'We join 'Mad' Dickie Ashcroft in the middle of an all-out, tongue-chewing, tomorrow-we-invade-Mars nervous breakdown. He bludgeons himself savagely about the head and body with his tambourine. He pulls himself to the ground by his own hair. He shivers and shakes as if shitting out demons and he furiously power-lifts the mic stand like a finalist in The World's Weediest Man. Finally, with the roar of an ebola-stricken warthog, he staggers through the audience, climbs up a pole by the bar and falls asleep. Looks like the guilt from nicking Spandau Ballet riffs and more talented blokes' girlfriends has finally got too much.
Squint a little and it turns out not to be El Bonko Vervio at all, but Ashcroft-alike Guy McKnight, demented singer with Brighton psych-punk-screamabilly rioteers The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster. He's part Jon Spencer, part Ian Brown and part Norman Wisdom and he fronts the most perverse, raucous, filthy-arsed and stupendous band ever to sound like ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead spontaneously combusting. TEMBD are Britain's chainsaw-wielding answer to The White Stripes and 'Celebrate Your Mother' and 'Whack Of Shit' are Iggy Pop, At The Drive-In, Black Francis and '65-era Jagger joyriding around Dead Man's Curve at midnight with the lights off, screaming "I WANNA FUCK YOUR MOTHER!!!" before ramming headlong into a tree. Fucking incredible.
After which British Sea Power are a far more sinister proposition. If TEMBD are electrified punk zombies chewing your face off, BSP singer Yan is more like the hatchet killer lurking in the undergrowth. Sloping onto a stage bedecked with spooky branches and stuffed owls, he stares out goggle-eyed like a One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest extra, does a spot of militaristic jogging and, at one point, scarily rides an invisible motorbike. He's clearly been failed by Care In The Community, but luckily BSP's inspired impression of Talking Heads freaking out during The Wicker Man is fantastic, from The Cure-when-they-were-under-18-stone razor pop of 'Fear Of Drowning' to the Bunnyriff Blitzkreig of 'Remember Me'. They must've been flooding the Brighton water system with psychosis-inducing mentalists' drugs, and by Christ it's done them good. Drink deep, my pretties...'

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