Crud World Domination Enterprises give you

ANTI-NOWHERE LEAGUE
PHINIUS GAGE
FUCKERPUNCH

Central Station, Wrexham
06.10.2005

(narration and pix by Neil Crud)

In the first year of high school my mate Yosser, who then answered to the name, Paul Winston MacArthur Tomlinson played me Sham 69’s Rip Off down the phone. I was instantly converted. Not that I was an 11 year-old music freak at the time, I did have a penchant for ABBA but that was more to do with pre-pubescent fantasies of being mothered by the blonde bird rather than their musical dynamics. So the 1970s shoulder length hair was shorn and Roger The Black Belt Barber gave me a spike (or a Sid Vicious haircut).
Whereas my peers would and still do take or leave The Damned, I had, and still have a huge place in my heart for them. Even to the extent of having their name tattooed on my wrist. So being just about old enough to go and see them in Colwyn Bay in 1981 and having permission and money off my mum; myself and Yosser went to our first punk gig alone (The Jam and The Clash at Deeside Leisure Centre were with my dad).
The support band were The Anti-Nowhere League and they changed my life! Imagine the impression a 14 year old kid got seeing this band of punk bikers turn up on stage clad in leather, chains, tattoos and muscles. Not only did they stick 2 fingers up at the world, they rammed their fist right up its arse. My life was changed from that moment on, I wanted to be in a band with that attitude, that outlook on life. Live fast, die young and smell like shit inbetween.
So its been a 24 year gap since that night on the Pier in Colwyn Bay, you can read what I got up to through a lot of that quarter century by going to the 4Q and Sons of Selina websites. The Secretary was also in attendance at that gig in1981; had she taken up the Anti-Nowhere League’s offer of going to a party after that show she may not have lived to join me in seeing them again tonight!

But first we had to deal with the business of Fuckerpunch, (pic above) who had 25 minutes to impress a sparse crowd. Featuring Ian Maiden from local legends Stuntface you kind of got a hint of what they were going to sound like just by looking at them! With support in the audience coming from Ian’s ex-sparring partners in Stuntface there was one ex-member absent - cementing the acrimony of their split. It was balls to the wall punk-metal from the days of the late 80s hardcore bands – not fast enough to be thrash and too heavy to be metal; a bit like Stuntface without the tunes? Maybe not. It was heavy and it was loud; probably too loud for my delicate ears, with a notable high point being Sick Sick Sick of You.

On this tour the ANWL brought along Brighton upstarts Phinius Gage, (pic above) who’ve been putting themselves around a bit of late – getting their name in small print on the poster – as Joe Strummer once sang. Brighton seems to be spawning travelling bands recently with Once Over and From Plan To Progress playing here over the border. Phinius are very young with a Vernon Kaye lookalike frontman with gallons of energy coming from every corner of the stage. There were tinges of that American-South Wales punk by numbers stuff and I guess they started off their career like that and have progressed into more rattling punk without the whining shit. Their set got better and better and they didn’t despond to a largely unappreciative crowd. I would’ve bought a CD had it not been priced at £10 – these Southerners think we’re made of money like them!

And so to the Anti-Nowhere League. I suppose in hindsight they were never going to have that same impact as they did on that impressionable 14-year old kid 24 years ago, and I was naïve in thinking they were going to. When you have bands with names like Anal Cunt and songs like I Fucked The Skull of Jesus, the Anti-Nowhere League can appear quite tame in the 21st century and that showed on stage in a way. Where I was shocked and in total awe all those years ago the band tonight kicked off with more of a whimper than a bang. With our ears still resonating from the full double guitar fronted assaults of the new kids on the block in the shape of Phinius Gage and Fuckerpunch, the Anti-Nowhere League sounded thin with the one guitar that Magoo (was it Magoo?) played well… almost politely. It was as if they were going through the motions and although vocalist Animal tried his hardest he was always going to be up against it with only 50 or so people to growl at, and one punter told me they are still awesome live. There were shades of the old brilliance with Reck-a-Nowhere, For You, Animal and We Will Survive, but some classics like I Hate People, So What, Lets Break The Law just didn’t work. They did get better as they went along but I did leave downhearted and maybe should have left the boyhood image intact.

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