Sunday 31st July 06 - Benefit Gig at Staks Bar (6/8) By Joe Hakim Photos By Roland Standaert

(1/8), (2/8), (3/8), (4/8), (5/8), (6/8), (7/8), (8/8).

Photograph Gallery   Gallery 1,    Gallery 2,    Gallery 3.

When You Decide is played, it's like I'm witnessing the greatest band that never happened, Jimi on guitar, Iggy on vocals - it really is that fuckin' good. The women at the front of the stage are losing their minds to this shit. I feel like running home and chucking a TV out of my window. Style Ambition is a driving tune, guitar histrionics and rock posturing to the nth degree. If I ever accidentally drive off a cliff, then this is the song that I want to be playing on the stereo, laughing like a maniac all the way down and then exploding in a ball of flame in the ravine below like something from the opening sequence of The Fall Guy.

The band looks the part as well. Ash screams out from behind his shades at the baying crowd, and the band stalk about the tiny stage, surrounded by screaming women. No gimmicks or bullshit - just good fuckin' tunes, delivered in the only way that's right.

Another blistering riff leads into C'mon Get Real, a track that injects a bit of The Ramones' speed into the mix. They finish off the set with Inside my Head; a track that proves that if the Hull bands are playing fast and loud, then these guys are taking it to a whole other level. I wanna fling a chair out of the window at some passing chavs. I wanna chop off a lamb's heads and throw it into the crowd. Actually, I don't know where that lamb's head part came from, so best forget I said that, lest Satan worshipper and animal abuser be added to my list of sins.

People are peeling themselves off the wall when the Dreamers leave the stage. The applause is massive, but no one can hear it because everyone's eardrums are burst. Now this is what I'm talking about. I've been waiting for a band like this, music to blow the fuckin' cobwebs from my brain in a morning, and this is it. Jeezus, if I had tits and a fanny (and hair), I'd be a groupie.

After Baz puts his guitar down, a group of young kids approach him for autographs. I know I keep saying it, but I can't help but get the feeling that this is the beginning of something. In a few months Baz and co will have lines and lines of people following them wherever they go. These guys - all of them, every band here - are Bona Fide rock stars. Who needs the rest of the country when this shit's happening right on your doorstep? Mark from The Sesh - the inspiration for this entire day - arrives, so I have a word.

I have to do it now before the beer catches up with me and renders me a mute moron. We fight our way outside and park our arses on a bench and talk about music in Hull, The Sesh, and coaching football teams. It's been a great day and a real indication sense of the sheer breadth of talent in Hull right now. How did you get involved with stuff like this?

"Well, I've been doing The Sesh for around two years, but in the last year or so it's really exploded. If I have to think of a particular point when I realised how big it was... then it must have been the Tsunami benefit gig that we organised with thisisUll.com in the New Year. From that point on, we've never had less than two hundred in a night at The Sesh." It's good to see promoters and DJs and people like yourself getting excited and getting behind it all.

"There's been a conscious effort for The Sesh to have a major role in helping to create a community. You have venues like Welly, the Ringside, Linnet and Lark, the Adelphi, Staks - and even places like The Attic with Grapevine - all forming this network.

Continued..... Next Page (7/8)

Check the thisisUll.com Gallery Photographs courtesy and Copyright ©  Roland Standaert 2005

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