Day 70: Kythera - Upsetting the German hippy

The sun rose over Kythera and so did I — reluctantly, as usual. You know it’s going to be one of those days when your morning starts with Dieter (our resident mad German foreman) storming around a half-built house, shouting orders like a man one stone short of a breakdown.

We were building again today — another stone wall, another chance for bedlam. This time, it came courtesy of Irving, a German hippy with a spiritual connection to rocks. I’m not sure there’s a worse combination than patchouli and perfectionism. Irving insisted on choosing “beautiful stones” for the wall and flipped out when Georgo (my Polish co-worker) and I committed the unthinkable crime of using… cement.

To be fair, Georgo and I are hardly a slick duo. He speaks no English. I speak no Polish. So we get by in pidgin Greek — a mix of gestures, swear words. The only Polish word I know is for “shit,” which, funnily enough, sees a fair bit of use on site. "Gówno" (pronounced GOOV-no).

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🌍 Meanwhile, in the Rest of the World...

While we were wrangling rocks and egos, the outside world kept spinning — and cracking.

A Ugandan Airlines 707 was forced to land in Yugoslavia today, intercepted by fighter jets and found to be carrying 19 tons of ammunition. Nobody seems entirely sure where it was headed, but it's a stark reminder that not all travel plans are made for pleasure.

In the East, the Soviet Union continues to disintegrate. Today, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan declared independence, bringing the tally to 10 breakaway republics. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine — the list grows by the week.

Wayne quipped:

We’ll know Russia’s truly democratic when they include it on the Interrail ticket.

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📞 Mum, Maps & Money

Managed to get through to Mum today by phone. She said Marshall’s in Florida and heading back to the States soon. More importantly, she’s posted maps of Italy and France to help me on my next leg westward. No smartphone, no GPS, just creased paper and a vague sense of direction.

I also handed over 15,000 drachma to Martina, who promises to sort me out with more Australian dollars at the current rate.

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🎭 Dieter’s Mood Report

Shockingly, Dieter didn’t lose his temper at me today — which felt almost suspicious. But he made up for it by yelling at everyone else on site. He’s not so much managing the project as surviving it one tantrum at a time. The man looks like the Kaiser and acts like he's one faulty cement mix away from exploding.

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📝 Final Thoughts

Kythera is a strange place to watch the world fall apart. While republics crumble and planes full of ammo land under suspicion, I’m knee-deep in dust, swatting mosquitoes, building imperfect walls with perfect strangers.

I’m not sure where I’m heading next. But today — just for a moment — I felt like I was exactly where I needed to be: sunbaked, sweating, arguing about cement, and somehow still smiling.

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On Tomorrow’s Horizon:

• Will Martina come through with the dollars?

• Will Dieter implode?

• Will Irving find the “perfect stone”?

• Will Georgo teach me another Polish swear word?

Stay tuned.

"Keith Richards!" – A Night at The Bistro with Joe Bear

 

21 July 1990 – Rhyl

Last night at The Bistro was one for the books — a night laced with sweat, nostalgia, and the smell of stale lager clinging to black and salmon walls. But what made it truly unforgettable was running into Joe Bear — legendary Denbigh rocker, local myth, and walking embodiment of Keith Richards worship.

Joe’d just come back from Maine Road, where the Rolling Stones were doing what they do best — making shitloads of cash with sweat and swagger. It was one of the gigs on their Urban Jungle Tour, the Stones deep into their steel-belted stadium rock phase, with Keith prowling the stage like a half-dead pirate god. And Joe? He was buzzing. High on it. Properly alive in that way only a lifelong rocker can be after brushing against the real thing.

Every time I saw him that night — and it felt like I passed him on every lap to the bar or bogs — he was in a slightly worse state than before. Pints turning into doubles, turning into slurring sentences and a slow descent into the usual Joe Bear wobbling stagger. But every single time, without fail, he’d grin, prop up his invisible Telecaster, and rasp:

“Keith Richards!”

Then he'd mime one of those half-shouldered licks, eyes rolling back, lost in the moment.

The Bistro, if you’ve never been, was Rhyl’s dark, sticky womb of alternative music — punk, goth, indie, metal, the occasional trance night if someone forgot to check the playlist. It was the kind of place where the DJ booth was part pulpit, part bunker, and the walls sweated with decades of feedback and body heat. Every corner had a tale. Last night was no different.

By the end of the night — early hours now — I staggered into the toilets in search of a piss and possibly my remaining dignity. That’s when I saw him.

Joe Bear.

Face down on the soaked tile floor, one arm submerged in the blocked porcelain trough, the other stretched out toward the urinal wall like he was trying to commune with the plumbing gods. His eyes, bleary and half-conscious, found mine. He didn’t speak at first. Just kind of blinked.

Then, with the slow, tragic elegance of a fallen hero, he lifted his soaking wet arm from the piss-water, raised it to his chest, and started strumming the air guitar again.

“Keith... Richards...”

he slurred, barely audible over the bass thump still leaking through the toilet walls.

That was it. That was the moment. The full Joe Bear experience — a man half-drowned in lager, piss and rock ‘n’ roll, still worshipping at the altar of his six-string saviour.

He might have been wrecked, but he was glowing with something pure. It wasn’t just booze and nostalgia — it was belief. Joe didn’t just go to see the Stones. He absorbed them. Channelled them. Brought them back with him like sacred fire, only to collapse in the urinal like a martyred prophet.

And you know what?

In that moment — half-dead, piss-soaked, muttering about Keith Richards — Joe Bear was and is a fucking legend.

4Q: Birkenhead: The Lennon Backlash That Never Came

 

March 3rd, 1990. The same day the Liverpool Echo ran the headline FURY OVER LENNON SONG SLUR – BAND’S TASTELESS ATTACK ON JOHN & PAUL, taking aim at us for our version of Lennon’s Imagine — the one where we sang that maybe Macca deserved a bullet too. It was pure piss-taking, punk provocation in the classic style, but to the Scouse press we’d desecrated their holy shrine.

The timing couldn’t have been worse: that night we were booked to play in Birkenhead, across the water from Lennon’s city. Cumi was bricking it. He tried to pull a Paul Puke manoeuvre, claiming, “I’m going away this weekend, so I can’t do the gig.” Truth was, he didn’t fancy facing a mob of irate Beatles disciples. To be fair, I had my own doubts. If we were going to get our heads kicked in for slagging off the Lord Lennon, then so be it — but it would’ve made a hell of a story for Crud.

When I told Cumi we’d do it without him if necessary, he backed down. He wasn’t about to let 4Q march into Birkenhead minus its frontman.

We rolled up at the Golden Fleece to find the place rammed — not with outraged Beatles fanatics but with punks. Proper punks. The room was so small they stood only inches from our faces. A couple we recognised from Planet X were there too, members of the band Go Heads, grinning like they’d come for blood but stayed for the fun. Even the landlord was in on it: he knew our parody lyrics to Imagine word for word. Instead of hostility, the scandal had done its job — it pulled people in.

We let fly with a longer set than usual: LSD, I Hate TV, Mental Asylum, Bat Gooch, Nein Werk, Video Party, Poo On My Shoe, Burn in Hell, We Want You, Imagine, 4Q Blues. The room shook, punks yelling back every line, bodies pressed against us. When the landlord himself starts singing along to your blasphemous Lennon send-up, you know you’ve won the night.

The crowd wouldn’t let us go, so we encored with Stand By Me and VD, then ended with a cut-down reprise of Bat Gooch — rechristened Bat Goo after we hacked it to pieces. By that point it hardly mattered; the atmosphere carried us.

The moment that still makes me laugh, though, was the little old lady who shuffled to the front mid-set, wrinkled brow, politely asking if we could “turn it down a bit, because I can’t hear myself think.” God knows how she ended up in the Golden Fleece that night, surrounded by 100 punks and a band tearing Lennon’s memory to shreds, but there she was — the most surreal critic of all.

In the end, no fists flew, no bottles were hurled. We didn’t get lynched for mocking Lennon. Instead, we played one of our tightest, most electric gigs. What the Echo called a slur turned into the best publicity we could’ve hoped for. The cult of Lennon survived unscathed. 4Q, on the other hand, walked out bigger than we’d walked in.

4Q / Black Listed - The Swinging Sporran

Manchester. The Swinging Sporran. It sounded exotic, like the sort of place you’d expect to find wild Highland dancers or whisky-fuelled riots. What we actually found was a mostly empty pub with a scattering of punks and a landlord who thought he was running the Hacienda.

When we rolled up, a knot of out-of-town punks were waiting for us — kids who’d been buying Crud fanzine for years. They gave us a hero’s welcome, and for a moment we thought we were in for a packed night. But as it turned out, apart from Danny Williams, John Casey and a mate, that was pretty much the lot. Thirty people, tops.

Still, thirty punks are louder than three hundred indie kids, and we made the most of it. Black Listed, the semi-metal band we’d sort of adopted from Penmaenmawr, opened up. They were eager, tight, and clearly desperate to do everything “the proper rock way” — the posturing, the flourishes, the ritual of “being a band.” I don’t mean that unkindly, but they would’ve done better just being themselves. You can’t fake sweat and chaos. Still, they got through it, and for a bunch of lads still finding their way, it was decent.

Then it was our turn. After the 500-strong Aberystwyth gig the week before, playing to thirty in Manchester should’ve felt like a comedown, but it wasn’t. If anything, I enjoyed myself more. The smaller the crowd, the more personal the piss-taking, and the night quickly became a running exchange of banter between us and them.

We blasted into LSD and Mental Asylum, the sound bouncing off the walls like we were playing in a rehearsal room. I Hate TV and Bat Gooch kept the energy up, but then Matt smashed through yet another bass pedal — his third that week. With him out of action, we killed time with an impromptu Stand By Me, everyone singing along, the sort of daft interlude that makes a gig feel alive.

We patched the set back together with Burn In Hell, Poo on My Shoe, Imagine, and We Want You. During the latter, my bass just dropped clean off — strap gone, instrument clattering to the floor. I just laughed and carried on. The crowd loved it; nothing like a bit of unintended slapstick to keep people happy. We closed with 4Q Blues, Robin shredding like he was headlining Donington in front of 30 bewildered Mancunians.

At the end of the night, the landlord decided to play the heavy. He turned up with a seven-foot-wide bouncer in tow, demanding twenty quid for room hire. Twenty quid! We’d pulled in barely thirty punters. But after some fast talking, a lot of shrugging, and a cheeky promise to “forward the difference next week,” I got him down to a tenner. He probably knew he’d never see the other half, but we shook hands on it anyway.

We left Manchester grinning. No, it wasn’t the triumph of Aberystwyth, but it was raw, ridiculous, and ours. Sometimes thirty punks in a half-empty pub are better than five hundred students in a hall.

Aberystwyth: The Night 4Q Took the University

 

Aberystwyth University. Five bands, 550 students, and a PA that cost £180 but sounded like it had been salvaged from a skip. We were on the bill with U Thant, Mavis Riley Experience, the Mistecs, and Jon Busker, and while the night promised plenty, it quickly descended into the kind of glorious wreckage only 4Q could deliver.

The Mistecs opened — a gaggle of Blaenau schoolboys thrashing out a tupenny-ha’penny Metallica imitation. Everyone has to start somewhere, but honestly, they should’ve stayed at home with their homework. Then Jon Busker followed with his anti-fox-hunting song, which was so dreary it made you want to pick up a shotgun and go after the nearest fox just to spite him.

Then came the Mavis Riley Experience, and they were wonderful. Even Matt liked them, which was a miracle in itself. By the time we were up, the place was primed for carnage.

We didn’t get a soundcheck thanks to U Thant turning up late, and it showed. With two lead guitarists battling for supremacy, the mix was shite, and to the poor sound engineer it must’ve sounded like a car crash. Within minutes of plugging in, Gumpsh pulled a “Neil Crud special” — breaking a string by looking at it. While he wrestled with his guitar, the rest of us jammed Stand By Me to fill the gap. The crowd lapped it up.

And then it was on.

“Thank you, c’mon!” Cumi bellowed.

“There’s not enough room for them to come up onstage, Cumi,” I shouted back.

We launched into Mental Asylum — or as I renamed it mid-song, Mental Shed. It was so loud we couldn’t hear a bloody thing we were playing, but the crowd didn’t care.

“This one’s for everyone who watches Coronation Street,” I quipped.

“Is everyone enjoying themselves?” Cumi yelled.

“Yeah!” came the reply.

“What about you lot at the back? You’re all boring.”

On we went, chaos and noise. I Hate TV ran two verses short because Cumi lost track. I demanded more guitar in the monitors. We barrelled into Bat Gooch, where we bullied the crowd into joining in with a chorus of “Oi!”

We tore through Twisted Tabloids, which I introduced with a story about getting lost in a field near Blaenau Ffestiniog on the way to the gig. We Want You followed, then Cumi tried to big us up: “We’ve almost secured a record deal, this one will almost definitely be the single. It’s called Burn in Hell.”

“Single what?” I chipped in. “Single cream?”

People danced! Fuck me! Next was Poo on My Shoe it hit like a hammer, “fucking spot on.” Imagine descended into comedy, with Gumpsh starting it out of tune to our delight, and the audience split down the middle on whether John Lennon was genius or tosser. We wrapped it with 4Q Blues, Robin hammering out a ridiculously over-the-top metal solo just to put the cherry on the cake. And Cumi doing a walking handstand.

“Cheers,” I said. “I thought we were bloody marvellous.”

And we were. For all the feedback, the string breaks, the insults, and the nonsense, we’d owned the night. So much so that when U Thant came on after us, they had to work twice as hard just to keep the crowd. I even stayed to watch three songs — which for me was a compliment.

We pocketed the cash, packed up, and headed home. Robin, true to form, managed to upset Cumi’s Jane by climbing on her car and vomiting everywhere. A perfect 4Q ending: noise, chaos, laughter, and a trail of mess in our wake.

The Bee Hotel Massacre – 4Q in Rhyl

 

The Bee Hotel in Rhyl was never a great gig. Cumi and Matt didn’t want to do it, and I couldn’t blame them. Bee gigs were usually more trouble than they were worth — dodgy sound, small crowds, and an atmosphere that felt less like a venue and more like a waiting room. But a gig’s a gig, and in those days, we didn’t say no to playing.

At first it looked like we’d made the wrong call. The room was empty until 9:45pm, then suddenly people began streaming in — mostly Matt’s clan of family, friends, and admirers who’d come en masse from Colwyn Bay. By the time we were ready, the Bee was packed and already brimming with trouble.

Soundcheck was a nightmare. Levels wouldn’t sit right, feedback screamed, and then someone called Boz decided he was the star of the night. He picked up Robin’s guitar like it was his, and when I told him to put it down, he mouthed off, slagging us off like he had some divine right to any instrument in reach. I’ve never had time for musos like that — the type who think playing a few chords entitles them to anything they want.

If the saying’s true — that a bad soundcheck means a good gig — then this night was determined to prove otherwise. We opened with LSD, only for both Robin and Gumpsh to snap strings almost simultaneously. Absolute carnage. And there I was, trying to impress Martin Trehearn, hoping he’d consider booking us for The Bistro, while our set collapsed around us.

Once the guitars were restrung, Gumpsh’s lead gave out. Cheap gear will always betray you at the worst time. While he fumbled about, the rest of us tried to keep the crowd alive with a chaotic rendition of Purple Haze. It was shambolic, but at least it bought us time.

From there, the set lurched forward: Nein Werk, Video Party, Bat Gooch, VD, Poo On My Shoe, Burn in Hell, I Hate TV, We Want You, Imagine, 4Q Blues. It was raw, loud, and messy — a typical 4Q gig. By the end, the Bee looked like a scrapyard: smashed glasses, puddles of beer, debris of a night too wild for its four walls.

The image that’s burned in my mind, though, isn’t the broken gear or the broken glass. It’s one of Matt’s endless girlfriends, slumped unconscious in a chair, her head thrown back, vomit tangled through her hair and streaking her face. That sight was the punctuation mark on the whole night — ugly, tragic, unforgettable nad really fucking funny.

We’d rolled in from Colwyn Bay and trashed the place. It wasn’t a triumph. It wasn’t a disaster. It was 4Q: chaos in motion, leaving wreckage in our wake.