DiS DJs

Ahoy there! Is that Captain Birdseye, wearing his late grandmother’s nightdress, I spot on the horizon...?

An anthropomorphous Humpty Dumpty dressed as a character from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes arrives on stage. Albeit with a Burberry check scarf screening his facial features, netting his extravagant beard and holding an orange length of rope with only one purpose in mind – flagellation.

Tim Harrington needs no introduction. He is a legend. I think he kind of knows it, but his punk rock credibility precedes him. Like a balding chief librarian of the New York Public Library who by night performs sadistic rock rituals which would warp the development of any young child’s mind, whilst his many mounds of loose flesh gyrate like a malfunctioning lava lamp, he is the man that proves you don’t need to have a six-pack like Jonny Bovril to be a rock star. I am convinced he was the real life inspiration for Jack Black’s character in School of Rock.

Thing is, this ain’t no Mickey Mouse Hollywood movie rock show. As Les Savy Fav aim their pent-up body shaped arty-party pop-punk rockets directly into the faces of this expectant crowd, they_ launch. Illuminating the room and singeing the auditory canals with the distorted power chord spirals of Seth Jabour on _‘The Equestrian’, the wooden flooring of the Scala takes the role of trampoline for the first of many songs tonight. To think a live rock show could get any better, any more energetic, any more downright slimy during new album standout 'The Year Before The Year 2000' would leave me salivating. “Nineteen-ninety-nine, nineteen-ninety-nine’s alright.” But it does… oh,_ it does_.

All waiting, hands outstretched, as if coaxing, tempting, pleading, requesting to be slimed by this greasy Captain Birdseye, the crowd yearns for more. They are warmed up; Humpty has used the sweaty foreplay to clear the way for some fond and familiar ditties such as ‘We’ll Make A Lover Of You’, with its delay steeped guitars; it’s a real slice of LSF in rare melodious mood. Not for long, though: I predict a riotous event that may result in the destruction of a few toes and necks. And it breaks out, just as the chimes of ‘The Sweat Decends' echo through the speakers. This is it. Crowd surfers, girls, boys, sensible types mixed with utter loons jumping on top of one another.

Preparing himself for maximum injury by installing a fetching pair of red shin-guards to his forearms, the Captain takes his first foray into the crowd and up and over the balcony railings. Scaling the platform, he proceeds to request the services of two young ladies to dangle him precariously headfirst from said railings whilst he continues to recite his apocalyptic parables. We watch in awe, realising this could so easily go wrong. (Farris Rotter, you’ll never be shit compared to this, go get a haircut you hippy.) This is where it’s at!

The captain makes it back aboard the deck safely, shedding his padding upon arrival.

The rest is like a blur. All memory erased. A front-row, Dolby-digital, widescreen, hi-res white knuckle rock ‘n’ rollercoaster ride.

And just as the captain, fashioning said nightdress, and his band of sailors return to the stage I regain consciousness with a wry smile. Having launched into an encore including a rambunctious ‘Who Rocks The Party’ he begins to tug at the loose fabric clothing his frame, pulling it dangerously low. So low in fact that one has to shield their gaze from what seems, for a moment, to be the inevitable pop of a flaccid wang from its flowery pink cotton.

… and what happened next is now available for your home viewing pleasure…*

* _Unfortunately this footage does not record the hilariously worried look on the face of the Scala security guard who ended up slap-bang in the middle of this lot. _

Wonder what he told Tracey and the kids when he got home after they enquired how his day had been?