Newbury – Waterside Youth Centre
Saturday 20th March 2004
Second In Line
Junk Culture
The Griswalds
Sidewalk Riot
It’s always a pleasure to bump into the cheery Griswalds folk, and today is no exception. We find ourselves is a pretty bloody great venue with what is probably the biggest stage we have ever played on. Kids were waiting outside in the cold and had turned up earlier in the day to buy advance tickets for the show, this is looking good. We spend most of our waiting time constantly going outside for a smoke (the venue was no-smoking) and wondering if we’ll remember any of our songs tonight. We had a brief moment of stardom when a photographer from the local rag turned up to take our photo. Paul from Second In Line accuses me of pulling a scary faces, everyone finds the idea of me looking scary hilarious.
The Griswalds are bloody great tonight, it’s just a shame that most of the kids are outside smoking sneaky tabs and sucking down strong cider.
We loaded up with Pro-Plus and take to the stage with no idea of how well we are going to play, just because we were as loose as a wino’s bowels last night doesn’t mean that we have actually practised or anything. A couple of songs into the set and everyone is active, excited and playing the same songs as each other at the same time! Kate is really on fire tonight and bouncing round the stage like a girl possessed. As we came to the end of our last song I amble over to Kate and give her a friendly nudge, she retaliates so fast it catches me totally off guard and quite frankly she kicked my ass. As I lay defeated and trapped by Kate’s guitar strap I can hear the kids screaming at us as her guitar continues to wail like a penguin on a rocket sled. I also wonder if I will get my head kicked in by the bouncers for picking on a girl! Jon heard some kids refer to Kate as ‘the girl with the feedback’.
Before we know what’s happening Second in Line have taken to the stage with a bassist who apparently hasn’t played for them for years and just happened to be at the show and fancied giving it a go! This is pretty typical of the whole Second In Line experience. The kids in Newbury are insane, smashing each other about the place and running round like little cider fuelled Tasmanian devils. We were also introduced to the delights of the ‘wall of death’, where two lines of nutters face each other then play a sort of hardcore British bulldog. The thing that made it really interesting was the kid that joined the throng by ollying in on his skateboard!
Far from it being Second In Line’s responsibility to try and stop this sort of behaviour they invited the skater kid on stage to jump over his mates who were laying on the floor in front. To everyone’s amazement he did it! By the end of the night we all agreed that this was one of the most amazing shows we have ever seen and wandered off into the Newbury night in search of lardy food goods.
Bedtime – 3.30am
Chief Snorer – Stuart
Chief Farter – Stuart
Last Updated on February 21, 2023
Leave a Reply