Well, against all the odds Wilson pulled off something of an away win last night. Even if it was in our own home town.

After a week of frenzied - if accidental - recruiting, the Wilson line-up emerged onstage last night looking something like:

Wilson Headstone - Telecaster, Singer
Misery Wilson - Bass vibrations
Agent Wilson - Percussion
G-Man - Stratocaster
B-Man - MC
E-Man - Theremin-like machine that goes Pffffffffttthhhhweeeeeeeoooop.

The set was the usual current one: Critters - God's Green Earth - Secret Government - Sweet Home Alabama - Burn, Hollywood, Burn - Dark Agenda.

The Wilson auxiliaries, E-Man (Curtis E. Johnson), B-Man (Ian Botterill, of Sumosonic and Fat Controller) and G-Man (Steve Gordon of NN1 Tarantino Funk kingpins P-Hex) all distinguished themselves very well indeed. Only B-Man fell over. Conceivably he was doing this on purpose, but it rather depends on who you're talking to. E-Man, being The Bald One, got to do Eno and G-Man added chunk funk and razzle in a fine demonstration of What To Do With A Fender Twin.

We were supposed to be playing around 9:00 pm, but early in the evening it transpired that, in fact, we were to headline a four band bill (it was easier on the drum kit situation, and all the other groups, being properly youthful, probably found us faintly intimidating anyway). Accordingly, Wilson took the stage about ten minutes before our ludicrous UK licensing laws closed the bar and about ten minutes mafter a steaming performance from the young and very talented Capdown. Capdown (short for "Capitalist Downfall", I'm told) are a rocking skatepunk n ska outfit who got the large and predominantly youthful crowd going something fierce. (You can catch them at this year's Reading Festival - Capdown, not the large and predominantly youthful lot.)

Accordingly, we had a bit of a tough act to follow and very little time to get people over. And we only went and pulled it off. A lot of the younger punters began to mumble disconsolately at the sight of a bunch of grizzled pensioners starting up, and some wandered out into the warm night and the beer garden. By half way through the set, though, the mumblers were starting to dance and the gardeners began to return.

With B-Man on fine form, having just received a spectacular and well-deserved kicking from one of the town's leading songwriters in the front bar, and with a powerful live sound from Geoff Kirk, our shit was truly swinging. Hollywood was duly incinerated (the sound of 10,000 enraged LA Korean store owners marching on the Mondrian Hotel) before Wilson laid their Dark Agenda upon the assembled and hideous guitar noise was the outcome. Thence to an old school Sumo party at the Agent's yard and a beastly hangover this morning. Nice one.
Credit: ;;