A couple of inbred horse faces are getting married tomorrow and we peasants are kindly given a day off work to celebrate paying for the whole fucking thing. I’m pretty happy with this because I’ve got a bed for the night, meaning that I get to avoid the late night drunk train home on my own, and I can get as pissed as I want without fear of sleeping through my stop.
I get to catch the majority of Lt. Meat and his minimal one man band shtick, with a surprise cover of a Neil Diamond song that I’ve never heard before. The set is slightly marred by the fact that the first pint I buy in Ten Feet Tall costs about £500 before they start to charge a more reasonable £2 a pint after ten ‘o’ clock.
A few more pints of Stella 4 are consumed ian between the end of Lt. Meat and the start of Ratatosk. I’ve never watched Ratatosk before and his one man band style is slightly more serious and sophisticated than Lt. Meat. Not that Lt. Meat was bad, but Ratatosk has got a loop pedal and mental instruments like a saw that can also be used to slice up hecklers in the crowd.
Just when everything is getting a bit serious, one of my mates who had indulged in a jazz cigarette before the start of the set, started poking me to whisper stuff like ‘Wendy Wheelchair’ and ‘Debby Handicap’ into my ear. I’m getting pretty pissed by this point and struggle to be annoyed at being interrupted appreciating the serious music, maaaaaaaaaaaaaan.
Drunkenness is slowly creeping up on me, and with the application of more than a couple of pints of Wife Beater LiteTM, I’m in the mood to get philosophical, angry or throw up everywhere. I go back outside after Ratatosk finishes playing in the vain hope I bump into the awesome chav kid who was winding up a bouncer from Ten Feet Tall a couple of weeks ago by calling him a ‘bald tosser’ and a ‘fucking sparkly-head’. I wish I could shake his hand for introducing me to that term and to tell him how I wish I could wind up some paid thug without the fear of getting my head kicked in. After not finding any hilarity outside I head back upstairs at the start of Daniel Higgs’ set.
Having only heard the stuff that he did with Lungfish, I wasn’t expecting such an intimate performance from a subtle band producing music influenced as much by authentic music from the American south as they are by Eastern mysticism and spoken word. The music provides a peaceful safe haven away from a bank holiday crowd of St. Mary Street mongs out to get cunted out of their minds so they can fuck and/or fight each other.
I’m progressively becoming blissfully unaware of the rest of the crowd around me, zoned out to the sounds greeting my ears, but this feeling isn’t to last much longer. After a while, the bouncers decide it’s time to open the doors to the top floor to allow a twat overspill to jizz their dirty liquids into our atmosphere from their collective cock of stupidity. I can’t emphasise how quiet the room was before these retards (who weren’t satisfied with having the basement, the ground floor and the first floor of the venue to themselves) coagulated together at the bar.
Pricks like that irritate the piss out of me at all times, but when they choose to come into the only bar in the whole of Cardiff where Daniel Higgs is playing instead of going to Walkabout or Yates or some other shit, I become severely enraged. The mass of muppets might as well have got on the stage with the band and started screaming in their face, because I couldn’t hear a fucking thing over whatever toss was spouting out of their mouths. I’m only one man (questionably), so there isn’t much I can do in terms of physically beating the shit out of the people who think it’s cool to come to a gig they didn’t pay for or have any interest in, so my brain tries to formulate an idea on how to deal with the situation.
I think about throwing something into the crowd on the other side of the room, but after rifling through my pockets, I can’t find any darts, coppers, fireworks or sharp objects. Then again, those items may be a step too far in my mission to make them shut up. I have a scan around the tables for something to throw, but even though I’ve grown up going out in Swansea, I don’t want to glass anyone indiscriminately. After deciding that violence probably isn’t the answer, between songs I shout something into the crowd that I hope the irritating pricks will cooperate with…’KILL YOURSELVES!!!’.
Unfortunately, nobody listens to my request and instead I have an awkward exchange with someone who I can’t see because I left my glasses at home. He said, ‘What!? All of us?!’. I don’t know whether it is someone who is watching the gig or someone who is talking over it, so I shout, ‘Half!’. What a lame reply to someone who may or may not have been on my side.
The battle of who can make the most noise is lost by Daniel Higgs and his band, so they stop playing after a fairly long set that was ruined by dickheads. I go outside in a rage after talking to the accordion player from the band who doesn’t seem bothered about the whole thing, and then I have a chat with Daniel Higgs who also doesn’t really care about them either. He does advise me that when I’m in America I should avoid groups of young boys regardless of where they’re from or what colour they are, because they are crazy and will probably kill me. He also tells me that if I’m walking through a forest in Oregon, I should expect someone to pop up out of a log and offer me a hit off a pipe full of marijuana.
Sage advice from a man who should probably be pissed off, but isn’t. I guess me and him have a very different outlook on life, so maybe I’ll stop being so angry after I go to Oregon.
