Just so you know, this beer is five quid a pint. It’s the dearest beer we have”. Kev tells the old boy Vik is from Stockholm and Vik hands over a fiver, fucking chuffed. We have a couple of games of pool and then decide to have a look at Andy’s stuff in the other room, old cunts or not. This one old girl is sat right underneath a big frame of the original artwork for the new EGS record. Kev stands right in front of her to get a closer look. She looks at him like he’s just dipped his knob in her glass. Mardy old boot. Snitch has been on the blower anyway, tells me they’re at the pub next to the venue, so we head off there, leaving them to the darts.

The Vine, which my mate James whose place we’re staying at tonight tells me is a terrifying pub, although James is easily terrified to be fair, is literally right next door to the rehearsal rooms which is tonight’s venue. Right outside the pub is also the spot where some poor bastard got kicked to death the first time we played here. Fucking heavy night that was. Anyway, there is this knuckle dragger stood outside the pub smoking a cig, big fat bloke who looks like a character from the film ID, looks like he hates everyone. We breeze past him and find Snitch and Bean sat in the bar. It’s great to see the big pair of cheesy smiles that these two carry around with them wherever they go. We’re sat at a table cackling like witches before Vik is even back from the bar, chuffed as fuck that his pint only cost two pound forty. There are only a couple of other old codgers in the bar and apart from our howling laughter the place is silent. I get the feeling we’re not too appreciated. It’s bright as fuck in here as well. Vik said he got a couple of funny looks when he ordered a glass of water for me and all. It’s great catching up with two of my oldest and closest friends though. Before long ID walks back in and takes up a position behind a DJ board, looks at us with a face like thunder whilst trying to concentrate on the playlist he’s obviously setting up on his phone. I keep my eye on him for about ten minutes. He looks pure infuriated. When he finally starts the show he kicks off with the Muppets Theme Tune, and some cheap flashing disco lights kick into action to accompany it. Total surreal scene. We get the fuck out of there and head to the venue.

Jeremie is waiting at the top of the steep stairs for me with a big hug. It’s great to see him. And then I spot my old school friends from Corby, sat in the gig room, which is even smaller than it was last time played since they’ve basically built a box in the old foyer to get around it disturbing the other practice spaces. This place now only holds fifty and they’ve sold all thirty advance tickets out. It should be a great evening. Revenge for last night’s pants. Anyway, the guys are sat on the floor drinking tins of beer, saying they couldn’t believe there was no bar and it was bring your own booze. They have three bags full of tins and they seem intent on getting plastered tonight. It’s really great to see them though. Heg, John, Kerry and Lucy. Lucy and John I literally don’t know if I’ve seen since school. Lucy is this really beautiful person that we were all in love with at school, she was one of the popular girls but for some reason loved all us long haired “grungers” and our association with her saved us from various kick-ins I’m sure. It’s great to see her. And Heg is the guy I probably have to thank for being here since it was him who first started playing me Guns n’ Roses and Metallica records when we were eleven years old. I have no idea what they’ll make of tonight.

The entire evening is pretty much spent chatting and catching up with various people. Dave Speedhorn and another friend Sean are here, always fun getting in on the latest Speedhorn gossip. Weird Chris has come down from Sheffield, he’s telling about how things didn’t really work out for him in Gothenburg, which is a shame since he was psyched about moving there. Says he loves Sheff too much to stay away though. I miss the first couple of bands since I’m out on the street chatting for most of them. I’m only waiting for EGS tonight anyway. By the time they start I’ve taken my position into the tightly packed room, right in front of Gords. Andy introduces the show, “Hi we’re Endless Grinning Skulls and we have a new record out. And we’re gonna play it for you now”. I love Andy’s style. They rip through the whole record and I’m doing my best not to tamp on Gords toes, but the crowd behind is nudging me ever slowly forward. I look over at Luc on the other side, banging his fist the whole set, big smile on his face. Kev and our mate Kelly Apple are stood beside me, big smiles. Kev is loving every second of it, eyes closed in ecstasy of the EGS thunderbastard. He’s probably a bit pissed too. The thing is, they’re so fucking good, all three of them super talented. Weird Chris is stood behind the band banging his head with a huge smile on his face. And watching Steve play those drums is a pleasure anyone can indulge in, even my old mate Kerry from school who is stood at the front having a little dance. I think all the four of them are pretty boats, Heg had caught me on the way in and told me he was wankered, apparently he’d fallen over a bollard on the way back from the pub here. Anyway, I enjoy every last second of the EGS set and I’m dying to get up and play, fearful that everyone will fuck off now they’re done. James turns to me and laughs, “Good luck following that!” No shit…

We get set up pretty quick since we’re using all of EGS gear but of course the punks have gone for a quick breather between bands and it’s not that full by the time we’re ready. But we start making noise and the room quickly fills again. Stone cold sober and full of energy, I’m ready for this fucker. Sixteen songs fly by, I don’t think I stop moving and dancing around during the entire set, just totally fucking buzzed. Jeremie and Henry, still in his heart shaped shades, stood right in front of me, big smiles across their faces. Weird Chris behind Vik fistbanging. Even Annie, from the legendary Burger Shack, a very old friend of the scene is in the middle of the crowd headbanging. It’s just one of the immensely fun shows and the energy doesn’t drop for a second. I have one bizarre moment when Lucy grabs me between songs at one point, obviously pretty sauced and shouts something along the lines of, “This is fucking mental!” and then John taps me on the shoulder during the next song and stands there headbanging in front of me for a few seconds. I just crack up and carry on. Feels like everyone has a great show, even Luc who was having trouble with his Rat pedal which I saw him kicking a few times seems to be chuffed as shit.

After the show I stand there sweating my ass off trying to wrap a lead up whilst talking to a pissed up Beany and Snitch who is driving back. It takes about ten minutes to untangle that fucking lead for some reason, Beany telling me he’s disappointed in my lack of skills. James approaches and tells me that if we can make it back to the King Billy for midnight we’ll get a lock in. We have forty five minutes to get there, time to get into action. Boulty gives me a bunch of codes for different doors to the building and asks me not to kick the doors in again like we did the first time we played here. On that occasion Kev had taken the code and then fell asleep pissed in the Old Angel and left the rest of us up the creek. This time I’m totally straight although have little phone battery so give them to Luc to store in his. It’s a bit of a faff fest getting everyone on the move but eventually we manage to move about thirty of us to the King Billy, pretty much half of the gig in essence. James is a bit panicky about the amount of people in tow but seems pretty sure that we’ll be okay.

When we get there we find Iggy and some other classic Notts punks already outside and the door to the pub is already locked. Although there is still plenty of signs of life from within. James looks through the letter box and says he can see Henry in there, trying to explain the situation to the landlord. Luc who is obviously pissed is oblivious to this and is stood knocking the window beside the door. I tell him to cool it but I can tell by the look on his face that he’s in that mood. Just as all is looking doomed and we’re trying to think of a plan B the landlord pokes his head out and says there’s time for one last beer, whilst giving a very sly wink. We pile in and swarm the bar, the young barmaid, very friendly and happy to serve us but looking a little worried by the sheer mass of punks flowing through the door, “Oh my…” she says in a beautifully posh accent.

Happy to have a cold pint of IPA in my hand I take a table with Jeremie, James and Chris who plays with James in Grey Hairs and was also in a great band before called Wolves! Of Greece. He’s really nice and is bubbling about the gig, talking over and over about the energy I had whilst playing. Fucking chuffed to meet him, I really liked his band. In the hour or so we’re there I manage to get around to most people for a chat, and apparently Luc, Vik and Kev have managed to get pretty smashed. Even Boulty is here, dreading yet another hangover tomorrow. By one am it’s time to go and we head back to the venue for our bags and gear. Boulty tells me that we can use the main door since there are still people there and James has the code. We get to the venue and James does not have the code. At least not one for this door. Vik and Luc are very confused, saying they have the codes and whilst I’m trying to explain to them that we have to go around to the back door they’re stood there punching different combinations on the panel. I manage to steer them round to the back door and we take ourselves in that way with the code I have from Boulty, the first of which was easy to remember. The second door is already open which leads us straight back into the venue but I’ve locked our gear inside EGS room. Queue Vik and Luc standing with phones in hand shouting codes at me. Getting on my fucking tits by this point I tell them to shut it and let open the door with another code to this room that Jeremie gave me earlier. They get a bit arsey now, reckon I’m being a cunt. For the first time this weekend I wish I was drunk so I could deal with this pair of jokers. Luc insists I apologise for my attitude, which I do, but he doesn’t accept it as sincere. Fuck this.

As James calls an Uber cab, something he apologises for directly, saying he knows it’s not very punk rock, the guys spot tubs of Henry’s food in the kitchen. A couple of different curry dishes, some bhajis of some sort and naan breads. Everyone happy again we tuck, making curry sarnies from the bread. We stuff it down before the cab arrives and head back to James’ place, talking with the driver about Irish folk music the whole way back. It’s almost two when we get back but we sit up for a while for a bit of a chat before bed time. The guys head off to crash out after drinking a couple of sips of beer but James and I have a glass of wine each and stay up a little longer. James is pretty fucking wankered himself though and when I notice his eyes closing as I talk I tell him it’s time we hit the hay. It’s almost three and we have to get up just before eight, have an early train to London tomorrow. I head upstairs to the top floor and lie down on the mattress on the floor, head clear and wired, thoughts won’t stand still to allow sleep to take me. I lie there for an hour, getting more and more pissed off. “I can’t get no sleep..” Gords line from the old Geriatric Unit comes to mind. Going to be fucking knackered in the morning. At least I won’t be hungover though. Is this the start of a new era? I wonder..

Leeds

Dad clock. Wake up at seven am. Dying for a shite. The flat is enveloped in a blanket of silence. Kev’s bedroom door is firmly closed. I empty myself in the toilet, grab a glass of water and head back to the mattress and will myself back to sleep. It’s u not happening.

Around nine the first signs of life begin to appear. Christie is up and out of bed, walking around in his kecks with his newly done tattoo, a huge black V (according to Viv it was in her honour) starting at the top of his scrote and ending under his nipples. What a sight. From Bloody Kev’s room there are murmured sounds. A bit of chat. Some giggling. Vik is playing something loudly on his phone, grumbling at me and Luc for talking loudly. We begin to speculate on Kev’s night, who it was he ended up going home with. Slowly a clearer picture of the situation begins to appear. There are two female voices coming from his room. Not long after Kev walks into his living room wearing nothing but his kecks and a guilty smile. “What the fuck Kev? Were there three of you last night?” one of us asks. Kev sits down with hand over his mouth, trying his best to hide his grin, “I’ve had an accident”. Dirty old fecker. And to think we were debating yesterday about whether he was contemplating retiring yesterday. He’s by far the oldest of us and yet he comes home hours after we go to bed and then with two girls. He makes some joke about how the Magick Gods are looking out for him. Love him, I really do. He heads back into his bedroom and the giggling continues. It seems like there is a lot of joy in the room. And what’s wrong with that at the end of the day? Consenting adults and all that.

A while later one of the girls walks out into the hallway and finds a newly showered Luc, “Where is the toilet? Whoever you are”, she bluntly asks him. Lucas cracks up. Like her style. Kev laughs and says that apparently in the midst of booze ridden haze she’d texted her boss at work telling her she wouldn’t be coming into work today, “You are the worst human being I’ve ever met since the dinosaurs,” and some further explanations of her contempt for him. I guess that’s the end of that job. Kev puts a pot of coffee on and after a quick shower the three of us head down to the Waiting Room for breakfast, leaving Kev to carry on with his morning.

The Waiting Room. It’s my favourite place in London. The food and coffee are fantastic and there’s always the chance of catching up with members of the Deptford family. We sit and eat with Alex from the tattoo shop, and later Christie appears from work. After breakfast we do a bit of shopping at Poundland, where literally everything costs a pound. Vik went in looking for a toothbrush and yet I find him in the queue with a multipack of Square Crisps. When I spot him I ask him if he got a toothbrush, “Ah fuck, forgot about that”.

Just down the street from Kev’s flat we meet some old crazy tramp shouting at nobody until he turns his sights on us. He approaches Luc first, “Alright John, give me a pound”. He then turns to me and I hand him a two pound coin. He face lights up, looks genuinely shocked. “I fucking love you!” he shouts at me and then grabs me and gives me a huge sloppy kiss on my cheek. The old boy has a surprisingly strong grip. When we get back to Kev’s he’s just getting his shit sorted, the girls are just getting ready to leave. We smile and say hi and then head into the living room to get our stuff sorted. I hear Kev’s voice from the hallway as he says goodbye to his friends, “Well thank you for a lovely evening”. Creamy sod.

Time to leave for the journey to Leeds, we walk along to Canary Wharf and take the train up to St. Pancras. As cheap as it is I’m glad we’re not taking the fucking Mega Bus. Saying that, our train carriage is inhabited by a gang of wankers, mouthy lads on their way to Leeds for some football game, making sure everyone knows they’re in the place. Fucking nightmare. Kev zones them out with his headspace app, I get to writing. Luc lies with his head on the table willing the lads to death. Vik tucks into the three tins of IPA he bought at Marks and Spencers.

When we get to Leeds we follow Kev’s phone map, trying to locate the Ibis Budget Hotel we’re staying in tonight. Twenty quid a room, can’t knock that. There is a lot of farting around with that fucking phone map, walking around lost in Leeds is a drain. This is a miserable place. I’ve never seen the sun here and there are lots of homeless people everywhere, just looking vacantly, no hope in their eyes. Reminds me of so many I work with at home. A lot of other people here just seem to have a harsh look on their faces too. Luc picks up on it, saying people just look so worn out and miserable. And there are so many fucking “lads” prowling the streets too, wearing nothing but tight muscle tops. We walk past this one shower and I hear one of them say, “Fucking hell look at the fat arse on that. I’d fuck the shit out of it”. The rest of his gang don’t even laugh at it, it just seems to be taken as a general statement. Fucking scum.

At a set of traffic lights we’re waiting for the green man and a trio of young yobs walking down the street towards the junction from the other side of the road. A bus is coming at a good pace from behind them and turning in and the three guys just carry on walking without even a glance, completely absorbed in their own shitty little world. We all realise what’s happening and everything starts going into slow motion. “Wuh…Woah.. WOAH!” the four of in alarmed unison call out. The bus misses the one guy by centimeters. As we pass them on the crossing they look at us laughing and I say to one of them, trying to make light of it, “You scared the shit of us”. One of them turns back acting the cunt, mocking us. This enrages Vik and he powers down the road saying he wished the twat had been mowed down. Me and Luc agree that we’re glad we didn’t witness someone being disintegrated by a bus but Vik is having none of it.

Of course the first thing we see when we get to the hotel is the gang of lads from the train, one of them shouting “Rooney, Rooney!” Fuck sakes… We hang back whilst Kev sorts the room keys, Luc finding it hard to hide the pain in his expression as he looks at the lads dominating the lobby area. After a quick shower and settling into the room I skype home to the girls for a chat, Polly mainly wants to talk to Lucas and the other guys, I have to show her around the hotel and she’s asking where the pool is. If only darling. Afterwards we head over to the venue which is just nearby, to drop the stuff. We played The Temple of Boom a few years ago with Kylma Sota and Perspex Flesh. That was a fun night. Lecky Voorhees owns the place and it’s a really nice space. Unfortunately tonight is not going to be anything like that night. This is one of those festivals with a hotchpotch line up, everything from ska to Oi! What the fuck we’re doing on the bill I don’t know. Everyone Kev knows is at this big party tonight for some scene legend called Kilvo. And there are some hardcore bands playing that too. This gig won’t have a chance. Kev had met a couple of old friends earlier as we were walking to the station and the first they said was that they couldn’t make the gig. I’m already feeling like I just want to play the gig, go to a quiet pub somewhere for a pint and then enjoy the hotel bed. The guy running the show is friendly enough, the first thing he does is pay us and then ask us if we want weed. We politely decline, understanding what kind of show this is going to be. A loosely run free for all most likely. When the guy leaves Kev sits down on an old sofa and slumps, propping his cheek up on his fist, looking miserable, “I’m not gonna be getting laid tonight am I? I’ll have to boof Gords tomorrow.” We all piss ourselves laughing.

We go off in search of some dinner, Vik is on to a tip he’d gotten about a pizza place. We find it after a while, it’s some big place that is heaving with people. Kev turns to me straight away, “It’s one of Vik’s fucking “beer” pubs init!” We check out the prices but it’s actually pretty reasonable and there happens to be a table by the window. It’s loud as fuck in here though. We decide to stay anyway and take turns at going to order. Vik and Kev go first and then Kev comes back having ordered and me and Luc head off through the crowd. I spot Vik at the bar talking to the bartender, trying samples of ale. Fucking typical Stix. He loves it. The pizza and the beer is good though, I have a nice pint of IPA from Scotland, low strength and full of taste. I’m deciding again to take it easy today, I enjoyed being completely hangover free last night not to mention sober during the gig.

After dinner we head back to the venue, there’s not really enough time to do anything else but head there and gear up for the show. As we walk into the gig room the first thing I see is some young kids soundchecking some kind of grindcore ska music and they’re all wearing Kiss makeup. This does not bode well for the show tonight. Does not bode well at all. We walk through to the backyard where they have the bar and I clock my old friend Jamie drinking a beer. I’d almost forgotten that he was driving down from Scotland to come see us tonight. My first thought is, “Why did he have to come to this show?” thinking about how great last night was and how tomorrow will be the same. Oh well. It’s great to see him anyway, as always. His mate Daz from his band is with him too. We take ourselves outside to the courtyard and sit around catching up. I help myself to a bottle of water whilst Kev and Vik are cheekily tucking into a bottle of Hooch. Fucking Hooch. Vik looks chuffed.

Kev catches up with Lecky for a bit who tells him he’s totally baffled by this “festival” this weekend. Three days and no red thread whatsoever. Lecky is obviously just hiring the place out and he has to be here the whole weekend. Doesn’t seem that chuffed. We go to check out the band before us, some two piece powerviolence/hardcore effort. It’s so insanely loud though that it just causes pain watching them. Well that and the music. The room has a bit of a vacuum effect though and the PA is about three times too powerful for the room. I head back in when they’re done and find the drummer talking to someone, looking chuffed with himself. Politely I say to him, “Fuck mate, it was insanely loud”. “Ah glad you liked it man. Glad you enjoyed it” he says. Well I didn’t say that, I think to myself.

We set up as soon as possible, I got to check out the amp on stage and the guitarist from the band before asks me, “So you wanna use my amp as well then?” A bit a mardy tone in his voice. Fair enough I suppose if nobody has asked his permission but that guy running the show told me I could use the amp on stage. It was a simple mix up though, and there is an in-house amp to use. As soon as Vik hits his snare you can tell what tonight is going to sound like. Chaotic. There is no need to put mics on anything and yet everything is miked up. The twenty or so people watching must simply be getting their faces melted by the PA. Although Jamie and Daz tell me afterwards that the thing kep dropping out all the time so all you could hear was the vocals coming out of the stage monitors. We play okay anyway but it’s a dead show compared to last night. This was always going to be the wild card though. Of course, I break a string about two thirds of the way through, but it feels like too much hassle to change it so I just struggle through to the to the end. That takes the enjoyment factor down another couple of notches though. Luc’s bass drops out completely at one point and is gone for about two songs. Rubbish. Luc says afterwards that it didn’t really matter since the amp sounded like a fart anyway.

Afterwards we head back out to the bar area and I’m already thinking about packing up and heading to the hotel. I feel bad though if Jamie and Daz want to hang around a bit more since they’ve made the drive down but Jamie says they’re heading back soon anyway, his boy has a cricket tournament the next morning. Magic of them to come down, but I feel bad about the show. Feels like Jamie didn’t know what to really make of it.

I’m pondering having a beer but there’s nothing I really fancy. I’m certainly not going to drink a can of Stella that I see Vik has in his hand. I’d rather wait, go to another pub somewhere and enjoy a pint of something decent. I mention this to Vik and he looks at me and says, “I’m gonna get wankered!” and then bursts out laughing. I hadn’t noticed until now but he’s pretty sauced. Kev is sat at the merch stall hanging out with some little girl on the sofa, she must be around seven, cute as anything, and her punk dad. Feel kinda sorry for the young child, she looks tired and bored, watching some horror film showing on the projector screen on the wall across. I ask Kev if we’ve sold any merch and he points at a pound coin lying on the table, “A patch.” Great. Jamie and Daz buy an album each though and want shirts but we only have three shirts left, one small and two youth large. We give them a couple of the shirts for free and say maybe their kids want them. Fuck, it was really nice of them to come down.

Jamie and Daz get going and we head off to the hotel to drop the gear off before going in search of a pub. We find a place across the road called The Palace which will do the job. It’s pretty dead, only a few punters left, two of which are terrifying looking skinhead football yobs, and a stroppy bartender. Luc is desperate for some food and is gutted to find the kitchen has just slammed shut. The smell of chips are still lingering in the air and as I walk away with my pint one of the skinheads turns to me sniffing the air and asks, “What’s that smell?”... I get the feeling he’s mocking us, my arse is getting the feeling it’s about to dump a load in my kecks. “I don’t know…” I offer is meek reply, barely audible. I hurry off to the table which Vik and Kev have located. It’s nice having a quiet pint, good way to end the day. The yobs have turned their attention inwards again and all, thank fuck.

We only manage the one before last orders but it’s all I require. I’m taking it very easy on the booze this weekend, makes a refreshing change. We head outside and find the yob sat at a table engrossed in his phone. Fuck, don’t need this. Vik is in the pisser and I’m willing him to get a fucking move on. Yob soon clocks us though, “Where are you lot from?”. Sweden, we reply, knowing that it’s going to encourage further conversation but not quick enough to able to avoid it. “Sweden! What the fuck are you doing in this shithole?!” That’s that, he’s over. Sweden seems to have acted as a peace treaty though and now he’s really interested in us. He asks our names and I realise that Gareth is going to give things away but I again can’t think fast enough to make something up, he totally misses it anyway. “My name’s Barry. I know, sounds like a peodophile!” he barks. Thankfully Barry’s cab turns up shortly after. He gives us some directions to some chip shops and fucks off. As do we.