Ticket
The Apollo
1st November 1979

Feels like flippin’ ages since I had a crack at uploading. Had the mormons at the door and you know what it’s like; once they’ve got a foot in they’re nearly impossible to get rid of....plus I’ve had bats in me belfry, gremlins in me scanner etc.....Anyhoo sumthin’ about The Apollo....I have in my hand a piece of paper, and I’m jolly well going to use it..
This one for The Specials, Madness and Selector on the Two-Tone Tour. Well it was a good night with all bands fired up which sent The Apollo security into overdrive. It was always a big draw back with The Apollo how heavy handed the bouncers were. They were complete bastards! At this gig, as with others I’d been to (the ones of the punk rock persuasion particularly), they were hell bent on putting the audience in their place and preferably kept seated, which was tantamount to putting a loads of kids in a sweet shop and expecting them to behave. It kinda defeated the purpose of going to see bands. As soon as the bands came on those on the downstairs level rushed the stage and of course the bouncers had to concede defeat and just stand back, but on the upper levels they did their utmost to keep control and this meant punching people and dragging some people out. A girl from our school got belted in the face by one of them; nice! I remember Terry Hall egging people on to overrun them but he wasn’t the one who was going to get twatted and so it definitely put a damper on what would have otherwise been a great gig.
About a year earlier at a Boomtown Rats gig (with Jimmy Pursey on guest vocals) lots of chairs were torn up and thrown at the stage so I suppose these kind of occurrences might have had something to do with how the bouncers had carte blanche to do what they liked; anyway at that time I always found going to The Apollo a bit of a chore.