The mask of anarchy
21 Apr 2001
Stu's Good Friday farewell to The Regulars proved a fitting send-off for the man who put the band together.
The bassist - who handed in his notice in March five years after forming the band - was given centre-stage by his colleagues and allowed to choose the set for the evening.
What Stu could never have anticipated, however, as the band took the stage to open the set, was the unnerving proliferation of masks worn by audience members - depicting his own grinning face.
In scenes reminiscent of the film Being John Malkovitch, all that was visible from the stage, as the band chimed in with Today at last, was an apparently infinite sequence of xeroxed Stu-faces.
"It's like a nightmare," announced a freaked-out Pete after the first song.
"A nightmare come Stu!" retorted one spectator, in the lame but enjoyable band tradition of substituting the cult bassist's name for rhyming words in common idiomatic phrases.
The healthy turn-out at the Flapper made for a fantastic, if somewhat unhealthily emotional, atmosphere - under which, if truth be told, the band would struggle to perform with technical perfection.
But this was one of those nights where it hardly mattered - and the crowd certainly didn't seem put off. Two Regs-watchers handed Pete a moving poem in tribute to the departing bass-man, to be read out between songs.
Lie down and fight - featuring Stu's best vocal contribution to The Regulars' canon - got the front of the crowd bopping; but it was the closing Once you get past Habrough - boasting Stu's finest fretboard moments - that really did the job.
As the song moved into its long instrumental section, Greg out of Baxxter - along with other popkids, remaining incognito behind Stu-masks - plunged onto the stage to carry on the dancing.
They were quickly joined by others until the five Regulars were outnumbered two- or three-to-one on their own stage, creating a single, colourful, overcrowded, grooving mass of love and nice hair.
The song emerged unscathed other than for the effects of one enthusiastic punter's repeatedly stepping on Chopper's distortion pedal.
Fittingly, once the tune had climaxed and the band staggered off stage to contemplate life in the post-Stu era, Greg declared the preceding scene "the politest stage invasion I've ever been involved in".
The four extant Regulars would like to say the biggest thankyous ever to everyone who was there for making the night so special - especially the other two acts, Ogs Bunkadoo Band and The Bee Men, who were both brilliant - and to Stu, because of whom we can face this day.
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