Juke are jinxed. Every time I've seen them, something has gone wrong... broken strings; disintegrating bass drum pedals; strings refusing to stay anywhere near the guitar; and drunken oafs kicking the bass player ;-)

But tonight was a real Bay Of Pigs... first of all a Nirvana cover band to open - I mean, I'm sure Teflon Don meant well, but after 2 years you'd think they would develop SOME sort of sound... but alas it was a downward spiral from the word go, by the end people just saw the funny side and named the Nirvana tune. Also a nice cover of Rage Against The Machine's 'Know Your Enemy' would have been good had they not reied to pass it off as original material. The one redeeming factor - the ska bits in almost every song were rather nice.

Juke opened with 'Aggro Punk' - continuing their newfound love of not-giving-songs-proper-names - and it passes off rather eventlessly. Except for a broken string. Some more new stuff and then Not The End decides to bring down drummer Craig's cymbal. Ooops. This is only the second gig with new guitarist Dave Dickinson and he gets off to a bad start when his E-H Big Muff distortion doesn't work. No, seriously. Old favourite 'Take It Out' is once again ruined by technical difficulties when Matt's amp gives in... and the 'crowd' (smaller than usual... and no underage girls :-o!! Well, not many) are kept waiting for a good 10 minutes as they try desperately to solve the problem. We get going again and, with the momentum of the gig now totally gone, try again. And it works a treat. We are treated to 'New Song' and it's brilliant (possibly thanks to the fact that they forgot the tambourine ;-) and it shows us why they needed to add a second guitar. As does the finale 'C-sharp song' which is pretty bloody good.

The set had to be cut short by two songs as there was no high E for Matt, who described the gig as 'worse than any practise we've ever had'. A bit harsh, but I would have to say it wasn't as good as the last few times I've seen 'em (maybe i shouldn't have been so sober...).