"This machine kills Wasps"....I said to the confused lady on the Here is what went down last night. We struggled to find the venue but when we did, we realised we had got there far too early (7.10pm) so we headed for a nearby scouse hostelry for my mate Kev to have a beer and me to have a glass of coke (the big pansy that I am). It was not the most salubrious of pubs and I began to feel a little nervy when Kev alternated between a fake scouse accent and an awful Terry Christian manc accent. We decided to play pool and the white went down. It must have been as nervous as me in the pub because it didn't come back up again so we borrowed the white ball from a second table. That too went down never to be seen again so now tomorrow night's advertised pool tournament may well be off.
We got into the venue and there was absolutely no-one there. It was quite big inside and very dark. A support band wandered on about 8pm. They were called Marlowe and against the ethos of support bands were actually quite good.
They played for about 45 minutes and by then the venue was looking quite full. It was fecking hot and I was sweating like a good 'un. After a load of roadies wandered onto the stage apparently breaking things, HMHB wandered on.
It was tremendous. They played for over 2 hours and it was great, it was just like having a sing song in a pub. They did some classics like 'Dukla Prague Away kit', 'Fucking Ell its Fred Titmuss', 'The Len Ganley Stance' etc. 'Paintballs coming home' went down particularly well as did 'Monmore Hares Running'.
During 'tending the wrong grave' the guitar effect went slightly awry and Nigel commented that he didn't expect a small herd of dolphins to be there which was quite funny. It was an excellent night although in my humble opinion they let themselves down with a cover version of Tiffany's 'I think we're alone now'. Honestly.
The encores were great with Joy Division Oven Gloves being sang before ending with Trumpton Riots.
All in all, they were splendid, even allowing for the fact that we missed the last train home and had to get a taxi home back to sunny St Helens.