GIG 0024: Anhrefn / Datblygu at Manchester University

Travelled with Anhrefn & Datblygu to Manchester Uni - Got picked up with Huw Prestatyn (who lives in Rhuddlan, not Prestatyn) in the Anhrefn tour bus (well, hired minibus) and headed to Manchester University for the first night of a two day jaunt into England. It took us ages to find the venue, like Bangor, the University spread out across a lot of the city, so ‘Live at Manchester University’ is really a very loose term. We also failed to see any posters advertising tonight’s event, but were assured once we finally found the place, that flyers had been distributed the week before.

Datblygu turned up from their hut in mid-Wales, a line up that is David, Patricia and a drum machine and in front of about 70 to 80 people; including bar staff and sound engineers they raised their ugly heads and peered at the unsuspecting faces. They’ve been called Kraftwerk with a hangover and their music falls into The Fall [sic] mould and I can only describe it as an experience, a spectacle actually! Both David and Patricia’s attitude seemed to be one of total disinterest, as if they were hating every second of their own performance but were unable to do anything to stop it.

Very few bands like an in-house PA and Datblygu are no exception as David continually demanded, ‘Will you turn the fucking drum machine up please.’ He repeated the line so often that fitted quite well into the song!

The Datblygu experience (my first time!) was perhaps not as long as it should’ve been for me to fully get what they were about, their set included titles such as Tymer Asprin, Mynd and the near legendary Peel favourite Casserole. Perhaps the idea was to give the audience a short sharp shock, whereas in reality it was a slow, dull uncomfortable pain – they’ll probably go a long way… if they wanted to.

Then Anhrefn mounted the stage and Sion’s guitar blasted into 500 watts of Cornel (his amp is probably 100 watts, but 500 sounds better in print!). The song is about the same guy, same pub, same pint, same corner, same Tom, Dick and Harry and is pretty new in Anhrefn terms and pretty damn good. I think this is the fifth time I’ve witnessed an onslaught by the band and the fifth time I’ve walked away feeling fulfilled. There’s never a dull moment when these lads hit their notes; Hefin Huws is sat tightly at the back thumping those drums like there’s no tomorrow, Rhys Mwyn is stood there looking proud as he pumps those bass notes through his amp, and there’s Sion Sebon and Dewi Gwyn providing us with two guitars and vocals. Sion picks a chord, gives us a twang and they burst into another song while Dewi struts around providing ample back up; he was once reported to have played a solo!

When it comes to breaking the ice with an audience, Anhrefn must be pioneers at it, and despite wide open spaces due to a lack of a large audience the band finally coaxed the nervous gathering down to the front to boogie to the encore, which lasted four songs (Anhrefn hate doing encores).

After the gig Rhys complained over the apathetic way the hosts handled the publicity – or didn’t in this case! Yet it was a success by the fact they made more new friends and future gigs in the city will only be beneficial to both band and punter! A floor for the night was kindly donated by Artists For Animals coordinators Peter Elliot and Sue.

GIG 0023: The Primitives / Screaming Trees at Bangor University

Got on the ‘free’ train to Bangor and headed to The Mandela Bar at the Uni to watch The Primitives with Wayne. They were supported by Screaming Trees from Rotheram whose heavy guitar sound was well received by the packed house, and their set included both their singles Beaten By The Ugly Stick and Release.

The Primitives, fronted by the 5′ nothing peroxide Tracy Tracy hit the ground running and helped by the coverage they get from John Peel they slammed their way through their repertoire to rapturous applause. Not bad for a Tuesday night.

GIG 0022: Alien Sex Fiend @ Manchester International

Myself and Wayne have so far sold nearly a hundred copies of Crud at 25p a throw, and got reviewed in the local paper (North Wales Weekly News) and on BBC Radio Lancashire’s ‘On the Wire’ programme where the reviewer Fenny, described it as ‘a little pearly.’

Wayne, Edi, Myself and Uncle Bowler got on the train went to see Alien Sex Fiend play a Valentine Day gig at The International in Manchester this evening after being convinced by Dae Goth that it would be a worthwhile trip.

It certainly was because I sold all the remaining issues of Crud at the gig and met Jill The Ripper who became a great mate and a great help with the making of Crud 2.

The gig itself was quite an experience, the support act was a solo rapper whose name I have long forgotten. He was awful, coming out with rubbish like, “I’m a sex machine.” Being punk rockers from Wales and let off the leash we stood right at the front and showed him our displeasure at having to be aurally tortured in such a way. The punk way to show gratitude or disgust to a band is the same in both cases; we gob at them! And we gobbed at this rapper and made all the various gestures that go with it. I was so pissed off listening to this rubbish that I climbed over the barrier onto the stage and walked past the rapper and towards the back. I was soon accosted by a bouncer and guided back from whence I came. The Crud Crew, as we became known, soon got known around the punk/goth circles in Manchester and it wasn’t too long after this gig that a rumour was being spread around about me being a racist. I eventually tracked down the source of this to an alternative clothes shop and confronted him, his name was Seb, a goth who said he was half Pakistani. He told me that I was spitting and swearing at a black rapper during a gig. I told him that was correct, but why does that make me a racist? Because he was black, came the reply. Now hold on a minute! My actions were justified by the fact that this was a rapper spurting his bullshit at a punk concert, it didn’t make a jot of difference whether he was black, white, pink or blue, he would have got the same treatment. In fact, I would have been a racist if I declined to gob and swear at him on account of his colour. Racism is for narrow minded bigots and school playgrounds where the kids don’t know any better.

Seb agreed and apologised to me and his gothic clothes shop became a regular stockist of the forthcoming issues of Crud.

Alien Sex Fiend were incredible - Nik Fiend most definitely being a larger than death character - he slid on stage with his appalling makeup and donned in a skeleton apron! They had a cool guitarist and Nik's beautiful wife, Mrs Fiend on keyboards. It was a pivotal performance for me, one that sticks in the mind and right up there among my favourites.

After the gig we had a 6½ hour wait for the train the following morning, Bowler tried to set fire to a pile of bin sacks in the road for a laugh when a police van screeched to a halt & a load of pigs jumped out & started pushing us around. One of them grabbed Bowler took his lighter off him & tried to set fire to his scarf while he was wearing it! The pigs jumped back in their van & sped off to mash some other punks.

We stopped at a chippy and a girl overheard our prospect of freezing on a platform all night and offered to put the four of us up for the night! The offer was very kind but we declined on the grounds that any one female willing to accommodate a group of marauding punks she didn’t know must be mentally insane and probably planned to chop us up in our sleep! We found the station & found a mobile temporary-waiting room full of down & outs keeping warm on this freezing night & we tried to get some sleep.

GIG 0021: That Voodoo at Speakeasy, Llandudno

 

High on last night's successful Anhrefn gig in Colwyn Bay, we got the bus to Llandudno to The Speakeasy to watch That Voodoo play, being pretty impressed with them last month in Rhyl. 

With alternative gigs / bands few and far between in the area we have to make the most of what’s given to us. The band set up in the corner on the dancefloor next to the DJ booth, they had a lot of local friends and family there to support, although I felt a bit more detached from the performance this time.

The Speakeasy was a pub hours night club underneath the Imperial Hotel in Llandudno on a Monday night and had become a regular jaunt, although filled with punks and goths, they would occasionally play the March Violets or Bauhaus to keep us marginally happy, but as Wayne said, ‘The DJ was such a tosser and we ended up being banned when Edi got into a fight with James Baguley [who played in Sleepless Dream] and glasses were smashed.’

GIG 0020: Anhrefn at The Imperial, Colwyn Bay

 

So I arranged for Anhrefn to play The Imp in Colwyn Bay in February 1987. The Imperial Hotel was at the bottom of Station Road and hosted regular heavy rock band nights, such was the glut of those awful bands. I made posters and flyers using Letraset transfers and my newly acquired second hand typewriter and with a bucket and brush, pasted them all over Colwyn Bay, Llandudno and Rhyl.

Anhrefn’s Welsh punk rock ignited the need within me to learn Welsh and break free from the mental abuse I endured in that oppressive village school of my childhood. The Anhrefn way was to promote Welsh culture by opening the doors to outsiders; to open up the closed mentality in Wales. It wasn’t the Wales For The Welsh and Fuck The English kind of jingoistic nazism we see all over Twitter today, it was about changing people’s attitudes toward the Welsh language. To stop non-Welsh speakers feeling like outsiders, to change the way people think. Welsh people were forever being called sheep shaggers, and rather than get all snowflakey and upset about it, Anhrefn would say;

‘Yes, we may shag sheep, but you eat them!’

This self-deprecating humour and punk ideal was catalyst in opening the psychological borders within the Welsh and English mentality and helped spawn Cool Cymru. We are all human! The fact you were born in Welsh Saltney or just over the border in English Chester doesn’t make you a different person; you are still human! Yes, it’s great to have a culture, a history, a cause, but is it really necessary to hate someone simply because they weren’t born in the same country as you?

The fretting, the panic, the worrying (a gig on a Sunday night!), the chewed fingernails, the financing; it all paid off. It was a good gig (I still have a recording on cassette), a good turnout and Anhrefn played well and they got paid £50. They brought a contingent of punks from Bangor, with whom I am still friends with today. And at the tender age of twenty I began to get a feel for local bands, and the need to create a local music scene.

Bands and local gigs were few and far between, there were rumours of ‘legendary’ punk or goth bands like The Dark, Foreign Legion, The Scargills, Sleepless Dream, Open Defiance but I had never seen or heard them. I caught a band called That Voodoo (from Llandudno) a couple of times who were a little like New Order meets the Wedding Present.

Also the ridiculously named Heroes On A Beach from Colwyn Bay who were nice guys but played fucking awful music, we dubbed them Hemoglobins In The Sand or Herpes On A Bitch. Aside from these, there was the poodle hair spandex pants high pitched screaming heavy metal brigade, whom we avoided at all costs.