Just sorting through some of my sons t-shirts and came across a Slaves one which had all the dates on......and a venue on there stood out - The Limelight in Belfast.
I moved to Belfast in Sep.1991 after spending six months living on the edge of the jungle in Central America. When I arrived in Belfast, golden tanned skin and sun-bleached hair I stood out a mile from the local population! We were given some presentations on the do's and don'ts of what to do if you were out of an evening, which areas were deemed safe, and which were definately NOT safe - this was at a time that bombs went off on regular occasions during every week.
Anyway, not having seen any live music for months, I found out that The Mock Turtles were playing in The Limelight - only problem.....at that time it was run by the IRA, had IRA goons on the door, IRA sympathisers working the bar, IRA memorabilia all over the inside and outside walls.. what to do? **** it, I said to my pal, how bad can it be? And off we went.
Parked the car about a mile from the venue in a "safe" area, and walked into the heavily Nationalist area where The Limelight was. Mumbling at the door, we got our tickets and headed in, again mumbled for a couple of pints of Guiness and stood waiting for the band. From memory, it's quite an intimate venue with a low stage and a small dancefloor, so we were quite conspicuous, especially me with my aforementioned carribean glow!
Eventually, on came the band who were magic (you can't beat seeing any band in a small venue). Me and my pal spent the whole set right up the front of the dance-floor, dancing and jumping about like loons.....and we seemed to be the only ones! The singer gave us a big thumbs up and shook our hands after the encore, and then the band set up in a booth to sell merchandise. By this time, we'd accrued the attention of quite a few of the locals, and some girls came up to us wanting to know who we were and what we were doing in the place. As we knew every word to all the songs, and spent the whole night dancing we told them we were superfans and were following the band on every date of their UK tour - which seemed to do the trick. We sat with the band for about 20 minutes chatting and getting merch signed, then quickly made our exit back to the safety of our car! Phew....dodgy night!!