Having been a fan of HMHB since my vinyl versions of Back in the DHSS and Trumpton Riots, I'd never managed to see them, despite buying the album from Probe when Pete Burns still worked there. I rang up the Cluny to find out that they were sold out, but luckily I'm good friends with the manager's sister so me, my girlfriend Fi and Tom Lard made it three.
The support were some folky duo and were tolerated by the crowd but as soon as the band opened with Fuckin' 'Ell It's Fred Titmus, you knew you were in the presence of Gods, admittedly Gods of the skewed parallel universe that is Birkenhead, but Gods none the less. In a Freudian slip that Nigel would have been proud of, HMHB were described as Maidenhead's finest in the day's issue of Metro...
The crowd were excellent, the T-Shirts were great and the glasses were plastic, yet the lager came in bottles. Oh well!!
Lots of brilliant stuff - Paintball's Coming Home, All I Want For Christmas Is A Dukla Prague Away Kit (and I counted two DPAK shirts on the night), and my favourite, Everything's AOR.
Absolutely brilliant.
You too can put a tennis racquet up against your face and pretend that you're Kendo Nagasaki.