U Thant, Mavis Riley Exp, 4Q @ Aberystwyth Uni

(from Crud Diaries)
Considering that the organisers paid £180 for the PA set up and the amount of equipment they had to hand, for our set anyway it sounded shit. I suppose that having 2 lead guitarists who are constantly having a private battle with each other for supremacy, does confuse your average sound engineer. Not having the chance to soundcheck due to U Thant‘s late arrival didn’t help matters. The 1st band on were called the Mistecs from Blaenau, a schoolboy tupenny Metallica type shite band, everyone has to start somewhere but fucking hell these children should’ve stayed at home. Then Jon Busker insisted on playing his anti-fox hunt song which was enough to drive you to killing foxes! The Mavis Riley Experience mob were an indie uplifting outfit – wonderful, even Matt liked them.
Gumpsh did a Neil Crud special & ceremoniously broke a string by looking at his guitar so the rest of us did Stand By Me while he sorted himself out. Then we got stuck into LSD with the sound all over the place, the same for Mental Asylum, it was so loud we couldn’t hear what we were playing. I Hate TV, Bat Gooch, Twisted Tabloids (which was awful!), We Want You, Burn In Hell, Poo On My Shoe, Video Party, Imagine, 4Q Blues.
And that was it. Due to a need to get home and work the next day we had to get off, but made a 3 song exception for U Thant and it was evident that they are a bunch of loons and what I saw was pretty good. We then took the money off Gwion & fucked off home. Robin managed to upset Cumi by climbing on his car & vomiting ha ha ha!!

(from This Patch of Land)
4Q’s stage set was radically different from the previous line up, Gumpsh and Robin were continually trying to out-guitar each other and a lot of the live uncertainty centred around chaos had disappeared.
Gumpsh saw it like this, ‘I honestly think I would have added greatly to the band had I been the only guitarist – if you listen to that recording when Robin was playing bass [Imagine a Dead Hippy], the raw edge and song integrity is intact – I love that demo. Unfortunately, when Robin was also placed on guitar, the inevitable happened – competition between two guitarists capable of playing solos, which was not really what the band was about.’

Neil adds, ‘We were becoming a serious band, although I do recall throwing pints of water at the front rows and stage diving, only for everyone to move out of the way, leaving me to greet the floor with my head.’
Whereas Neil had a fuzzy head due to injury, Cumi explains the reasons and logistics that led to the rest of the band feeling a little fuzzed out after playing in Aberystwyth, ‘We travelled down in two cars, Neil’s Fiat 127 and my girlfriend’s equally naff vehicle. Robin brought a friend called Mad Jez with him and we all ate hash flap-jacks on the way back and got absolutely fucking caned. Robin tried to get out of the car for a piss at 70mph, and when we did stop for a piss, Jez came back from behind the bushes with his dick out, with a hard-on and got into the car. We were like… err… Jez can you put that away please!’