Come all ye children

Several years ago I bought a copy of The Kids' second LP, Naughty Kids. I think it was a bootleg - Kids stuff was hard to come by, despite their good reputation as Belgium's premier punk band. Now 30 years after the band first kicked out such anthems as This Is Rock'n'Roll they've embarked on a short North American tour (Montreal and Ottawa, to be precise). I thought that a chance to see Wire was one of the great improbables of my showgoing experience, but now that I've heard No Monarchy as performed by its mostly original authors, all I can say is don't that beat all. The show at The New Bayou got underway at 9:30. Things were a little soggy around the stage ... at first I had fond hopes the inch-deep water was caused by recent melting snow, but alas it soon became clear that it was in fact issuing from a backed-up toilet in the ladies washroom. I'm just hoping I wasn't standing in urine while I was taking the photo of The Kids - on the other hand it did add that frisson of authenticity

First up were Critical Convictions. Vocalist Maxx is wearing a smock because she was planning to give birth to the baby Jesus. I definitely saw a punk in ersatz Middle Eastern garb wandering the back room before the show, but the band apparently decided they had too little time to rock to bother with such theatrics - or maybe they couldn't locate three wise men in the room.



Next up were Germ Attak!, who I hadn't realized were on the bill. Like Critical Convictions they played a blistering set that had the punks moshing and staggering right from the start. I'll mention right now that they'll be playing the Bayou again in a couple of weeks at one of the punk covers nights, where they'll be masquerading as The Partisans.



I've seen Brutal Knights a few times before, they've always been great - for this show they dressed up - except in the case of drummer John Powers who only wore briefs. Katie G. Warrior dressed as a cop and you can see the rest of the band's colourful garb below. Much moshing and singing along.



So here are The Kids ... Luc Van Den Poel, Ludo Mariman and and Danny de Haes - drummer Franky Saenen is concealed by the post. They rocked things mighty fine. Ludo cautioned the audience that "I still have my own teeth, and I'd like to keep it that way!" but there was no stopping the assembled mass of bristles and spikes from shoving back and forth ... he may be missing an incisor or two now!



Things wrapped up around 1 a.m. and while not as crazy as The Monotonix show earlier this year at Mavericks, it was still pretty wild.

• Show reminder: It's Halloween, and that means evil is about ... Good2Go and Evil Farm Children scare up some rock'n'roll at Irene's Pub; Truth Or Scare, The Sewer Rats, Machine Gun Dolly, Hand of the Few, Nummies, The Living Sound System and (presumably not the original) The Victims play The Bayou; of course there's Halloween harcore at Babylon with Buried Inside, The Creeps, Fuck the Facts, Brights, Today I Caught The Plague and Alaskan. There's also spooky and kooky stuff at Zaphod's with Hellbros and Knives For Kids.