stephen duncan
gore slut

instrumental
white socks
stumble (2)
giraffe
building
telephone calls
in limbo
accident
crash by river
bitterfruit
crawling to target
showing off bruises
hurt
lisa drugstore

The Cartoons café in Antwerp is (was) too much of a smoky, hip, student café on a thursday night for my taste. In order to see Gore Slut play, I’m willing to go through a lot, but the smoke in the bar that night was just painful.
Gore slut do a soundcheck around half past ten. They play one instrumental track and a short one with vocals, both unknown to me. The crowd sitting nearby is barely interested. After the soundcheck, Gore Slut leave and won’t come back for another hour.
I’m trying my best to blend in with everyone; act cool and drink fashionable drinks, but I doubt I fooled someone with it.
Anyway, the 'opening act', Stephen Duncan was feeling lucky that night. He played an acoustic set which seemed to last forever. He was having the time of his life, and some of the audience were really enthusiastic. I found the whole set a bit dull, but I don’t like bare acoustic guitar-sets in the first place, so I cannot be a proper judge.
Finally, at about half past eleven, Gore Slut crawl back on ‘stage’ (don’t be fooled- stages don’t come much smaller than the one in Cartoon’s café).
Rudy is being funny again by trying to persuade people to leave to the Phil Collins club, because something interesting is happening there. ‘Oh, and we’re Gore Slut, we play love songs.’
The first song they play is an unreleased long instrumental track, which I never heard before, but sounded plain beautiful and typically Gore Slut- excellent. White Socks sounds even more familiar of course, and Stumble starts off nicely too; ‘The next song is Stumble, and it’s supposed to be played with a casio. But especially for you people, we didn’t bring it along’.
Later on, Telephone calls starts off in a similar mood- Rudy points his finger randomly to a couple in front of him- ‘the next song is dedicated to these two people here’. The twosome look at each other like 'what did he just say?'
A couple of songs further in the set, Rudy requests for more beer and at the same time repeats people should really take off to the Phil Collins club. Viking Dave Robertson is dancing in front of me with a beer in one hand and his girlfriend in the other. A completely loaded old guy comes wandering in the front, staring at the band as if they were from Mars. He shouts something, tries to move along, but falls over in stead, purely from being drunk. Yey.
Gore Slut play Crawling to Target, a song new to me back then. Rudy seems to get a bit fed up with the overall lack of interest, and the band continues their set without any further witty commentary by Rudy. ‘This is the last song’ is followed by a predictable ironic yippie! from someone from the crowd. In an equally typical manner, Rudy yippies back at her. The band play an excellent version of Lisa Drugstore, Rudy sounds like a possessed madman and shouts Take me! Take me! as intense as he can. A lovely end to a nice (and free) gig. Thanks, mr. Trouvé.
Exactly when we walk towards the exit, Tom Barman comes in. ‘Have they started playing yet?’. Nice timing, man! :)