It’s 28 degrees, it’s a Friday night, and somebody is crowdsurfing to the support act – welcome to Welly and Sports Team at the 100 Club. No strangers to chaos, Welly burst onto the stage with all the pent-up energy of a well-directed bullet. You’ve got ‘Big in the Suburbs’, you’ve got ‘Shopping’, and you’ve got Welly himself forcing a crowd member to do a perfect A-flat into the microphone before they’ll do a song. At times Britpop’s bratty offspring, at times Chas & Dave for the TikTok generation, it’s everything you could hope for and more from one of our favourite new bands.
Warmed up and ready to go, the crowd don’t need much encouragement to whip up a mosh pit or three when Sports Team take to the stage. True to their promises, debut EP ‘Winter Nets’ is played in full, but there are at least two songs that this intrepid reporter (and author of four Sports Team cover interviews) has never heard live before. Sound special? Only the best for Dork’s 100th issue celebrations.
No worries for the fairweather fans, though, with the hits getting a hell of an airing as well. ‘Maybe When We’re 30’ might sound pretty nice in a big venue, but here in the sweaty basement that is the 100 Club, it becomes something transcendental, with crowd members hugging and screaming the words into each other’s faces. Likewise, ‘Fishing’ is celebrated in the unique Sports Team tradition of… the whole crowd sitting on the ground and pretending to row a boat (because of course it is).
Back in early Sports Team territory, the mosh pit for ‘Margate’ is absolutely feral, and somebody’s hanging off the ceiling by the time ‘Kutcher’ rolls around. It’s a five-star show from a band who are legends in the Dork canon, but did anybody ever expect anything less from indie’s biggest rabble rousers?
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