For the second time this year, HMHB were at The Witchwood in Ashton. An excellent venue that gets very full and provides a great atmosphere.
Support were the aptly named I Can't Believe It's Not Punk, who played a wide variety of cover versions including 'Teenage Kicks', 'Ever Fallen In Love', 'When The Kids Are United', 'Alternative Ulster' and the like.
After a quick break, HMHB arrived on stage to be met with an open space at the front of the stage containing just Gus and I. Everyone else seemed to want to stay back whilst they opened with Fred Titmus. A few tracks later and a few more moved forward to give it a much better atmosphere, whilst they went into Dean Friedman, AOR, 24 Hr, Irk, Gubba, No Tunes, Squadrophenia and numerous others in a long set.
Nigel's dittys included 'On top with Exeter sly crew', 'Procession moves on', 'Plunder the ministers' accounts', 'My heart aches', 'Laboratoire Garnier', 'Evening sun' and '6th form satanists', if the kids were united. He also had 'Qantas airlines 100% safety record', but as this wasn't on his cheese and tomato sandwich wrapper it didn't appear!
The two track encore was the now infamous slave song called Worried Man and then the infamous Trumpton Riots - which caused some concern for the bouncers who felt they had to protect the stage from the thronging masses. You must remember this is 'a twenty grand stage set mate'.
And for those that still think a tube of Pringles is £1.35 will forever be wrong. It's much more likely to be £1.12 and then 99 pence.
Final thanks to the lads for throwing a few different tracks in, for as he said 'I know these two down here are getting fed up with hearing this, but i'm going to tell you anyway' - the varied tracks are well appreciated. Gus is still yelling for M6ster and we understand it isn't coming together as it might? Maybe it will appear at Manchester Uni?
For me, I'll be back soon with luck, but not at York or Manchester due to the afore mentioned 'lets trash the murder mystery weekend'.
More gigs soon lads? I hope so.