The Cribs slam Doncaster crowd’s “small mindedness”

On Saturday evening, The Cribs played The Dome in Doncaster promoting their, ironically titled, Ignore the Ignorant album. Support bands for the tour were chosen by the band and on Saturday night featured Los Campesinos and 70s punk icons The Slits.

Support bands with touring bands are often just label-mate-contractually-obliged pairings rather than considered partnerships; thankfully Los Campesinos fall into the latter camp and the assembled gang of music fans (I use that term loosely) seemed to buy into the indie rockings. It was good to see that all the hype this band received was actually deserved and they delivered a set as energetic as a puppy full of Mountain Dew… The British Arcade Fire? The best sound of the entire night was wrung from the neck of a fine vintage SG of the Camp’s guitarist though I think their version of Pavement’s ‘Box Elder’ may have been lost on 99% of tonight’s crowd. A great start to the night.

Within moments of The Slits taking the stage the mood quickly swings into the realms of uneasy before plummeting, within 4 bars of dub bass, into a full on attack of the band. First with ‘boos’ and chants of “OFF! OFF! OFF!” before physical attacks on the band begin, with bottles and glasses (albeit plastic) and even coins being thrown at the band on stage.

The Slits handle it with an estrogen fueled counter attack; “You guys need fucking educating, we invented this shit!”. This seemed to simply fan the flames and the attacks continued for the entire set. Some members of the crowd did what they could to cheer over the jeers in an attempt to quench the mood but The Slits set really suffered at the hands of the assembled gang. The band handled the situation with humour and retaliation in equal measure and could at least leave the stage knowing that, by finishing their set, they had not surrendered to the assembled hooligans.

The Cribs are known for a ferocious live performance but tonight seemed to have an added dose of vigour and unsurprisingly they berated anyone who took part in the attack against the Slits calling that “anyone who was involved in that situation shouldn’t bother calling themselves Cribs fans… we don’t need you”…

Statement from TheCribs.com:
“Just thought that we should write something about the Doncaster show last night.
Firstly, it’s pretty obvious that this band were disgusted by the way that a certain minority treated The Slits during their set. Despite putting on an amazing, powerful performance the night was marred from this point onwards by a handful of people throwing coins, beer and generally putting on a disgustingly chauvinistic display of small mindedness.
As we said from the stage last night, it reminded us of when we were opening for the Sex Pistols in Brixton a couple of years ago and we remember being really quite pissed off that the audience were too close minded to really give us a chance, so imagine how bad we felt when a band we have a lot of respect for and invited to play with us were treated in a similar way. The thing that bothered us most is that this reception can’t possibly have been anything to do with the music. Also, just to make it clear, these people didn’t bother or upset The Slits in any way AT ALL. They played on, and the show of unity from the rest of the bands on the bill, as well as the way The Slits carried themselves was not only a moral victory but also pretty moving. The only people these idiots upset or bothered was this band, The Cribs – and their real fans who had to tolerate being represented by the dick heads with the loudest mouths. It was so cowardly.
We were in 2 minds about what to do during their set, do we pull the show? No, that would be letting them win and making the night all about their behaviour. So we played.
We’ve never played in Doncaster before and we have to admit that we had been looking forward to this show maybe more than any other in our 6 years of touring, to be playing what is essentially our local arena was something that I was really excited about. I guess that when you play shows of this size you have to come to terms with the fact that you will have some people in there that have views that are way out of line to yours but it still takes you by surprise when it happens.
As we said earlier, I know it was just a small minority. We have met our fans all over the world and know that our fans are some of the best you could hope for, we’re not stupid enough to tar everyone with the same brush because of a few bad apples. We’re just disappointed that Yorkshire was represented so poorly last night to so many people. 3 of us grew up in Yorkshire and know that we are better than that. To our real fans, thanks so much for helping us salvage something from the gig, our show lived up to the aspirations we had for it, but there is no way that we can let these things pass unmentioned.
As Ari Up said “educate the person next to you”. To those who would rather treat our (or any bands) show as an excuse to indulge your testosterone – leave us the fuck alone – we have no place for you here.

The Cribs“