GIG REPORT

08/11/2002 - De Brugse Bierkaai - Brugge: Crapulius Cesar - The Dirty Scums

OWN REPORT - 09/11/2002

It seems each gig has its own story and this certainly counts for this one. It started back in January when we received an e-mail from the home brewery/pub/restaurant “De Brugse Bierkaai” in which we were asked if we showed interested in doin’ a free gig at their place. We normally don’t do free gigs anymore, but in order to support Belgian home breweries we were certainly willin' to make an exception.

We arranged the gig for the 27^th of April, and it would be a gig together with the band Vanguards. However, two weeks before this date we received another mail saying our gig couldn’t take place on that day because there were other things happenin’ in the pub at the same time. We had already noticed on the pub's site that W.R.3 would come to play in “De Brugse Bierkaai” in November, so we asked the pubowner if he could place us on the same bill as W.R.3 and so he did. The 27^th of April we all went to “De Brugse Bierkaai” to see how things were goin' there. This visit pleased us a lot, the beers tasted well and there was this nice beertender Chris, with whom we spent a lot of talkin’ and drinkin’. To be honest, we found this wasn’t really a good place to do a gig, it was really playin’ in the pub/restaurant itself, full of tables to eat, and with the waiters typically dressed in white shirt and black trousers. The Vanguards played that evenin', but man, what was this band suckin’. They sucked so hard they nearly were a persiflage of a ... well of a suckin’ band. Anyway, after we tasted all the different beers several times, it was a hard job to find back our car, and once we were drivin’, there was also Zjantie who had to puke along the road …

In order to arrange a special punknight at the pub in November, we contacted our friends from the Barjackers to play as third band. Sadless the band had split up, but one of the members now played in Crapulius Caesar (named after the famous Julius Caesar), so the bill of 8th November would be: Crapulius Caesar, The Dirty Scums and W.R.3. The day before the gig, we contacted both bands in order to share some equipment and things like that. Only, we received a mail back from W.R.3 that they couldn’t play that night because one of the members couldn’t take a day off at his job and another one was sick, and if we could inform the organiser of this inconvenience. Fuckin’ hell, we first phoned to Mise*en*Scene if they could play the next day and then mailed “De Brugse Bierkaai” of the fact that W.R.3 wouldn’t be there, but that we were already lookin’ for another band. By the time Mise*en*Scene phoned us back to confirm the gig, we received a mail back from Chris that he preferred to restrict it to two bands, because he expected noise troubles with the neighbourhoud. Why does this shit always happen to us ?

Anyway, the next day we were back in “De Brugse Bierkaai” to play in Bruges for the nineth time already, and found ourselves among some friends of the old days which is always fine (especially when they bring along their grirlfriends, haha). Among the audience: the drummer of the legendary early eighties band Anarchists on Dope aka De Jeugd van Tegenwoordig, figuring on volume 1 ànd volume 2 of Bloodstains Across Belgium. Crapulius Caesar played on our equipment (except for the drums), so we hadn’t to arrange too much things and could concentrate on the fine home brewed beers.

But let’s talk about Crapulius Caesar. Central figure (although he will deny this) is Vrokker, the guy who also played in the Barjackers. Noticeable is that in earlier days Vrokker also was the bassplayer of Chronic Disease, one of these famous Belgian bands of the late eighties with whom we played several times together. Crapulius Caesar consists of a drummer, a bassplayer, a guitarplayer and three singers, of which one female singer. Some of them are even a bit of TV-personalities, as they appeared several times on TV as activists for the Lappersfortbos in Bruges. But let’s talk now about their music, and it must be said: Crapulius Caesar definitely is a really great band ! In their hardest pieces they made us think of our own Game Over, in their softer pieces they made us think of Counter Attack, another great Belgian band. If these guys and girl come to your town, you sure have to pay them a visit.

Our own gig started very good, everything went well and sounded well, till one of the worst things that can happen on a gig, happened: in the intro of “We hate cops” Keez broke a string of his bassguitar. He couldn't but stop with playin', but we continued the song. Crapulius Caesar immediately went to search their bassguitar and by the end of the song Keez was back on the tracks again. The rest of the gig however was no more 100 % because this was definitely another kind of bassguitar than the one Keez uses to play, and he wasn’t quite comfortable with this one. This was namely a fretless bass, how on earth is it possible that people can play on these things ? And this wasn't all yet, one song later it was obvious that this bass wasn't well tuned, so we still had to interrupt the concert to tune the bass. It also must be said that few people in the crowd noticed this, because the beer tasted really delicious and was doin’ its thing (make people drunk). Between the program and the encores, we could arrange Keez’ own bassguitar, so we were ready to play the encores at 100 % again. In the intro of the first song, there was a quarrel startin’ in the crowd, so we immediately stopped playin’. It were the two brothers who play in Crapulius Caesar who had a fight and it had something to do with the behaviour of one of them who had consumed too much beers. Anyway, they made friends again while drinkin’ another beer, so the gig could go on. By the end of the gig, which everybody had enjoined it seemed, we were very thirsty, so we could once again taste the different beers of this home brewery.

By midnight, everything was packed in and all of the people had already left for another place. However we spent three more hours drinkin’ and talkin’ with Chris, the bartender, who is a real sympathetic man, who can tell you crazy stories of the places where he was bartender before: France, Morocco, Romenia, ... So, if you happen to be near Bruges, don’t forget to pay this pub a visit. It's for sure that we'll do the same.

Well we were there back again sooner than expected, but therefore you have to read the report of our next gig ...

Dirty Pik