Our day out...

Leeds - at far end of the M62 from us over here in the Socialist Republic of Liverpool, so when Seanie e-mails saying what could be translated as I've sacked me band and need some idiots soft enough to play a gig in Leeds (that's not quite how he put it, even he was a bit more diplomatic than that...) I said Ok sounds a laugh, bass player needed as well no worries my old Bitches of Psychedelia and Plan-B and Infra cohort Jan might be up for it, she's asked and in a moment of madness (or no plans for Saturday night if the truth be known) she agrees to play.

Two ropey practices later and The Streetpunk Drunks (version 7.3.a the Hippy years...) head off down the long strip of tarmac that connects the two cities. We have a maximum 15 minute set and thats if we play everything twice, we have no idea of what we'll find when we get to the venue and on the way Seanie mentions that he's picked up another gig later on in Leeds that he wants to do.

The Fenton is an upstairs room in a pub in Leeds's downtown studentville area, painted the traditional cheap venue black and with some desperate posters clinging to the walls including one for the Dead Class who are playing there the week after (so we scribble a hello message on it that we think will be dead funny when they read it but probably isn't).

We play, amps break - it doesn't matter, drums self-destruct - no consequence to us, we forget the songs - doesn't stop us for one minute and we are shit as expected but surely the two punters (yup thats 2) get the joke and will laugh with us, not at us?! Or at the least maybe they will not get violent and we will get out of here alive? But no, one of them is so drunk she thinks we are actually good, no not just good but fuckin' brilliant. Her hangover will be bad tomorrow...

John Doe and the Fuckups are up next and our temporary drummer Daz joins his real band for a set of punk angst and shoutalong choruses washed down with more of the equipment failures we had. Doesn't slow them down though and when they are given the 1 more song signal they turn this into three segued together.

Off to venue 2, Carpe Deum, an altogether more upmarket thing. At first I though we'd been booked by mistake and who knows what Seanie had told them to get the gig ('Beatles covers, yes, thats no problem...') but the band .. us - Skiprat - are punky, melodic and reggae tinged so (despite the fact that they are good and we are crap) maybe there is hope for us? We play, we get it wrong again, Seanie goes for it hell for leather and scares some scallies, the hip-hop contingent on the other hand think he is boss, insane but brilliant, to them he is a 'gangsta'!!!??? to us he is just more drunk than we are...

We warmed the audience up and John Doe played a much better sounding gig than their first one and even carried chunks of the audience with them. All good fun and some local student-punk girls liked them and jumped up and down until the cheap cider they'd been consuming not very inconspicuously out of their handbags left them incapable of maintaining verticality.

Back down the M62, get to Liverpool at 5am, tired but still laughing at having pulled off another guerrilla gig. Once I spent so much time travelling in vans up and down motorways at night that I could tell where I was in the dark anywhere but could get totally lost in daylight on the same stretch of road, now I get lost in Birkenhead after dropping Daz off and it takes ages to get back to Liverpool a journey of about 300 yards as the crow flies...

review by Richie (19 November 2007)