YOU just knew it was going to be a weird night when a table - I kid ye not -fell from the roof as Green Star Project took to the stage.

And if it wasn't exactly a case of the roof caving in on the Selby foursome, you knew they were up against it when their guitarist decided to wear a Liverpool FC shirt.

On the same night his team crashed out of the Coca-Cola cup, so his band were to crash out of the second heat of the Battle of the Bands.

It's not that Green Star Project didn't try hard. In fact, judging by his facial expressions, the Liverpool fan was playing through the pain barrier.

And indeed, live-wire frontman Christian Salveson was certainly doing a good impression of a snarling John Lydon and a svelte Rick Witter.

But while his eye-liner may have matched perfectly his pants, Green Star Project seemed more like a poor man's Sigue-Sigue Sputnik than an angry man's Sex Pistols.

Shouting "come on" to a small band of pogo-ing fans is never likely to strike fear into the Establishment.

They had energy and enthusiasm, but at the end of the day, and to quote Alan Partridge, it was "just noise".

Next up were eventual winners Subway...and they 'Rocked Da House'.

Diminutive frontman Charlie Floyd has traded in his magic box of bleeps from yesteryear for a guitar and the Floyd is now firmly in the pink.

He may still look like a member of Hanson, and the bass player clung to his guitar like a koala to a eucalyptus tree, but Subway are the future.

They had a real drummer and, incredibly, a real DJ spinning and scratching his wheels of steel.

The spiky start was all Beastie Boys, samples and guitars. But then the soon-to-be Famous Five went into Beastie Boys reverse, revved up the guitars and took us on a ride with Ride.

And finally, to Audiowerk as the sun-kissed clubs of Ibiza transported themselves to York. A dance duo with a techno, sexy-dub feel, they had more technology than the Starship Enterprise and were more Wired for Sound than Sir Cliff Richard.

It was, more often than not, hard-core and completely lost on the Fibbers crowd. But in a whistle-posse atmosphere they would have brought the house down - and probably a few tables as well.

* A special thanks to the night's sponsors, Carlsberg-Tetley, MOR Music, York and the Old Dairy Studios, York.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.