The Gathering 1.
Held at The Swan Public House, Rhyl and Rhyl Town Hall, Rhyl Wales.
The Gathering began out of an idea that was based on a tradition that we always had in The Alarm right through the 80’s we always ended up with a Christmas concert that was always a special occasion and it was always at that show that we would play songs we wouldn’t really play on the tour. Then in 1992 when I was touring as Mike Peters, I decided to have a Christmas concert in my home town of Rhyl, as we’d never really played in our home town very often. So we organised what I decided to call The Gathering, it was in winter in December it seemed the right word and we actually organised the first one within in a months notice, I was coming to an end of a tour we were playing at The Wheatsheaf in Stoke and I was sitting in the dressing room and thinking we needed a Christmas gig to finish the year and I just came up with the idea of The Gathering and we organised it overnight, really quickly and the first Gathering was held in Rhyl Town Hall in December 1992. A soon as we put it on sale, the tickets and announced the event we realised just the nature of the word Gathering seemed to symbolise certain things for many Alarm fans. We started to see people travel not just form the local area but they were really coming from far afield.
So when news filtered back to us, we decided to organise something on the Friday night as well and the first Friday night of The Gathering was actually held in my brothers pub The Swan in Rhyl and it was supposed to be a little impromptu get together, we thought maybe a dozen people were going to turn up and we’d have a drink and a bit of music, then we realised there were going to be much more than that, so I organised to have a little jam session with a reformed sort of version of the first band I was in The Toilets and we did a little punk rock set with a few friends standing in for our absent members and we did the little punk rock set in the back room of my brothers pub, but the trouble was when we got there to play the room was so packed and as the last person had come in had shut the door behind then the crowd had expanded so much that no-one could open the doors to get in the pub, so I had to go into the pub through the cellars out form the street, under the pub, back through the pub, carried across the audience to where the gig was set up in the corner of the pub and we played and all the fans were right up close. It was brilliant!. The atmosphere was incredible and then we played in the Rhyl Town Hall the next night, we di a set, and it was there that I first started to play with new musicians, the old songs of The Alarm. it then became a tradition. we decided it was so good the first year that we would have it the following year. – Mike Peters – The Gathering DVD collection
Friday 11th December 1992
Gathering warm up social at The Swan Public House, Rhyl.
Including a set of songs by The Toilets with Mike Peters on guitar, Dave Watkins-Clarke on drums, Patrick Smith on bass. The songs are a mix of Toilets originals played for the first time since 1978 and cover versions.
Patrick Smith was Mike’s booking agent at the time.
Set list
Nothing To Do, Hear Me Out, Ice Cream And Rock, Breakdown, Sheena Is A Punk Rocker, Anarchy In The UK, This Train Is Bound For Glory, Mind Games, Rockin’ In The Free World, Knock’ On Heavens Door.
Footage of this set was recorded by Jules Jones-Peters and features on The Gathering DVD Collection box set on The Gathering History disc. It includes snippets of Sheena Is A Punk Rocker being rehearsed upstairs above the pub and then snippets of Sheena Is A Punk Rocker and Anarchy In The UK
Video Link – Youtube footage from The Swan set uploaded and is the same as that which features on The Gathering DVD Collection – The Gathering History disc.
Audio link – Link to a bootleg of the full set audio
A week before The Gathering was due to happen, guitarist Ethan Johns quit the band, citing musical differences and Brad Williams was drafted in as a replacement, he had been on the previous tour in the support band Pigs From A Gun.
Saturday 12th December 1992
Full electric performance of Mike Peters and The Poets of Justice.
Band line Up : Mike Peters, Dave Watkins-Clarke, Brad Williams, Jules Jones-Peters, Martyn Baker.
Special guests : Bob Hewitt (Misery Brothers), Patrick Smith, Steve Allan-Jones
Set list (full set list tbc)
Poetic Justice , One World Exodus, Unsafe Building, It Just Don’t get Any better Than This, Levis and Bibles, We Are The Light, Spiritual, The Cross, Unstoppable, Rockin’ In The Free World, Knockin’ On Heavens Door, Happy Xmas (War is Over).
The Gathering DVD Collection box set on The Gathering History disc contains footage of what is believed to be the only video footage of the night and includes full versions of Poetic Justice, One World Exodus, Rocking In The Free World
Audio Link – Bootleg of part of the Town Hall set
Sunday 13th December 1992
Charity football match – The Poets v All Star XI – Kick off 11am at Rhyl Football Ground,
(Page updated 03/04/2021)