Answers on a postcard please....

Keep the pics rolling in!!!

A small venue with a nice stage, it never fails to deliver a quality night. Our last visit there saw Toby the drummer completely out of his nut and barely able to sit on a drum stool let alone keep a beat (no change there then big boy...). This time was a bit quieter than usual (many punters no doubt saving their weekly night out for the highly overrated Valentines night - pussies), but still a great atmosphere and plenty of old tossers pogoing away.

It was also Steve Tones' first night at The Wheatie, and he seemed to go down well. He even had a crack at "Submission" especially for the lovely Marina (we must get around to teaching him the end though...oops).

The only disappointment was the fact that we didn't get any tits. We ALWAYS get tits at The Wheatie (and I'm not talking about Mr Grumpy and the like). So ladies next time we visit on the 28th November you've gotta redeem yourselves; we want NIPS!

See you at the next Wheatie gig, 28th November!!!

Alright Punks,

Steve Tones 'ere. Just a little 'eads up to all you punk rock guitarists out there, to let you know that the Steve Tones Guitar Masterclass is now officially endorsed on the Gibson Guitar website.

Follow the link below to the best guitar manufacturer in the world's website and see for yourself 'ow its dun!

www.gibson.com

Tones Out

So apologies again. Keep checking the gig pages as this will be rearranged in the near future.

There's The Flag up by the station. A huge pub with masses of potential and used to be great back in the day, but they stopped putting live music on there a few years ago and it only started again fairly recently, but sadly it has never been the same since. We gave it a go in May but I ended up in a right state having had my drink spiked with what I assume was acid or the like. Sidney pointed out the fact that I had necked about 12 pints of Stella in order to console myself about the poor attendance, but I'm positive there was some foul play. Anyway that's another story.

There are a couple of other places, but one venue I always wanted to play was The Horns. From the outside it looks like any other pub, but inside it's a different story; they've had a decent sized stage put in with PA, lighting, plasma screens, digital stage cameras, and (this is what got me) "extensive memoribillia collection". I pestered Denis the landlord around 4 years ago for a gig, but he wasn't up for it. He kept turning us down, saying it wasn't really "their thing". I think he was just worried about the place getting trashed if he put on a Sex Pistols tribute, which, I'm sorry to say, never happens at our gigs.

So a little while back our drummer was at some poncy do in Watford and he just happens to be sitting next to Denis from The Horns. They got chatting (not in a gay way) and when enough booze had gone down Denis' neck Toby managed to slur:

"Ere...our band wantsh to play at your booza"

And that was it. Denis agreed to the gig while out of his nut and couldn't back out!

The night of the gig Dirty Sidney had kindly offered me a lift. I hadn't had a pint for at least 36 hours so thought I'd have a couple during the soundcheck. Bad move. Well, it wouldn't have been a bad move if it had just been a couple. But it was a couple, then a couple more, and then one more for the stage. Coupled with the fact that I had just bought a new pair of brothel creepers with a 2 inch platform sole it was bound to get messy. We had an hour to kill so I had another couple of pints. When we went on I was several sheets to the wind, perfect for a Pistols gig! The trouble started when I tried to pull off a classique Lydon idiotic hunchback jump during the intro to Holidays. I bounced off the brand new 2 inch crepe sole and almost went flying off the stage!!! I stayed upright though, and somehow managed to remember the words to most of the songs. A few minor slip ups (well it wouldn't be authentic without a few fuck ups!) and for some reason mid song I decided I was going to give Tones a massive slap round the face (sorry Tones) but all in all a great gig with a good crowd (OK they were a tad sedate, or was it just total disbelief!?).

After the gig Denis was pleasantly surprised and even seemed to enjoy the gig himself a little bit. Even though I kept called him a c**t while he was behind the bar.

Looks like we're on for a return to The Horns in 2009, see you then!!!

We weren't on stage until midnight so didn't arrive until late, missing our allocated soundcheck time as usual (let's be honest we're not a difficult band to engineer...just make sure the mics are working and the guitar is turned up fuckin loud!). I had a quick look at the line-up for the Friday evening and saw that we were playing in Jak's at the same time that Alvin Stardust was on in the big hall. Yes, Alvin Stardust; I assumed that cunt had given up the ghost a long time ago! I thought we'd been tucked up; I mean, who would want to come and see our little Pistols tribute when a legend like Alvin was about to take the stage?

How wrong could I have been!?!? Having been over to Reds for a few swift beverages after setting up we headed back over to Jak's where I expected to see a few old tossers that remembered The Sex Pistols of '76. But we went in the front door and could barely get in the place! There was in the region of 1000 people in there, all pissed up and gagging for something other than the glam shite they'd been subject to for most of the evening.

So we proceeded to deliver just what they wanted. We launched into "Holidays" and instantly the place came alive. People were jumping about from the outset and I knew it was going to be a cracking gig. The mic's all went dead as we started the next song ("Substitute") so we did an instrumental/crowd singalong while the soundman sorted things out. It didn't take long, and the rest of the show went without a hitch, right through the encores of "No Fun" and "Friggin In The Riggin", climaxing quite literally as Sidney took the stage for "My Way" clad in only in his swastika Y-fronts...Nice. PS we're missing a decent full-frontal of this from an audience view. If anybody out there has got photos from the gig please email to us!

All in all a truly excellent gig with a great audience who were well up for it! We look forward to a return in the future, in fact on the 7th February 2009...get your tickets now!

"Rott", he said, attempting to be tactful. "It's like this...your website is fucking shit"

"Well, if you can do better let's see it", I replied.

And here it is! To be honest I don't think he actually did it himself, he probably got one of his bitches to do it. We now have a few new pages...a Shop, this Blog, Links, an example Set List, plus a page dedicated to Steve Tones himself where you can get loads of punk style tips and even online guitar lessons by the legend himself.

We'll be adding to this blog with stories from The Road; Feel free to contact us if you want to contribute. See you at the next gig!

Cheers, Rotten