As record sales dry up, bands nowadays, more than ever, generate their revenue in the live environment. As such, most have now created their own wee circuit e.g Bob Dylan comes around every eighteen months or so, and our Japanese friends seem to appear at exactly the same week of every year.

As The Prog IV we’re a man down tonight with Bill being in Spain for a week.
Shields has never experienced them before and so her and I meet Spanner, as usual, in The State before nipping along the road to Nice & Sleazy’s.

No brown beer or Guinness in this fetid basement tonight! Is this some part of global conspiracy against me, I wonder?
I remonstrate with the barmaid to such an extent that she allows me to fetch some pints of soothing porter from the upstairs bar.

The loudest band I’ve heard in years, no, make that decades!!!
Within seconds of them starting, Shields and Spanner had stolen my ‘beer allergy’ tissues and were ramming them into their ears. I can only attribute this volume level to tonight’s sound man, as I’ve now seen them four times and they were nothing like this previously.
It’s bloody Krakatoic!
I decide to be macho/stupid and soak up all the sound. I believe I’m okay until I go to the bathroom and realise I can’t hear the running water in the handbasin.

Playing five tunes in just under two hours (including the wonderful Pink Lady Lemonade), they’re hardly The Ramones. And what is this? The second occurrence of an onstage theremin within a week!

After the show we pore over the merchandise, there’s probably more titles than I’ve ever seen at a gig stall. Spanner settles for the new album when he discovers that they’re out of his size in teeshirts. Another good wee night out!

Spanner, Higashi Hiroshi and me come over all psychedelic!