Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

My favourite rock and roll story of the week was the abandonment of a show by the Kings Of Leon because pigeons were dropping their, er, droppings on their heads from above the stage of the Verizon Wireless Ampitheatre in St Louis.

Like the pigeons, I'm not a fan of KOL but I would draw the line at making my opinions known so crudely. The band had to concede defeat when the bass player was hit in the mouth by one well aimed morsel of manure, which is probably a wise course of action to take. If you're a seven year old girl, that is. It's just as well Kings Of Leon don't trace their royal lineage back to punk rock.

It wasn't pigeon poop that was the main source of annoyance in 1977 - it was human phlegm. Spitting was an occupational hazard that lasted for far too long. It's thought that it began with the Damned when drummer Rat Scabies was hit by a can of beer thrown by a fan. Or a critic. Rat emerged from behind the drums, lifted the culprit by the scruff of the neck and spat in his face. I prefer to remember Rat as the drummer on the New Rose single, rather than the man who invented spitting. Joe Strummer of the Clash ended up with hepatitis after, it's said, he swallowed a well aimed globule of spittle which came from an infected member of the audience.

I have also been covered in the stuff after some early Undertones shows. We learned that the more you complained about it, the heavier the shower became. Ignore it, keep your mouth closed, a towel handy and try not to slip, was the 1-2-3-4 of punk. You wouldn't have ever dreamed of leaving the stage because of it, though. That's not to say that the show always went on. On Halloween night in Derry, in the years before it became a huge event, we were playing on the back of a lorry in a local park. It was just two days after our first appearance on Top Of The Pops, so we were feeling pretty pleased with ourselves. Three songs in, an egg came out of that dark October sky. It hit my new Rickenbacker bass guitar. We carried on playing. More eggs hit us, thrown by unseen hands. We couldn't do anything about it but , yes, get down from the back of the lorry. Hold on. Eggs ? Maybe it was the pigeons attacking us as well.Μύ