GIG REPORT

The Dirty Scene Tour - 01/11/2002 - JOC De Kim - Oostende: Mise*en*Scene - The Dirty Scums - The Thirsty Scums

OWN REPORT - 02/11/2002

It was the 8th time we played in Oostende, first time in this place. We arrived at 7 pm, at the same time the guy who opened the place arrived there too. There was almost no indication that this was a youth centre (needless to say there was no indication at all that there would be a gig goin' on that night), just one door, and no windows 'cause the place was located at the first floor. The door only indicated "K2" and there was also this little note sayin' the pub was closed today ! How could people ever find this place to come to our gig ? We suppose K2 stands for Kim 2, this is namely the 2nd pub of this youth centre (we played already once in the 1st pub). And this little note, well let's suppose it was left the day before.

The guy who let us in still had to empty the stage which was full of chairs, sofas, tables, games, …, it was obviously some time ago that the stage was used by a band. Anyway, in the mean time we could empty our van. There was a parkin' place in a buildin' next to that of the youth centre with an exit just next to the stage. This was excellent of course, only the parkin' place was too low to let in our van, so we had to climb up the 24 stairs (!) to the first floor with all our equipment ! Great job in order to lose some weight. At 8.15 pm we had finished settin' up our things and doin' a little soundcheck. By that time all the guys who where in charge to open the place had arrived, as well as our partners in The Dirty Scene Tour, Mise*en*Scene. Yes, we still missed somethin': an audience ! Some months ago, we had played a pretty good gig in front of an audience of 1.000 people in a school in Oostende, so we expected a lot of people here. By the time Mise*en*Scene started to play, about 9.30 pm we guess, there was a bit of a public but not as much people as we had expected for this town. We heard afterwards there was 1 person from the aforementioned school … Shame on you guys ! Anyway, among the audience, we recognized some guys from TV (activists for the Lappersfortbos in Bruges), the bassplayer from the Marky Ramone Group, some guys of the eighties scene (a.o. members of the band Full Time Drinkers and the Be Yourself Records-label) and a French speakin' guy who used to be a contributor to the anarchistic periodical Alternative Libertaire.

In order to gain some time and to make things easy, Mise*en*Scene used almost all our equipment (only the drums had to change). It was the first time we saw M*e*S on stage and they sounded pretty good, old school punk played by younger guys, which means also sometimes a bit of new school influences, or as they call it themselves, no school at all. Nice reaxions from the audience for M*e*S, as well as for our set. We played well, we could hear each other, the sound was good (our own small pub-P.A.), no broken strings and only one time a cable that failed, so we pretty much enjoyed our own performance, as well as the encores we had to play. We guess it was about 11.30 pm when we finished, and we finally had the time to drink more than one pint successively without havin’ obligations to do, although we still had to disguise as The Thirsty Scums to play our Ramones covers. Some people left the place, kids who had to be home at midnight we suppose, but also M*e*S: hey guys, don’t forget we’re in this thing together ! It must have been around midnight when we started to play the Ramones songs, and as always everyone knows this songs and sings along, which makes that everybody’s havin’ a good time.

It  finally must have been 1 am when we could deliver ourselves completely to the booze and could start packin’ everythin' in again. Durin' the evenin', there hadn't been any time to set up our stand with our mailorder-stuff, we however sold some copies of our new CD at people who asked for it. We also remember that the plastic beer-beakers were run out, and that we had to drink our beers in cola-beakers. We stayed till the last person was gone, and the friendly people of the youth centre helped us carryin’ all our shit again over the 24 fuckin’ stairs to the van. When you know we still had to empty the van at home in the early hours to put everythin' back again in the rehearsal room, you'll agree with us that rock'n'roll sometimes is some kind of a fuckin' hard life.

Dirty Pik