EAST END BADOES
The 100 Club, London
The 100 Club was the evening’s destination for Human Punk’s four band offering of East End Badoes, The Violators, Knock Off and Geoffrey OiCott, and there was the added attraction of it being the Badoes album release gig.
The evening kicked off with Yorkshire Cricket based Oi band, Geoffrey OiCott. Dressed in their obligatory cricket whites, they warmed up the 100 Club with their tongue-in-cheek renditions ‘Dawn Of The Dickie Birds’, ‘Robin Hood Was A Yorkshire Man’ and ‘Glory Glory Garry Thompson’, which was changed to ‘Glory Glory Eric Bristow’ in recognition of the darts player’s recent death.
Knock Off (left) were next up, a three piece from Watford with a couple of cracking albums and singles under their belts. They are an ultra-hardworking band and it really shows with their tight professional set which included crowd favourites ‘Are You Offended’, ‘Jack The Ripper’ and their terrace chant, ‘Football, Beer And Punk Rock’ which always goes down a storm.
UK82 returned to the 100 Club in the shape of The Violators (below). Having been back together since last year’s appearance at Rebellion, great things were expected of them. After overcoming some initial bass amp problems, they put in a blinding set of old favourites, with ‘Summer Of ‘81’ and ‘Gangland’ being the highlights.
The stage was now set for the East End Badoes to make their first ever album launch. There was a large following for them, most of whom piled down the front of the stage to join in the fun. The majority of tracks, as expected, were from the new album, like ‘Poplar Boys’ and ‘Trouble On The Streets’, all were very well received by those in attendance. The band played at full tilt and at one point Mark’s snare drum broke; until a new one was found, a member of the audience offered his prosthetic leg to use! A great, fun evening which ended with a few of the crowd on stage adding vocals for ‘Trouble On The Streets’ and their cover of The Professionals ‘1-2-3’.
Tony Ghirardi