Guinness, Trains & The Fluff

It all kicked off around 4:30pm in Bangor at The Ship, raising a pint (or several) to Alan Fisher, who was making his grand exit from Jewson. A celebratory pint of Guinness in hand, I found myself joking with Dewi Hughes, Mike, and Dewi Coch about the barmaid’s top — or more accurately, the very strategic Guinness-coloured stain on it. We decided, in our growing wisdom, that her breasts might be full of Irish stout. Turns out it was just from leaning against the pump, but hey, it made the 15-minute wait for the next pint a little more entertaining.

By pint number three, the topic of conversation turned to a friend’s upcoming interview on Radio Cymru. Pre-fourth pint, I dashed across the road to grab a double cheeseburger — pricier than the usual kebab house fare, but so worth it.

Then came the 10-metre crawl to The White Lion for two more pints of iron-rich goodness. Afterwards, we democratically voted (with great seriousness) to return to The Ship for another round. Somewhere around pint seven, I casually mentioned heading to Rhyl to catch The Fluff live. One of the guys decided to hop on the train with me, claiming seven pints was his limit. Sensible.

Of course, the legendary British Fail hotline (0345 484950) told us there’d be a train at 10:22pm. Lies. We had an hour to kill, so off we went to Angels for a final pre-train pint — lager this time. Guinness was starting to feel like a meal.

I bid my mate farewell at Llandudno Junction and made it to Rhyl just before midnight, sprinting to The Bistro in time for a lager and the last 20 minutes of The Fluff’s set.

Now, The Fluff and I go back a couple of years — I first saw them when I was doing my time DJ-ing at The Bistro. My crime? Knowing Martin Trehearn. The punishment? Thursday night slots. But The Fluff were a welcome relief from the sea of mediocrity that can quite often grace this stage.

Fast forward two years and they've leveled up — hard. Visually and aurally. Enter Krissy: 22, new lead singer, and exactly what the band needed. The locals weren’t wrong — her voice and stage presence gave the band a huge lift. The sound? A rich, psychedelic Britpop blend that instantly made me think they’d fit perfectly on Delerium’s roster (if they fancied kissing their souls goodbye).

Only complaints? I dropped a full pint of lager while, shall we say, “multi-tasking” outside the gents. And maybe — just maybe — the songs ended too soon. Just when they’d hit that sweet, free-form psychedelic groove, it was over. But you know what? It left me wanting more.

So I did what any true fan would do.

I ordered another one.

Sons Of Selina - The Bistro, Rhyl

 

It only took four years, three singles, one album, and a Radio One session before Sons of Selina finally played our first hometown gig. People always asked: why not sooner? The truth is I never wanted to get caught up in the local band mentality that swirls around Rhyl like bad weather. Every town has it — the rivalries, the gossip, the back-slapping with knives hidden behind backs — but when it’s your own patch it feels toxic. We kept our distance. We avoided the sycophantic local press. We didn’t want to be part of that small-town scene. The only local band I’d seen and genuinely enjoyed recently were The Fluff.

Still, sooner or later you’ve got to face your own doorstep.

A few days before the gig I’d floated the idea of projecting a video I’d put together with Dave the Rave (ex-PSST) over the stage while we played. On a Delerium Records budget it was wishful thinking. Luckily, Bonehead came up with a cheaper, brilliantly daft alternative: six TV sets wired up behind the stage, all running the same footage. With Roger Bickley’s (ex-ZODIAQUE UK) handy wiring skills and a £37 booster amp, it worked. A DIY multimedia extravaganza.

Steve Jones (of White Tygerz, Heroes on a Beach, Picture House, and nearly SOS himself at one point) handled the PA. We’d finished soundcheck by 9pm, but weren’t due on for another two and a half hours. That gap worried me. Robin was on his second pint, and I couldn’t shake the memory of the infamous PSST incident that ended in him facing seven charges. So I did the only sensible thing: I marched the lot of them back to mine to kill time.

When we returned to The Bistro the place was heaving — over 250 people, jammed into every corner. At £2 a head, that’s about £500 through the door, with £170 making its way into our pockets and the rest lining the Trehearns’ tills. Whatever my misgivings about playing Rhyl, that sight of the room buzzing with our people, our town, was special.

The set blurred past in a rush of noise, screens flickering behind us, all of us throwing ourselves into it. This was the Sons of Selina line-up in full: me on vocals, Robin, Martin and Bonehead wielding three guitars between them, Ken Maynardis on bass, Steve on keyboards, and Cumi on drums. It felt like a proper homecoming, even if it had taken us years to get there.

The next morning there was no time to bask in it. Delerium hauled us out of bed for a photo shoot, and those bleary-eyed pictures are now plastered all Kerrang!. Around the same time, the NME ran an ad for us in their small-ads section:

SONS OF SELINA: AVAILABLE FOR WEDDINGS, FUNERALS & CHILDREN’S PARTIES (WE NEITHER).

It still makes me laugh.

Ludicrous Lollipops come to Rhyl

Spent the day prepping video stuff shooting footage around town then got ready to play at Rhyl with the Ludicrous Lollipops and the Psycho Sexual Sex Terrestrials. About 130 people showed up, which was pretty decent. Gotta say, this was our best performance so far—got a brilliant response from the crowd. Wayne was filming the whole thing, so hopefully we’ve got some good footage.

Our set went down well: LIAR, BEIRUT IN RHYL, JOHNNY BARNES, PERSONAL WARS, KENNEDY, POWERFUL PETE, £2.17, LIFE GOES ON, STUART, FATAL ATTRACTION, then finished with KENNEDY again. Felt tight and energetic, the kind of night where everything just clicks.

The Ludicrous Lollipops were great too. For anyone who doesn’t know, they’re a Nottingham band — tight, melodic indie stuff with a solid fanbase. Their set was really well done and well supported by the crowd. Only hiccup was when Paul’s “lady of the moment” got on stage and shouted that the Lollipops were shit, telling them to get off so PSST could play. The vocalist handled it brilliantly though — he told everyone, “This is my mum, she always does this. Fuck off mum.” The crowd loved that.

Later on, Paul gave Chunky a hard time for buying a Lollipops T-shirt, insults were traded including “Scouse cunt” and “roll on the 3rd Reich”. Just shows how petty band politics can get, and Chunky's not even in the band!

After the gig, I headed up to the Bistro for some beers to get away from all the drama. Nice to chill and enjoy the buzz from a great night of music.

Full PSST set here

PSST gig and arrests are made

 

I had just come back from three months working in Greece. No sooner had my feet touched Rhyl soil than I found myself back in the chaos — onstage with Psycho Sexual Sex Terrestrials at the Bistro.

The band were already in bits before I even walked in. Robin was pissed, Paul was pissed, Jon and Scott were pissed. Dean, ex–Dam Yankee, was holding it together on rhythm guitar, while Hot Scott was doubling up on bass. I clambered up and joined them for Kennedy and Distance, hammering the bass and generally wrecking the place. The set was a shambles — Robin broke two strings and just carried on regardless, Dean stopped mid-song to bollock Scott for fucking up, and I threw myself into what a reviewer described as a typical demonic Crud performance.

But the gig was a blast. A sweaty, chaotic mess of music, broken strings, shouting, and laughter. It was also the last time the Bistro allowed live music for quite some time. We burned it down in spirit, if not in flames.

The after-show was pure carnage. Paul was trying to juggle not one but two girlfriends — both sat at the same table, glaring daggers, while one of them, soon to be his wife and mother of his child, tried not to combust. The whole band was spiralling into chaos, fuelled by drink and bravado.

Leaving the gig, things got darker. Dean was assaulted outside, which sent Paul, Robin, and Jon — who doubled as a Special Constable — into vigilante mode. Dean spotted one of the culprits, so Jon screeched his car to a halt, leaving the engine running and doors wide open, Robin drunk in the back seat. Dean, Paul, and Jon bolted after the lad, Jon arresting him in full Special Constable glory.

But when they returned to the car, it was gone. Vanished. Robin, in his drunken wisdom, had decided to “help” by moving it out of the road to avoid an accident. Unfortunately, he moved it straight into the path of a police car.

The cops saw he was pissed and hauled him out. Robin, furious at not being recognised as the upstanding citizen he believed he was, kicked off. He lashed out at the officers, smashed the windows of their van, and earned himself seven charges: assault, destruction of police property, drunk driving, no insurance — the full house.

The entire band somehow ended up in the police station, joined by one of Paul’s girlfriends who had just discovered the other one existed. She was screaming, “I hope you catch fucking AIDS!” at the top of her lungs while Robin raged in his cell. The police even tried to confiscate the video of the gig to use as evidence. They didn’t get it.

By some miracle — maybe because Jon was a Special Constable, maybe because Robin had some kind of luck lodged in his bones — he walked away lighter than he should have.

It was a hell of a welcome home for me. Three months in Greece, then straight back to Rhyl, straight into the heart of the storm.

"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.