An Excellent Pub, An Average Club and a Druggy From Manchester. By Allen Miles

When I dropped round to the thisisull.com headquarters last week, A friend suggested that I should go down to the Silhouette club in Park Street on Saturday night, to see the infamous ex-Happy Mondays and Black Grape frontman Shaun Ryder DJ at the Tube indie night. A fine idea. Mo was then kind enough to ring forward on my behalf to book me two tickets. An interesting night was in store for me and my 4 companions.

We commenced our evening's festivities at the Linnet and Lark down Princes Ave. Without a shadow of a doubt the best public house in Hull.

The DJ on a Saturday night is absolutely superb and brings a massive range of tunes with him, you can request almost any kind of music and he will play it. We asked for The Smiths, The Specials, The Teardrop Explodes, Bob Dylan and many others. He played them all along with Bob Marley, David Bowie, Nirvana and dozens more. The crowd are usually friendly and the ale is spot-on. Linnet has somehow acquired a reputation for being a rough place but I don't know where this came from as the people there are generally just out for the excellent music and they are not after causing trouble. The best thing about Linnet in my opinion is that it hasn't become all yuppyfied like everywhere else down Princes Ave.

It retained a local atmosphere and that is becoming increasingly difficult to find these days. If it was open till 2 we've stayed in there all night.

We remained planted here until the bar shut, and then walked the short distance to Silhouette. On the home stretch I reached into my pocket for my thisishull ID. I then placed on the entrance booth and said exactly the following: "Y'alright mate, I'm here to do a write-up for this website I work for (hand over card), I'm told that someone has rung up about complimentary tickets."

The "gentleman" in the booth scrutinized my card for about 90 seconds during which time a particularly malicious smile spread across his face. His reply: "I don't know nowt about it mate, Get your £6 quid out." This razor-sharp, almost Ocsar Wilde-esque quip brought sniggers of laughter from the bouncers. One of them then reached forward and said: "Actually, give it here let me see it." This obviously sensitive and intelligent chap then looked at my card, winked at his colleague and then screwed it up and threw it over his shoulder. Obviously a comedy statement of such genius had his colleagues in peals of fatuous laughter. continued below

An Excellent Pub, An Average Club and a Druggy From Manchester continued By Allen Miles

At first I felt extremely angry at being treated in such a way but that turned to sympathy when it dawned on me that this man was probably never hugged by his parents as a child, has no qualifications and was unspeakably ugly. Indeed he has probably taken a job as a bouncer so he can wield some sort of perverse authority over people who are more intelligent and better looking than him to in some way make up for his countless failures as a man and as a member of the human race. What an utter tosser. With a shrug of the shoulders, and no longer acknowledging this is thoroughly unpleasant personage existed, I paid my money, as did my also somewhat ruffled friends, and walked through the doors.

We had arrived at 11:30pm, which is a fairly late time to get to a night club, so we expected that the special guest would have been well into his set by now. We were however mistaken as the notoriously hedonistic singer was nowhere to be seen. Ordering drinks, we then asked the barman of Ryder's whereabouts. We were told he was in a private room upstairs and he'd been down to ask for places to score three times. Great. My order of two double vodka and cokes came to £7.20 which I thought was rather pricey as it wasn't great vodka and also due to the fact that I am used to paying £2.80 for the same round in Spiders. Luckily though my good friend Dave was on hand to see me right for a few more over the course of the night.

For those of you who have never been, silhouette is quite a small club which is centered by it's massive dance floor, surrounding this is a concourse which forms the rest of the main room of the club. It's not an ideal layout as when there's nobody dancing it gets very congested everywhere else. Hats off for the music though, as it was pretty much a continuation of what had been playing at Linnet.

In fact, it was exactly the same as what had been playing at Linnet as when I looked up at the decks I noticed our DJ friend had somehow beaten us to the club to spin at silhouette for the remainder of the evening. At around half-past twelve the music stopped and an overweight, rather unkempt figure had appeared in the DJ booth.

Introduced as "The Legendary Shaun William Ryder," he took the mic and the crowd cheered. He then proceeded to play a song which he intro'd thusly: "Thizunsanowldunofowersitzafugginbanginchoonand….(descend to unintelligible.)" The opening chords of The Happy Mondays' "Kinky Afro" then chimed and the dance floor was heaving.

Ryder decided it would be a good idea to sing over the sound of his own vocal but sadly he was gravely mistaken because he wasn't the best of singers at his peak and now, well, the less said the better. He staggered off stage after playing a roughly 45 minute set which consisted almost entirely of his own songs with him slurring over the top of the mix. I found out yesterday that he got paid £1000 for this shambolic display. As we left at about quarter to three I was sober enough to realize that I'd had a fairly decent night, no thanks to the special guest star. It is impossible to get a cab down Park Street so we strolled down to Spring Bank for a take away and reflected. If I'm honest the only reason I'd gone to Silhouette was the offer of free entry and a famous DJ and I didn't really get either. I'm still particularly pissed off with the attitude of the door staff and I hope the club manager reads this. Before Saturday night I hadn't been to Silhouette for two years and on the strength of this night, it is going to take a very special guest star to make me go back again.

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