Friday
We arrived after an appalling 7 hour journey we had up from Southampton (thank you the M6), with only time to dump our cases, wolf down some chips and then straight into the Winter Gardens, the venue for this year’s HITS.

After the usual queuing up and banding process, we made our way through the entrance hall to the Ballroom. It’s an ornate venue for sure. We watched a bit of Foreign Legion play whilst we queued up to get a beer, pretty generic sounding Oi but okay all the same. After a 15 minutes wait to get a pint here, we wandered off into the Olympia, a big top style greenhouse of a venue, which provided the best facilities to get a pint by a mile. The sound in here was not too good.

After a bit of Farse we headed back to the Ballroom to catch the Fast Cars. I had wanted to see them since I got sent their recent CD on Detour, it’s an ace release, poppy humorous Manchester Punk with a tinge of the Undertones. They lived up to the build up I had given Tup, a fine set, getting the evening off to a good start. They played their “Kids Just Wanna Dance” single from 1979, lots off the “Ready or Not” Detour CD and some new stuff they had put together recently. Ending with Bowie’s “Suffragette City”, I’d certainly like to see them again.

Ian (Part Time Punk zine)