His new album, Dog In The Sand, a joyful, peculiar rock and roll, has echoes of Black’s old band, re-enforced by the return of Pixies guitarist Joey Santiago.”I ain’t liked, as my dietician tells me,” Black acknowledged. But he looked relatively ready for action, shaven-headed and black-shirted, like an indie rock version of Apocalypse Now.Metronomic drums, rasping sixties guitar and Black’s old, eruptive voice announced the new album’s “Hermaphroditus” and for a while he coasted through his solo backlog. It’s after a grand cover of Larry Norman’s apocalyptic “666″ that this thirtyish crowd’s collective, expectant breath is expelled.”This is another punk song,” Black said simply. And 1989’s Pixies classic “Gouge Away” begins, with its steady, silkily sexual base and minimal guitar. Black’s voice hits its shrieking peak as the base chokes and catches behind him, and the creaky crowd surfing begins.The night flattens around his dogged persistence But it doesn’t quite matter. At his best, this deposed king was reaching hard for his crown.. After being shot at, shipwrecked and nearly imprisoned, two British brothers will end an epic journey across the globe by cycle and kayak at Sydney Harbour this morning.

After being shot at, shipwrecked and nearly imprisoned, two British brothers will end an epic journey across the globe by cycle and kayak at Sydney Harbour this morning.
Richard and Andrew McLaughlin, from Taunton, Somerset, set off from the Meridian Line in Greenwich in September 1999, 100 days before the new millennium. Their goal was to fulfil a youthful ambition to travel to Australia by human power alone. The brothers were thwarted tantalisingly close to their destination when logistical problems forced them to charter a yacht to cross the Timor Sea between Indonesia and Darwin, northern Australia.But when the brothers reach Sydney’s Botanical Gardens, they will have made the longest human-powered journey ever. Compilers of the Guinness Book of World Records may introduce a new category to mark their achievement.Richard, 28, who worked for Thames Water before the trip, and Andrew, 25, who had just graduated from Cardiff University, were accompanied for stages by three team-mates: Richard Scriven, 29, Tim Stocks, 28, and Richard McLaughlin’s fiancée, Nadine Potter, 27.Mr Scriven said yesterday that this had been the first attempt to undertake the 16,000-mile trek to Australia by pedal and paddle “We didn’t quite make it,” he said. “Now it’s up to other people to try.”The expedition nearly came to an end last December, when the team encountered Cyclone Sam as it made the 500-mile crossing by ketch from the Indonesian island of Flores to Darwin.

Richard McLaughlin said: “A lot of the time we were on our backs praying for the weather to come good.”The swells were gettingup to 18 feet and the boat was lurching 45 degrees into the air. Everything was flying around, glasses were smashing and food was spilling out ofthe fridge.” Their distress call was answered by an Australian naval ship, which escorted them to calmer waters But as they approached the coast, the ketch hit rocks They grabbed their equipment and swam for shore. “It wasn’t quite the arrival that we’d planned,” said Mr Scriven.Mr Stocks said: “We questioned our sanity after that. But we wanted to achieve a feat never attempted before, and to show the distances that can be covered with simple, non-polluting transportation.”The journey began with a hazardous 11-hour nocturnal navigation by kayak of the English Channelin gale-force winds. From there, they cycled across Europe to Turkey, where they narrowly missed the earthquake that killed more than 700 people in November 1999. After crossing Iran, they were escorted by police across the bandit-infested border into Pakistan.