I remember Centrepoint - the last visit was full of smoke, confetti, madness, mayhem - it was great! (-ish.) Tonight, following recent indications of the band's current standing, we're hopeful of a decent show - it's supposed to be an apology for the travesty that was the Lady Owen Arms gig (hence the lack of entrance fee) - a good night out, disintegrating P.A.s notwithstanding.

Support, Psycho's Mum have apparently come as The Jam, but they're entertaining and even go down well with the Acolytes faithful. (A reknownedly fickle bunch.). Good effort is well rewarded.

Tonight: what can be said? It starts well enough: "Ethnic" again is 'strident', 'anthemic'... whoops! I'm becoming a bizzare parody of myself here.

Despite a few feedback problems, they turn in an estimable "Meet Me..." which goes down in the manner befitting its status as 'crowd favourite' and follow that with "3-0-0-1", during which the feedback problems worsen slightly.

"This is a song we got halfway through last time," Andy tells us as the chiming, arpeggiated start of "Newboid's" engulfs Centrepoint. The Acolytes rock and we rock with them. But why has this song lasted so long without getting a real title?

"There's a message floating in the air... This is not a rebel song..." What???? Anyway, "Crazy Horses" is greeted with a big cheer, everyone gets right down thank you and the feedback problems worsen again.

"I haven't seen the band tonight, where are they?" complains one punter - testament in itself to the sorry, smoky state of the room. Even the band are experiencing trouble, but it's not due to the smoke:

"Alastair can't see what he's doing... he's lost his glasses I think... Here's something you may never have heard before (Andy's on a severe Bono trip tonight) and they're into "Get Down..." Now Alastair's problems with the guitar really begin: "Sorry about the unprofessionalism of this man, he's... er, had quite a lot to drink." And he deserves to be heckled relentlessly. Which he is. "FUCK OFF!!!" Oooh! Can't take it.

"This next song, if we ever did a single, this would be it... King Of California. It's got absolutely nothing to do with Ronald Reagan. At all."

On reflection, maybe I was expecting a little too much. With the audience makeup very similar to that of the last Centrepoint... 'experience', much the same kind of show was on the cards, I guess. And that's what we got: Alastair's guitar went hideously out of tune and got progressively worse through the latter stages of the set, mainly due to the front row reaching out and fiddling with the tuning pegs; the pauses returned towards the end of the set as Alastair became more and more unable to control the cacophony that resulted every time he even looked at a string (in the end he gave up, was gaffer-taped to the floor and force-fed confetti) and worst of all, some dickhead got up on stage to tell a crap joke which he couldn't even get right. Well okay, it was badly introduced.

So they finally begin "King" - Alastair slides his plectrum down the fretboard and - oops! Too quick! So he starts sliding it again!!

"He's out of tune, but I don't know if he knows."

"It's not normally as bad as this - sorry," says Andy.
"Oh yes it is!" roar back the faihful.

Screams of "Far Out" - calling for the encore, not a general comment on the night's performance - were met with confused glances between band members as Alastair tried to stand, was helped to his feet but promptly returned to a safer level.

Everyone concerned had a great time, but when will they ever play a serious gig?

Set: Ethnic, Meet Me (In A God Forsaken Place), 3-0-0-1, Newboid's, Crazy Horses, Body, Get Down To Lovin', King Of California, Trans European Excess, Death Train