Hell, this was a fine evenin’ yesterday, and night too in fact, ‘cause it was about 7 am when we returned. Some months ago, we invited Crimson Brothers to come to play with us in JH De Broesse in Harelbeke, but as they were already split up at that time, they sent the band Strait Forward instead. It was the drummer of this band who contacted us to play with The Dirty and The Thirsty Scums on this punkfestival in a town called Wille. By the time I received the contract (from a different person than this drummer), the bands mentioned for the festival were already different than the ones originally said, the town seemed to be Welle instead of Wille and there was no use for The Thirsty Scums to play. After havin' asked what they finally wished, they however decided to take The Thirsty Scums too, but there was no possibility to make it an issue of The Dirty Scene Tour (read: to include Mise*en*Scene). The day before the gig I received a mail in which organisor Koen explained they had no P.A. and he asked if they could use our material. No problem, but the first band whould start at 5 pm and there was no way for us to be there on time. By the way, the playlist had changed again and would include 7 bands in total. In the evenin’ of this same day I received a phone call in which Koen told me they finally had been able to hire a P.A. This all seemed pretty amateuristic and chaotic, we also hadn’t seen or received posters or flyers of this festival, and the gigs weren't even announced on their own site.

I just had a skinny haircut this week and it was fuckin' freezin’ outside. When we arrived at 7.30 pm the second band, O.P.P., had just started, which meant they were already seriously out of schedule from the start. The place itself was a garage and I suppose it was also freezin’ inside. It really looked very punky, the sound sucked a bit, and when I took a closer look at the stage, I immediately noticed that the monitors weren’t workin’. The band O.P.P. – I first thought it was O.B.P., which stands for Objectieve Bierproevers, an organisation that supports the Belgian beer (and of which I am of course a member) – consisted of a lot of people, in any case we noticed 2 girls, a violin, a German flute (which is a hell of a thing in a girl's mouth, no kiddin'), and furthermore the usual instruments. It sounded a bit weird and good, and one of the girls was an ex-member of R.A.T.S.

The backstage place was in fact the pub of the youth club, and with all the stuff of the 7 bands, it gave a bit the impression of a crowded and sociable secondhandmarket. Durin’ the gigs there were a lot of people backstage and I always wonder what people are doin’ there while you can watch a gig instead, which is mostly also the intention of this kinds of evenings, no ? We learned it was the second time this festival was organised. Headliner of last year’s issue was a band from Holland, and after they had played 2 songs, the cops arrived to stop the concert. Damned, this didn’t promise much good. Back to the garage where there were plenty of people, amongst them a bunch of friends and members of different bands we're friends with: WR3, Senomar, Anarcasticats, R.A.T.S., Kut, … to name some. It wouldn’t be easy with them to stay off the booze before playin'. By the way, Anarcasticats must be one of the most mythic bands of the moment in Belgium, they come to nearly all our gigs, they are all some kind of friends of us, in a former life the drummer played in Funeral Dress, but we never saw them play, never heard one song of them and we never saw a flyer on which they figure (hehe, now I'm sure of havin' a free beer next time I'll meet 'em).

The second band we saw this evenin' was Dearly Deported who play nice newschool punk with strong melodic vocals. Some of the members appeared to play in another band with Ben, former drummer and guitarplayer of Funeral Dress (and a thousand of other bands). Yeah it's a fact that Funeral Dress has a lot of ex-members. Then we had Fart, drinkin’ brothers of R.A.T.S., with whom they even share the same drummer. It was the first time we saw Fart and we were in the minority: half of the crowd sang along their songs. They play a bit of chaotic Crass-music, their guitarplayer has a very strange way of playin’ the guitar, but the bassplayer leads their music in the right direxion. It sounded pretty cool and punky and thanx to the punky garage I really felt like it was ’77 again. They played the Adicts-cover "Viva la revolution", this is not an easy song to play and I know it ‘cause we once tried it ourselves in vain (playin' the riff and singin' at the same time didn't work for me), but they did the job well. Next band was Strait Jacket who play a melodic kind of punk/pop, they have a very talented bassplayer who plays on a Faylon-ampli. I always have sympathy for guys who play on Faylon, haha.

I believe it was about midnight when we could start. We first tried to solve some technical problems and discovered that the cable from one of the monitors was defect, and sadly there was no spare cable, goodbuye monitor. We had a false start in which the vocals of Zjantie were far too loud and you couldn't hear mine. But when everything had fallen to its place we played a very good gig in which the crowd moved a lot, and sang a lot along. It was one of our better gigs with a good sphere and a lot of gentle people. I also tried to move a lot on stage, and I’m sure Keez once moved his feet, I really have never seen this before. There was one song which the crowd obviously didn’t recognize and strangely enough this was the cover "I'm Stranded" from the almighty Saints. It was also no more done since the eighties that we included in our set "Sunny Spain" from our first album. When finished we waited about fifteen minutes before startin’ The Thirsty Scums. Although it must have been after 1 am by then, there still were a lot of people and they all liked a lot our Ramones-covers. It was again a very good gig with much participation and appreciation from the audience. Why isn’t it always this way ? Haha, inside joke, "Why is it always this way" is a Ramones-song. We were called back and hit the stage again to play "Pretty Vacant" from the Sex Pistols.

After the gig we drunk a lot of beer and the venue quickly ran nearly empty. When there was no more beer on draught, we switched over to Jupiler bottles. Few people could follow our drinkin’ speed, and one of the first to fell off was Strait Jacket’s drummer, a weird but sympathetic guy. Koen, responsable for the youth club, promised us a Dirty Scene Tour-evenin’ and updated the youth club’s music collexion with all of our CD’s. We asked for a typical beer of the region but they couldn’t think of one. We proposed Affligem (which is about 10 kilometers from Welle), but they didn’t had it, till one clever guy discovered some time later one bottle of an Affligem Christmas beer called "Patersvat". It seems this beer is the only blond Christmas beer. I drunk it, and it tasted good. By lack of other beers, we switched to Leffe (one can never be mistaken with this beer), as usual the dark one for Keez, the blond one for myself, and the empty bottles for driver/drummer Zjantie. I browsed a bit in their CD-collexion which resulted in somethin' of Jacques Brel (hey this is an outin’, I really like his songs) on the stereo, and some Led Zeppelin-stuff (yeah another outin’, Led Zeppelin is one of my all-time faves). In the mean time there was this unbelievable beautiful lady who entered the place (think of Kim Gevaert and multiple her beautiness by at least 3). It happened they just turned Led Zeppelin’s "Stairway to heaven" on the stereo and I invited the lady to dance a slow together. Yeah, life is really great.