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Farse's 2003 tour is now under way, this being the 7th date. A new album to follow up last year's "Boxing Clever" (Moon Ska) is on its way in the summer so this is a good chance to showcase some of their new material. I headed down to the Joiners with Beth from HiH, having not booked tickets and found a huge queue outside the door. Luckily there weren't many people with tickets booked or reserved so I managed to get in after standing around for half an hour. The PA entertained us with the same song played again and again until people started complaining, and then the first band were on.
Drink Drivers... were (according to Beth) the winners of some competition in Kerrang which meant they got to support Farse for their tour along with Schism. So obviously they weren't used to touring and playing so many shows. They kicked off with some fairly sloppy hardcore and continued in the same vein for their whole set. They sounded kind of like Black Flag, and could have been quite good if they'd have tightened up the performance a bit and had louder vocals, but were just a bit messy at this stage.
Next up were Schism, a band which could be viewed as the ultimate irony or just a complete waste of time. They came across as American at first, due to the singers accent, but this gradually evaporated through the set to an English accent. Just looking at them I thought they'd have a street-punk kind of sound but unfortunately not, they broke into some fairly lame pop-punk. Things went from bad to worse when they announced the title of their next song "I Like To Piss On People" (I think it was?), now some credible street punk bands can get away with that (see Sick On The Bus) but this band were doing it in a kind of ultra-immature Blink-182 (or even Bloodhound Gang) way. They followed this with the jovial "Dude, I Fucked Your Mum Last Night", which they also have slapped across the front of their t-shirts. Nice. I kept telling myself that they must have been doing some kind of tongue-in-cheek pisstake of frat-boy American punk bands but since the audience didn't seem to find them funny at all I guess it was their genuine intention to be like that.
After the sound guy managed to dig out a copy of the Idlewild album to make a change from the same punk song played repeatedly, Farse came on and everyone moved forward. Ollie has apparently recently become a hairdresser and cut half his mullet off so he was treated to shouts of "Hairdresser, fucking hairdresser!" until he said that hairdressing was the new car-fixing. Ollie's voice never fails to entertain me, it's kind of a Brummie accent but with "s" pronounced as "sh" and loads of sub-Jamaican words thrown in. The band played "Eggs Is Eggs" and then started showing off their huge collection of tatoos before swapping guitarist and drummer for one of the slower songs. The new songs are definately more hardcore than their old stuff, they are progressing in much the same way as Capdown did, going from ska to ska-core to hardcore. "Firing Line" was belted out with enthusiasm (about the only one I really know well), with some serious skanking down the front. The guy that always turns up with the Anti-Nowhere League leathers seemed to be permanently crowd-surfing through that one. Farse finished with "Blueprint To A Downfall", whilst wearing some pants on their heads from the adoring female fans...
All in all, Farse were great but the other two bands blew. I had to pay full price for entry as I didn't book in advance but I thought Farse were worth it even if the other two weren't. Beth said she was going to one or two of the other gigs on the tour and we decided it would be better if you could get a cheaper ticket in advance and turn up just for Farse. A bit mean I know, and the tour would suck if everybody did that but surely there are some better bands around who could have done the support?
Jamie
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