It was comedian Tim Vine who said “I never tell people what I get up to at the top of small hills. What goes on on tor, stays on tor”. I’m going to do the opposite and tell you about the Sleaze* In The City Tour.

Firstly a big thank you to Alan for giving me a lift to Fat Lils in Alan’s Babemobile** It was a sunny, loud ride and I did my first ever listening to Paramore (and heard great singing along by babes Emmy, Emily and Shannon).

The opening band were the splendidly named Sykko Dollz (pronounced Psycho Dolls, in case you’re wondering).  Not since the glory days of Kerrang! has the over used letter c been swapped so enthusiastically with the less common letter k. You can tell this band gig a lot, they were on top form. They all have great hair. I didn’t expect the Abba cover. I look forward to getting more familiar with their set over the next three nights.

Terminus were the filling in the sleaze sandwich tonight. They selected the stuff from their repertoire that was likely to please a sleaze crowd and it looked like it did from where I was standing. Personally I love their cover of Zodiac Mindwarp’s “Prime Mover”, the crowd seemed to enjoy their sleazy Rose Tattoo cover plus their non-sleazy Blink 182 and Rage Against The Machine. Bass player Steve was wearing an appropriate Motörhead T-shirt for today is Motörhead day (see Lemmium for more details).

The main event, all the way from Ireland to entertain us, was Stone Trigger. Fond of writing big glossy catchy party music, fluorescent posters and wearing sunglasses indoors they had the crowd grinning from the off. A duet of Welcome To The Jungle occurred, with Terminus’s Dean joining Tommy onstage.  You can listen to their latest single Masquerade on YouTube.

A big thanks to Liam for the lift home and to a tipsy John who claimed to have eaten a camemberg which we assumed was a half camembert, half Battenberg creation.

 

The gig in brief

Most disturbing phrase of the night: “jizz towel”.

Number of Motörhead T shirts in the venue: 3.

Number of bandanas in the venue: too many to count. If we tied them all end to end we could probably have reached the next venue on the tour.

Number of people wearing sunglasses indoors: lots.

Number of people convincingly wearing sunglasses indoors: actually lots. It seems that sunglasses indoors is fine in a sleaze context. Looking around Fat Lils last night it seemed a bit like someone was filming a sequel to The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years.

Number of crisps flavours available behind bar: 1 (cheese and onion).

 

*The type of sleaze to which I refer is the musical type, not the odious News Of The World type. Sleaze is a hard rock sub genre that flat out refused to leave the 80s. It clung on with glitter nail varnished fingers to the doorway that led from the 80s to the 90s and it hasn’t slipped through yet. It prides itself on having good hair and having a good time all the time.

**Not my words. The credit for this goes to Dean Thirkettle.