Sink or Swim present The Dirt – The John E Vistic Rock’n’roll Soundsystem – Strip Search Tramp – Coventry – live review

Sink or Swim present The Dirt – The John E Vistic Rock’n’roll Soundsystem – Strip Search Tramp – 24th of April 2026 – The Tin Coventry.

Joe has put together another excellent Sink Or Swim presents night, this time it’s a night of Punk Rock Goodness at the Canal Basin in Coventry, so of course Fighting Boredom would be there, and, as you all know, Punk comes in many different guises these days so you never really know what to expect. Read what we thought below.

The usual suspects are gathered outside, at least two people sat on a canal boat with cans of booze. Groups of old punks and new heads, an interesting gathering for another excellent night put on bt Sink or Swim Promotions at the Canal Basin in Coventry. We’ve been sat in the pub down the road while our friend explained her tattoos to a bunch of blokes and chatted to various heads. But we are now up here at the Tin for what promises to be an excellent night of raucous noisy punk rock’n’roll.

First band on are Strip Search Tramp, Tracey resplendent with blue hair and a mini dress, The screens at the front of the stage drag you in and a weird vocal sample plays out, then they all make as much noise as they can alongside a strobe flickering and they’re straight into their very best blistering punk rock. The bass is the loosest I’ve heard in a long time, fuzzed out and glorious and Sharif makes that drumkit pay for whatever wrongs have been dealt to him since the last gig. They slacken, feedback fills the loose groove and Tracey sings over it all, then back to punk. It’s a low down filthy sound and Fighting boredom love it.

Doc sings the next track, with a funky punky bass and a rockabilly beat.

Tracey says that she’s forgotten her glasses and puts on a shocking neon glow in the dark pair of sunglasses. Everything goes into a spinning groove and Tracey is ranting, it’s punk but poppy as hell too.

Joe 90 hits and Tracey just seems to be naming drugs in the gaps, she’s really going for it tonight as the band hold it hard and whole. Eraserhead and Frankenstein are on the screens, the rockabilly groove gets fast and furious as Doc and Tracey hold down the guitar noise. The glasses get passed into the crowd and the Joe 90 theme kicks in again, it’s utterly bonkers. Batman and go go dancers fill the screens as tribal drums and cymbals kick in, a deep cool punk riff over it all, it’s true psychobilly, slow and dangerous, a filthy sound, they speed it up as Tracey falls to her knees, the sound spirals as it sounds like Sharif appears to be trying to demolish his drum kit.

A new song starts with the violins from Psycho, they name it but I couldn’t hear, slabs of noise and a fast in your face tune. Tracey puts on her ‘serial killer glasses and the music verges on pure hard core brilliantly done. Donna Summer’s I Feel Love plays and Tracey sings over it, everyone joins in and Tracey repeats ‘Sex.. Drugs… and Bad Decisions’ The music explodes into a rock’n’roll mass and it’s a story of drunken, under the influence bad decisions and sexual misadventures. They end chanting ‘He had a body off Baywatch and a face off fucking Crimewatch’.. Over and over.

They finish and Tracey asks Rayna to come onstage to read her poem for the recently passed Steve Brophy. I’m not quoting it, just to say that she delivered it straight from the heart and it summed Steve up totally. Wonderful.

The tee shirts on the merch stand sum it up with ‘Who the fuck is John E Vistic?’ I have no idea, although I have been trying to spot the members of the other bands in the audience. I thought anyone brave enough to follow Strip Search Tramp has got to have something about them. I was dead right.

There’s five of them onstage, the sound is a post punk guitar squeal and off centre drums, then, the saxophone joins in, the bass throws down a line and a vest clad scarecrow lunatic throws himself into singing and all of a sudden it’s a wall of wailing noise with a true star singing, a brilliant feel and a brilliant groove, just great. They kick into a slow sexy groove and the whole thing has blown me away but to be completely honest, the saxophone makes this, the sax player makes that instrument talk, she is utterly indispensable for this groove. It feels like the Stooges are back, I mean I can feel it all the way to my gut. The whole sound is as loose as you could ever want and Mr Vistic commands it all from the front of the stage, lunging, spitting out the words, howling, hair everywhere and a shocking disregard for his personal safety. But what drives him forward are the four behind him that are making a wall of musical rock’roll noise lunacy with that sax plastered all over everything, this is bloody good. It’s shades of the Bad Seeds back when they bled for us, the Stooges before they disintegrated and the lunatics that followed.. Gallon Drunk, Jon Spencer, Chicken Diamond. You all know what I mean.

He tells us that one of the band lived in Coventry a while back but they’ve never played here, he then said he came to see Bob Dylan here but he refused to talk between songs, ‘he was rubbish’. The drums skip and launch into a garage punk groove, just a brilliant sound. I want to know how they met, what put them into a room to enable them to make this glorious messy noise and again, just when you think the groove is perfect she breathes deeply and plays another massive slab of saxophone and it goes one step higher. I know I’m going on about the sax, but I don’t care, it’s brilliant and if you were there you already know, this is what I do, rant about stuff that’s ace

The bass turns as loose as you can imagine, drums and hard edged surf guitar with shrieks and howls from the ever present sax. It feels like the Dead Kennedy have embraced jazz, it’s glorious. It’s also short and sweet, no wobbling here. He introduces the next song with ‘This is our hit’ and proceeds to sing all over the hard noise like a bloody star. The dense groove disintegrates into a sleazy, sweaty mess as Mr Vistic is in the crowd, there are words, then drums then absolute chaos, he’s on the floor as the band destroys us. ‘This is the last song’ Atonal surf guitar leads into hardcore punk with sax wailing. Everything has gone daddyo. It cools down to a rockabilly, psycho billy Crampian groove, garage surf punk and he’s back in the middle of the audience dancing like a prima Donna as the band plays on, he sings again and the band switches up to hardcore punk to finish. I mean I wondered who would be unhinged enough to follow Strip Search Tramp on stage and now I know. What a band, what a sound.

The Dirt are a duo, A small Japanese woman playing guitar and as it turns out, lots of effects and a big angry dude with a microphone and electronic drum pads. He congratulates Coventry City for their promotion to the Premier League and hits the drum pad to create the fast beats for the first song. He looks dangerous, angry and antagonistic. Pissed off and telling us why. Guitars now, constant as the singer dances and gestures like a lunatic. He draws your eye as he moves to the music, drum patterns underpinning it all and relentless guitar stabs, she doesn’t move except to press pedals and occasionally kneel down to manipulate the sound into even stranger and more volatile shapes. She is completely calm and collected as the singer leaps off stage and into the crowd. He hits the drum pads again, manipulates them and loops it, he turns on a weird vocal sample and the noise grows, there’s a hard static whine and he shouts over it, think Merzbow meets Crass if you can. He never stops moving. He gestures, dances, folds himself up as the sound surges around him.

He introduces them as The Dirt from Yorkshire and Japan. The beat shifts and is offset to the dark gothy guitars and noise that come from all around them. It’s a chaotic mess but it makes sense as he talks over it. He commands and controls the crowds eyes but it’s the woman that creates the sound and makes it brilliant. They come from the same tradition as Benefits, the difference is the sounds created and how they are made. He talks about the Do It Yourself ethic and how we need venues like this and to support the bands and then says that they’re going to make a noise again with new tracks. He creates a hard slow beat and they start the noise but it’s a false start and grinning at each other they try again, this one is weird, bouncy and has a strange B52’s feel. Her twanging guitar is ace but when he starts the vocals it turns darker and less fun. The next is about Borders and Anti Facism. It’s got a robot beat and low down dirty guitars, louder and harder as it goes on and then they turn it into a joyous noise as his anger and frustration screams out over a relentless groove.

He introduces the guitarist as his beautiful wife, who is a musician while ‘I just hit things and shout’

They hit a hard dead beat and steady noise while the guitar plays off to the left of the sound, he jumps and this is as hard as nails. He talks about still having the freedom to create this kind of stuff and that the underground is still there but we all need to keep it going by going to gigs, buying shit, going on Bandcamp, just however you can.

He sets the beat up and the guitar rises. ‘ We’ve been The Dirt, thank you very much’ The track sounds angular and it’s another ‘Fuck This’ track, the drums get faster and robotic then become just a stupid beat. The noise comes in and he moves even more, shouting, ranting and bent double. He’s on the floor and the noise rises even more. He leaves the stage leaving the guitarist kneeling at her effects just making more noise and keeping it going on and on. Brilliant gig.

He’s right you know, we are very lucky in being spoiled for choice here in Coventry with the scale of choice for gigs, from Bobby Dylan to open mics at the local, there’s something on here most nights. Fighting Boredom makes as many as we can and there’s always four more that we miss. Keep it going, do whatever you can.

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The Dirt