REGULAR FRIES Bullingdon Arms Now this is just plain silly. Nine fellows, every instrument known to man, three tellies and a giant bird cage, all squashed onto the Bully's stage. I could swear there's even a bloke whose sole purpose is to smoke fags throughout then entire set. But then that's those crazy post-modern situationists the Regular Fries for you. Here tonight, warming up for their impending support slot on the Lo-Fidelity Allstars tour, and proving that you don't need such ephemera as talent when you've got a load of old mates in the music press to blow your trumpet for you, and another load of mates in the Beta Band to rip off wholesale, right down to the meaningless onstage detritus that passes for scenery. It must have seemed a bit of a laugh at the beginning: ex-NME scribe Paul Moody and some similarly stoned chums jamming through some old Primal Scream b-sides circa 'Screamadelica', scamming a few gigs and column inches, getting even more stoned and hoping no-one would notice that it was just baggy revivalism. So here they are, trawling, literally, through twenty five minutes of medium-to-slow sleazy dope grooves punctuated with some 'Stars in Their Eyes' Shaun Ryder droolings and a bit of Moog just to see if they can snare a couple of passing lo-fi types. Any subtlety or wit that might feasibly exist is drowned by a lukewarm sludge of noise. It's all so contrived, but worse, it's boring as hell. Like Fabulous in the early 90s, Regular Fries are an industry in-joke. We're not meant to get it, the whole thing is at our expense. And that of the dozens of bands who deserve the attention. Still, let them have their fifteen minutes of what passes for fame these days. Then they can go back to being tramps. The Regular Fries: regular guys plaing regulation shite. Swallow it at your peril. Ian Chesterton. Photo by Pat Loughnane

HENRY ROLLINS The Apollo Ah, Mr Rollins, you're not the person we were expecting.... Through Black Flag, to the Rollins Band, Henry has explored emotional extremism to such a harrowing degree that previous live performances have left audiences shaking and afraid for their lives. This is the man who ripped Reading Festival to shreds with screams of 'Some of you will be murdered, some of you will be raped...'. So, who is this jovially personable character doing the spoken-word act tonight? It would be wrong to say that this is the real Henry Rollins - he is both characters equally - but tonight is a chance to discover that alongside the iron man of American punk, is a human being with all the weaknesses that make the rest of us cower pathetically in his shadow. And an extremely funny human being at that. Rollins' routine is not pure stand-up comedy. Instead it's a two and a half hour anecdotal meander that covers subject matter as diverse as meeting James Brown (his own ultimate hero) and Ultravox (a bunch of poncy pricks); acting and having to do nude scenes (which, despite his physique, he's terrified of), and the eternal battle of the sexes. On the latter, as in everything, he's brutally honest; never alienating the female part of the audience while making the men squirm at the realisation of what utterly idiotic slaves to our hormones we are. He royally mocks the whole rock and roll circus while taking good-natured side-swipes at vegans and Smiths fans and takes the piss out of himself for being unable to grow up and do sensible things like buy a bed. A protracted tale about being dragged to a shop by his secretary to buy bed linen shouldn't be remotely hilarious, but it is. While he isn't a joke-teller per se, Rollins comes across as some kind of hybrid of Ben Elton (right down to the 'farty' imagery), Robin Williams and, when he gets a bit surreal, Eddie Izzard. His familiarity with Britain from his touring days gives him the edge on most American comedians. He takes Milton-esque flights of fancy before returning to his original story and remains utterly captivating, without pause for breath, never mind an interval, for the entire set. In the end you're left with an entirely different view of Henry Rollins, one that you could ever glean from his music or interviews. He's a regular guy with a God-given gift for story telling. If he wasn't a teetotal fitness fanatic, you'd happily spend long nights down the pub with him, hanging on his every tale. A giant among men, in every sense. Dale Kattack

SCRIBBLE The Jericho @ The Firkin Speed thrills. The singer looks like Thom Yorke on a starvation diet with John Lydon's healthy complexion; the guitarist looks like The Man Who Fell To Earth and the bassist looks like he'd take your head off, just to see what was inside. They're called Scribble, they're from Derby and they are a fizzing fuzzing, busy buzzing total noise pop supernova. Oh yes they are. From the opening blast, a My Bloody Valentine tsunami of overdriven guitars topped off with some hysterical Gaz Coombes vocals, Scribble barely pause for breath in a twenty five minute set that seems to encapsulate everything we ever got excited about music for in the first place. It's a breakneck rampage through unselfconsciously cool influences that have to fist-fight their way to the surface for air. So, 'God Bless The Kids' is a staccato glamrock scurry between Supergrass, the Sweet and Smashing Pumpkins. Or Radiohead play the Undertones in the style of Wire under a blizzard of molten grunge powerchords. With a side order of Motorhead and the Stooges. Even when they slow things down they sound like they're on the verge of meltdown, aiming for sky-scraping grandeur a-la 'The Bends'. So startlingly fresh, so rabidly unrelenting are Scribble that you end up having to pinch yourself to check that it's all real, and then you wander off wondering whether the whole thing was a fluke, uncertain whether to tell everyone about it because, face it, next time it's bound to be an appalling let-down. And then you remember that only old people prepare themselves so readily for disappointment. So, instead, you etch their name in your 'My new favourite band ever' notebook and know that this time it really is forever. Until next week. Sally Anne Ford

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