Like a Night out in Sheffield...like a greasy chip butty sing The Blades fans...well this was one hot night out in Sheffield not to miss.
Me and Kitty left sunny Mancunia around 6.30 with high hopes before reaching the back of a traffic queue at 6.50....a queue that stretched for just over a mile but took us 70 minutes to get to the end of.
It did however see us come in contact with a Black Cab which appeared to contain Ernie Wise and Stephen Hawking...this amused us no end. now we realise that unless this was Mottrams answer to The Mary Celeste it wasn't them,but it put us onto a strange train of thought.....
When Hawking is in a taxi,does he type (or whatever he does) "YOU BEEN BUSY MATE?" or "WHAT TIME ARE YOU ON TILL?" into his thing?...and then we got to thinking about Hawking having sex...."PUT IT IN YOUR MOUTH"..."WHO'S YOUR DADDY"..."I'M COMING! I'M COMING!"etc in that voice......we did chortle!
We hotfooted it over the pass and arrived in Steel City at about 9.00......however the long traffic jam with Ernie and Steve had played havoc with La McDermott's bladder and she had to run like bloody fcuk into The Norfolk Arms for an emergency long wee!
15 minutes later (cough) we left the now overflowing Norfolk Arms and made it Woodhead-style to The Boardwalk, convinced we would have missed the start of the gig.But what's this,the unmistakeable sound of The Calvin Party coming from the stage and the unmistakeable shape of Fatal Ex larging it by the speakers? Wheres the 4 lads?
Turns out that the BVH had actually spent 6 hours en route from Birkenhead and they hadn't arrived till 8.30....so upon taking the stage at around Ten bells, there had been no sound check and NB57 had to unravel his amp lead in front of everyone on stage...talk about fingers and thumbs!
The register of attendees read me,kitty,loop,cressers,wobble,wobbles girlfriend cat (a national treasure by all accounts) and ishmael down the front with the main actors.
They kicked off with "Mathematically Safe" and I do look forward to Mikes set list, cos there were so many gems plucked from the back catalogue it was hard to keep up...so lets hear it for "4AD3DCD", "Floreat Inertia", "Turn a Blind Eye" and "A Shropshire Lad" amongst others. The cover was "His Latest Flame" and the mp3 player in "24 hour garage people" was set to "ironic shuffle" and included "Buddy Holly" by Weezer and "Bad Medicine" by Bon Jovi!
The lack of sound sheck only showed during a calamity filled CAMRA Man,but that along with the 2 pronged attack on the Rotherham posties from the stage,only added to what was a brilliant biscuit gig.....the best I've seen for a very long time.