Stinking drunk is probably the best state to walk into a Barbaros gig. Three quite clearly talented young beings dressed in faceless, sheer fitting lycra gimpsuits (two drummers & a keyboardist), are busy rewriting the rules of what is rhythmically acceptable at 5pm on a Sunday in Salford. The small gathered throng appear bemused, aloof even, at this incredible display of artrock.  I'm not adept at looking cool at the best of times and certainly not in the face of such musical insanity.  Sporting a massive grin, I look like I've just been given the good news by a girl on crutches; they're so tight, and clever, and way ahead of anything I can think of in this state, but I don't care.  I'm having a riot to this Kraut-Prog alchemy and before I can even get my head around the idea of what they're doing, it's over.  So I nick a drumstick off them, buy a couple of Diet Cokes and stagger outside to tip a load of Vodka into them.

Our unofficial hosts were The Death of Her Money, three Welsh sludge merchants playing the first date of a short UK tour.  This is stripped-down screamo sludge, guitarist/singing Kaskie develops ideas by forcing them through a Boss GE7, a head that I didn't recognise and two 4x12 cabs which I am basically stood right in front of. We've moved onto these big bottles of some Polish 5.5% stuff now and I'm starting to think I know more about music than any of the gathered audience of about 30. I can't really remember much more about this set other than I really enjoyed it and, unlike the first band, I actually understood it.

We took a break outside for a reefer and some more vodka.  The little food shed was busting out some generic Reggae for a while, then'The Show' by Doug E Fresh came on and I thought I was the greatest rapper in the beer garden.  In reality, I wasn't even the best rapper on our table.

We then saw another band, I can't remember what they were called or paying much attention to be fair, I think I stood on a girls foot on the way out.  At this stage we were both pretty smashed up and we seemed to, sensibly, stop drinking for about half an hour.

Action Beat were up last. I've been trying to catch these for ages, so was looking forward to this set.  We positioned ourselves front and centre and racked up the last of the Evian bottle of vodka I had brought. Two drummers, a bass player and FIVE guitarists sound exactly like you would expect: incessant and futurist, a shitstorm of feedback and tone.

I think I probably tried to dance a bit, and Doormouse got knocked on her face being at the sharp end of the pit.  I had some new strings in my bag which I kept trying to give to one of the guitar wielders. Doormouse kept snatching them back. We looked like twats and ironically I now believed that I was the cleverest man in the city of Manchester.

We then had a couple more doofers with The Death of Her Money, as Doorface fell asleep while we talked about music videos.  They gave me a free CD which I would have paid for, if I paid for music. We then danced a bit to Notorious BIG and some rancid R and B before getting a cab home, lighting a final bifda off the toaster before passing out in a whirligig of white-noise Tinitus, proper fatted out and proper fucked.