Live

Serpent's Kiss - Leicester University

Massive in the '90s, the 'Kiss seem now to have fallen on very hard times indeed. Forced to sell their instruments to help pay for a failed copyright lawsuit (their last single ripped off four Andrew Lloyd-Webber songs in the space of seven bars), the band now take to the stage clutching paper cut-outs in the shape of their instruments and mime to a cassette of their greatest hits played on a ghetto blaster. Hardcore fans in the audience were far from pleased although the student contingent seemed to enjoy it, probably believing they were doing it ironically.

Ibuprofen - Rock City, Nottingham

Many bands get called cults but never has the label been so richly deserved. Drummer Lance Gisburn was once the drummer for rival band The Flea Machine until the members of Ibuprofen kidnapped him and brainwashed him into joining their ranks through a combination of hypnosis and brutality. He's now been with Ibuprofen for nearly a year and seems to have settled in nicely, pleasing the audience with his imaginative fills and solos, although that could just be Stockholm Syndrome.

Bobby Oxenhope - Star Factory, Bromborough

For once the smelly aircraft hanger masquerading as a venue that is the Star Factory is well named, for tonight we have discovered a genuine star. Bobby Oxenhope is a portly 50 year old man with a remarkable talent. He can eat any CD while wearing a blindfold and tell you the artist and the album simply by 'reading' the information on the disc with his ultra-sensitive stomach lining. Delighted audience members selected CDs at random and broke them up into bitesize pieces before feeding them to Oxenhope on long spoons. He frowned for a few seconds as his digestive juices went to work and then identified every CD faultlessly. Surely the big time cannot be far away?

I caught a few words with Mr Oxenhope after the show. I asked him if he made much money doing what he was doing and he said, "Let me put it like this. You know those training towers that firemen practice putting out fires on? I'm living in one of those."