uncarved.org blog

Having a rifle through my tunes tonight I rediscovered three releases from an obscure outfit called “The Christmas Bunch”. Like a fair proportion of my records, these were all bought second hand. In fact I think I grabbed them all for less than a quid over a few years in the late 80s.

They sound OK. Not amazing, but there’s enough going on to hold your attention. And I quite liked the anonymity of it all, after over twenty years holding onto these records I was still none the wiser about the people behind them – (insert ominous crescendo) until now.

The first Christmas Bunch product I found must have been their “Hit No. 1″ single. A one-sided twelve inch with minimal rubber stamped markings and a biro scribbling announcing it as 230 out of 250 copies.

It ain’t bad actually – characteristically stiff “dance” beats which could politely be described as motorik. There are some nice vocal samples and arrangements which remind a bit of the Art of Noise. The actual vocals spoil it for me a little, a bit too earnest and shouty – even for me, ha ha.

“Hit No.1″ also came with this intriguing free gift, made up to look like an executive toy or educational tool:

As you can see, it’s two circles of printed card with a central pin. Windows in the front card reveal words printed on the rear one, in combinations like “glitter [....] ofcorruption” and “hide [...] behindyoureyebrows”. This forthright rejection of spaces between words would be an enduring theme.

So when the album turned up a little while later, I figured it had to be worth another quid or so…

“Get Out Of My Face” is a six track affair. It even has some credits on it, which are difficult to decipher because of the lack of spaces between words. Nevertheless the label yields a useful “all songs (c) 1986″. The back cover states that it was recorded in London, Luton and Sussex and  announces that the group “are Clyde Ely Goldhurst”. I have no idea whether that is one, two or three people cos of the lack of spaces.

Side One is a bit more”beaty” and includes “Hit No.1″ again. “Private Property”and “Dreamtime” remind me a little of Fad Gadget at his most croony – but with a slightly posher voice.

Side Two is more to my liking and verges on electronic chillout territory. “The Elephant Bar” is filmic and jazzy, a bit like some of Barry Adamson’s solo gear. Luckily the only vocals are wispy female operatic ones. (Hmm!) “Last Chance” almost sounds like a more plinky plonky Massive Attack or something. “The Fridge” might consist of pitched down church organs and choirs.

I then forgot about the Christmas Bunch for a while until I stumbled on this record in Brighton one summer:

I think you’ll have to agree that this cover either heralds the magnificent or the tragic.

The back cover reveals that the full line up is “Nick Sample featuring The Christmas Bunch”. Side A is “Marvelous Person” and features Margaret Thatcher doing vocals over an almost adequate “acid dance” backing. Whilst I doubt this ever got played at Shoom, it’s an interesting novelty record and yet another example of old industrial types dovetailing with acieeeed. Or maybe that’s too naive – it’s billed as “Yet Another Acid Cash In”. That guitar solo is a no-no though.

Side Two is all the vocal samples done acapella for all you mash up mixmasters out there. I’ve had some drunken fun with these over the years. Which is why it’s not exactly in mint condition, even by the standards of certain sellers on GEMM.

Actually, hearing it again, I’m not clear if it’s clever editing of Thatcher or a soundalike. She comes out with stuff like “I am a marvelous concept… we must take away the fruits of people’s labour” and stuff. There’s a newsreader type bloke in there as well gobbing off about “profits are modern warfare” and suchlike.

And that was the last I heard of ye Xmasbunch. It looks like they made at least one other record, which judging by its cover might include Michael Heseltine stepping up to the mic. I’m not about to start paying 5 quid for their records though. If anyone has any further information then please feel free to leave a comment below or drop me an email.

So anyway, where does Alison Goldfrapp fit into this? Well after occasionally googling for info on The Christmas Bunch to no avail over the years, this little snippet turned up tonight:

“Alison was born in 1966 — or earlier. She was in a LCP student film made in 1988 (find it on myspace) and also in 1985 also. She was NOT 15 in 1985! She was in a band called the Christmas Bunch. Do the maths.”

(It’s in the midst of a discussion about her age, which I am not remotely bothered about – it’s easy to see why women in the media spotlight might obscure their age, no? For the record I have a lot of time for Goldfrapp – particularly their “Black Cherry” and “Supernature” albums. There’s a lot of inverted snobbery about them in bloggerland.)

To be honest I don’t hold out much hope for an anonymous single source on the internet actually being true. For all I know it’s someone who used to be in the band trying to reignite some interest in their backcatalogue. But it was an unexpected bonus which has added to the mystery nicely.

And… there is an “Ali Blank” credited on the sleeve of the “Get Out Of My Face” album…

Click here for a complete list of entries in the series  ”the first 23 gigs I can remember going to”.

I got a “D” in my Psychology ‘A’ Level, and an “E” in Maths. I also completely fucked up Chemistry, again. My parents were both at work whilst I stared at the slip of paper which announced my doom. I helped myself to a stiff drink before calling them.

I was quite upset, I needed better grades to get to where I wanted to be (can’t remember what was in the running, but Leeds and Warwick were up there I think).

So I had to chance my arm with the “clearing” system – where you throw your hat in the ring and see if any college will take you. This seemed to take ages and was quite humiliating, but I just stayed focused and got on with it…

I eventually managed to secure myself a place at the Polytechnic of Central London to do a BSc in Psychology. But I still needed to find somewhere to live. PCL had a reputation for being radical, and my flat hunting confirmed that the students union was a haven for freaks, goths and layabouts. My search for a place to rest my head was exciting but ultimately fruitless.

I might have been desperate to move out of my parental home, but the rooms on offer at the students union only managed to cough up some real dives – places where you couldn’t even get the door open because they were so small. Or a room I’d have to share with a bloke who was monomaniacal with the excitement of being “out” in London.

Luckily one of the grebo freaks in the students union took me under his wing and I was offered a decent sized room in a house in Haringey. Everything else was detail. My awkwardness and fear dissolved into excitement. I’m sure my parents went through a similar process. There was time for one last gig before I hit the Big City on a full-time basis…

23 Foetus Interruptus, Tackhead Soundsystem. Town and Country Club, 20th September 1988.

I’d been waiting for two years for this gig and couldn’t quite believe it was happening. Peter Rehberg had done my mate Wal a C90 with “Hole” by Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel on one side and a bunch of 12″ with all sorts of mad names (You’ve Got Foetus On Your Breath, Foetus Art Terrorism, etc) on the other. Wal had duly copied it for me. We absolutely destroyed those tapes and I remember some really intense conversations in the school playground about what the fuck was going on with it all. Jim Thirlwell’s productions still sound amazing, he is definitely up there in my pantheon of sonic sorcerers. Legend has it that he was so driven he once barricaded himself in a studio when his time was up, emerging pallid and scurvied when the job had been done.

Foetus aka Clint Ruin aka Jim Thirlwell made Totalitarian Pop Music. “Hole” and its follow up “Nail” were precision-tooled pop records made by a psychopath. They distilled The Cramps‘ rockabilly, big band music from cartoons, James Brown funk, film noir soundtracks and jack-hammer industrial dance. Tracks like “Calamity Crush” sounded like a marching band of drum machines being conducted by some Hammer Horror mad scientist.

The lyrics jumbled up pop culture with a completely nihilist hodge podge of mass murder, sexual deviance and military atrocities. But they weren’t shocking, they were oddly catchy, darkly funny and manic.

When I finally saw the artwork for the records, I was blown away by Thirlwell’s graphics. Really bold, pop-art styles combined with Maoist propaganda – all riddled through with that sickness.

Foetus was a solo effort, and he never played live. Well, not really. Rumours abounded of live shows he’d done as part of The Immaculate Consumptives alongside Lydia Lunch, Nick Cave and Marc Almond. Supergroup or what? I think they played in London and New York – one-off gigs when I was still working up the courage to go and see Howard Jones.

I slowly amassed a Foetus collection, originally acquiring both “Hole” and “Nail” as official cassette releases that stayed glued to my Walkman. Then onto the vinyl, largely courtesy of the Rough Trade Shop in Ladbroke Grove. I think Wal did the same, so that C90 Peter dubbed us lead to about 30 royalty payments for Clint Ruin Incorporated, and good luck to him.

Foetus was a relentless collaborator, cropping up on records by Coil, Marc and The Mambas, The The, even Nurse With Wound. I grabbed a bunch of these (notably the latter’s incredible “Brained By Falling Masonry” 12″) and filled my life with Foetus. Most of these collaborations were fleeting, the odd track on an album or one-off twelve inch. One of the more enduring projects was Wiseblood – Foetus + Roli Mosimann from SWANS = bludgeoning percussion and even more twisted visions. I’d got into trouble playing their “Someone Drowned In My Pool” 12″ in the 6th form common room one breaktime. To me, it sounded entirely acceptable, a little light ballad about murder. Apparently this feeling was far from universal.

Just when I’d fully embraced the idea of never seeing this stuff live, Foetus Interruptus embarked on a European Tour. They were doing two nights at the Town and Country Club and I was sorely tempted to go to both. But I only managed one, and considered it to be something of a celebration of my successful escape plan.

The support was the Tackhead Soundsystem, i.e. Gary Clail on the mic and tapes whilst Adrian Sherwood made the floor vibrate. I seem to remember that they did this all from the mixing desk, there was nothing to see on the stage. There’s a lot more to be written about that, but I’ll have to leave On-U Sound for another time.

Foetus Interruptus was essentially Clint Ruin backed by most of SWANS. They rocked their way through a load of Foetus and Wiseblood material and it was great, but not amazing. I think my main disappointment was the  impossibility of reproducing that studio wizardry on stage. And even the “I like the way you fill out your clothes” vocal sample introducing “Clothes Hoist” was squealed by Mr Foetus instead. None of this stopped me having the time of my life, however.

A couple of days later I moved down to London with the bare essentials. I’d already sorted out my first evening’s entertainment:

Aside from an unsuccessful attempt at suburban living in Leighton Buzzard in the mid nineties, I have pretty much lived in Haringey and Hackney ever since.

As I said at the outset of this story, these years saw me transform myself “from being a polite boy who toed the line, into a polite teenager with a head full of weird ideas. Who wasn’t quite so sure about that line he’d been toeing…”.

There are probably a million things I’d do differently if I had that time again, but looking back on it now I can see how all the fuck ups and the worrying in my bedroom and of course the obsessing over music has made me the well-rounded, sensitive and attractive man I have undoubtedly become.

It was intense, which is why I can remember it so well.

Road Rage archive #1 « Piece of Paper Press.

Tony White on 1980s Hackney, the backstory to his “Road Rage” crusty pulp novel, Psychic TV and much more…. well worth a read, as are his books!

Click here for a complete list of entries in the series  ”the first 23 gigs I can remember going to”.

22. Throbbing Gristle Ltd. Astoria, 3rd June 1988.

The Apocalypse Club put some good events on after the main gig of the night at the Astoria had finished. I remember weighing up whether I could get to see Into A Circle there after the Butthole Surfers gig at ULU, until my sister grassed me up to my parents for thinking about being out so late. Actually, I think they said it was up to me but I figured I’d better play it safe (being the revolutionary psychonaut that I was, ha ha!)

I was mystified and excited when I saw “Throbbing Gristle Ltd” in small print in the NME listings. I rang up the Astoria and the person on the other end didn’t really know much about it but muttered something along the lines of “yes I think they’re reforming for it”. At the time that was completely unthinkable, but that didn’t stop me handing over my Mum’s credit card details for a ticket.

Throbbing Gristle had played their last gig on 29th May 1981 at Kezar Pavillion, San Francisco. I wasn’t able to make it for various reasons including being eleven years old, living on another continent and never having heard of them.

By the mid eighties I had become an industrial music obsessive and knew that the group had split up pretty acrimoniously after that gig – and that the various parties had made snide comments about each other in interviews ever since.

TG product was readily available in the eighties courtesy of the Mute Records reissues of their albums. Needless to say I was too purist for them and waited patiently until I got my hands on cheap copies of the Industrial Records originals (except for the ultra limited 2nd Annual Report which I got on Fetish).

It should go without saying that the first four “proper” LPs (2nd Annual Report, D.O.A., 20 Jazz Funk Greats and Heathen Earth) sounded earth-shattering to these ears in the mid eighties and still cut the mustard in 2010.

I can still remember working as a temp, changing the oil in lathes at a factory in Enfield one summer and spending my lunch hour sitting in some waste ground, eating my sandwiches and playing Throbbing Gristle on my walkman. Which made for a very noisy day.

The two RE/SEARCH books dealing with TG were staples of my weirdo library, with a wealth of information and trivia. I had resigned myself to never being able to see them live. And to be fair, I never have seen them live – not really. Because this wasn’t actually Throbbing Gristle, but Genesis & Paula P-Orridge, Scott Nobody and other PTV types.

There was no support band, just lots of anticipation – on my part at least. Wandering around the venue I spotted the obligatory merchandise stall selling the usual bits and bobs, but also some ridiculously rare artifacts like Heathen Earth on blue vinyl. There was a bit of a scrum for the “antique” items, so instead I got myself a TG LTD t-shirt with union jack a la Jack the Tab but with a TG lightning flash instead of the inverted peace sign. It was a bit fascist looking, which went with the territory.

Years later I spent some time rummaging around in the London patents office on a P-Orridge related mission. One of the guys working on the front desk saw the TG logo and mentioned that he used to march under it. I twigged that he was talking about Oswald Moseley’s British Union of Fascists. In retrospect I should have pursued that further, but the guy clammed up a bit when he realised we weren’t on the same wavelength.

On the night in question I think the Coum Transmissions film “After Cease To Exist” may have been shown. At the time I would have paid six quid just to see that, such was its legendary status. Side two of TG’s first album is the soundtrack to the film – lots of sinister pulsing electronics which are soothing on the surface but somehow also manage to create a sense of unease. A lot the film itself is completely black (an idea borrowed from Guy Debord?) which means that the audience is plunged into darkness, waiting. I can’t remember much about the the actual footage you can see except that it features a staged castration of some unfortunate man.

TG Ltd performed reconstructions of Throbbing Gristle that were pretty good facsimiles of the original. Moody lighting, black and camouflage attire. Minimal, militaristic. Very different from the recent “hyperdelic” Psychic TV shows.

I remember a lot of rhythmic noise and electronics, out of which emerged the familiar sonic attributes of tracks like “Weapons Training”, “Persuasion”, “Hamburger Lady” and others. They were probably all the better for not being faithful tributes. Gen was clad in black, improvising heavily around the lyrics.

In many ways this satisfied the itch I had to witness PTV performing darker pre-”hyperdelic” material. Paula P-Orridge provided some vocal samples on tape from the PTV library, stuff like Charles Manson talking about being “scared to live”, “This is a fucking war!” from a zombie film via the Jack The Tab album, moans of female pleasure and pain.

“Discipline” was the grand finale, with the mighty Jordi Valls appearing onstage brandishing a whip, looking out of his mind. Some people down the front were losing it a bit, I think there was some ranty screaming going on. It was pretty intense.

But what was it all about? Genesis described it both as “a banishing ritual” and “to pay the telephone bill” at the time. He went on to explain his take on the event in an interview with the Swedish T.O.P.Y. magazine “Fenris Wolf”:

click to enlarge

The continuing historification of TG after this gig has thankfully allowed old wounds to heal. Throbbing Gristle reformed in 2004 and have performed live and released a few albums. I have to confess that all of this has completely passed me by, although people who I respect tell me that they are doing good works. I’m glad they are still out there, causing trouble.

Meanwhile, back in 1988, my ‘A’ Level retakes were looming…

Click here for a complete list of entries in the series  ”the first 23 gigs I can remember going to”.

21. Skinny Puppy plus comedian. Fulham Greyhound, 21st May 1988.

This was a really sunny day, so a bit of drinking outside the venue was called for. I can’t remember much about the Greyhound  except it was a bit of a hike from the nearest tube. I suspect I was still wearing a leather jacket and army surplus trousers despite the heat. And the obligatory t-shirt.The unwritten rule was that you couldn’t wear a t-shirt of a band which was actually on the bill, but you should try to wear one featuring an act which was similar, but more obscure.

In those days wearing a t-shirt signified being a true fan with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the band in question. At least it did for me. So, yes, I get annoyed by goons wearing Ramones shirts these days who can’t tell you three of their favourite tunes. (Off the top of my head: “Beat on the Brat”, “53rd and 3rd” and “Rockaway Beach”).

The St Albans stoner goth posse were in full effect at this gig. One of the things which put me off drugs as a teenager was that they seemed to make people really boring. I swear I spent whole afternoons sitting around while people argued over whose turn it was to skin up. And then talked bollocks to each other.

They were OK people despite all that – some of them let my mate Wal camp in their garden for a whole summer when he fell out with his parents. Plus it was good to widen the circle of people you traded tapes with. I remember getting a C90 with “Tackhead Tape Time” on one side and Portion Control’s “Psycho Bod Saves The World” on the other, as well as a whole tape of Skinny Puppy. I played the former more often, but Puppy definitely had something going for them.

It’s just a shame that the future gets old so quickly. A quick shonky download of “Cleanse Fold & Manipulate” and “Bites” reveals some cheesy orchestral synths, plodding beats and pantomime growly vocals. And some samples of evangelical preachers and horror film dialogue and all that. Death and War and Disease and stuff, yeah? YEAH? It’s like… WOAH!

Nevertheless this sound proved to be hugely influential with yer Slimelight cyber-goths. In fact you just have to add heavy metal guitars and you have the template for a load of groups which followed – albeit after having passed through the intestines of Trent Reznor. Needless to say, during this process a lot of the more experimental and ambiguous aspects of the original wave of industrial artists got left out.

Meanwhile another branch of industrial would shed any trace of rock music and converge with house and techno… but that’s a different story.

I have no idea who the warm up comedian was – he ranted on and threw raw sausages in the audience. Quite an odd billing.

Skinny Puppy had been heavily hyped in the music press, notably in the Melody Maker  as part of Simon Reynolds’ rather dispersed Arsequake “movement”. Much was made of their singer, Ogre, mutilating himself onstage. This seemed to bring the ghouls out, baying for him to do something outrageous.

There were some theatrics with fake blood and masks and possibly a staged vivisection, I can’t really remember. What stays with me is a packed sweaty mosh pit and a pummeling wall of noise and synths.

Sent via email, 14th July 2009:

Thank you for the latest issue of New Humanist which is a great read as ever, only slightly let down by Fiona Russell-Powell’s piece on Genesis P-Orridge. Whilst I’d be first in line to agree that Gen can be grumpy old sod, I don’t think he deserves a hatchet job for refusing an interview.

Leaving most of the snide gossip and factual errors in the article to one side, it seems curious that Russell-Powell omits the background to Genesis’ family exiling themselves from the UK.

The police raid on the P-Orridge household followed a sensationalist TV programme on “satanic ritual abuse” which falsely implied their involvement in child murder. The objectivity of the programme was called into question when defences of the P-Orridges were mounted from sources as diverse as Derek Jarman and The Mail On Sunday. The programme makers were revealed as evangelical Christians with their own axes to grind.

I was surprised to read that Hackney social services had taken an interest in the incident as the family had been living in Brighton for a number of years when it happened. Needless to say, no charges were brought against the P-Orridges, who must therefore be included in the select group of victims of “satanic panic” in the UK. I imagine that this will be of some interest to New Humanist’s readership.

I too was at the recent PTV gig in London and found the band to be on surprisingly good form. One of my friends had a brief chat with Genesis afterwards and remarked on how polite he was.

John Eden

Published in edited form in the September/October 2009 issue. My missive was awarded “Winning Letter” much to my amusement, but I am yet to receive my prize of six bottles of wine.

Since writing the letter I have been made aware of this recording of an interview Fiona Russell-Powell did with the Psychic TV for The Face in the early eighties. Her fascination with Charles Manson and the P-Orridge’s genital piercings seems to have diminished somewhat in the intervening years.

In a Madonna stageshow involving gasmasks and kilts, circa 2001.

(See the left dancer’s shirt).

Part one in a probably-not-very-expansive and very occasional series:

Chicago House producer Traxx aka Melvin Oliphant III aka one third of The Dirty Criminals rocking the classic* “crucified wolf” t-shirt.

(*actually the classic t-shirt just had the logo on with no mention of Psychic TV, spotters).

Click here for a complete list of entries in the series  ”the first 23 gigs I can remember going to”.

I’d busied myself assembling a collection of virtually everything Psychic TV had ever done. Working back from the psych-pop of “Godstar” and the eclectic Live Albums Series to classic albums like “Force The Hand of Chance” and “Dreams Less Sweet” as well as more, ah, experimental/conceptual records (like a ballet soundtrack!). I completely immersed myself in the philosophy behind the records too, corresponding with various industrial outposts and of course PTV’s ideological wing: Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth.

It all seemed much more open-ended than other belief systems on the market, such as anarchism. And if truth be told it satisfied the neural needs which I’d developed during a lifetime of churchgoing. I found it all fascinating, but I’d never really got to grips with the finer details or met anyone who was attempting to put all this stuff into practice in their lives.

What were they like, these people you saw at gigs with all the mad occult tattoos? In my head they all lived lives of uncompromising orgiastic excitement. And I didn’t, obviously.

Then one day another mailout from TOPY HQ dropped through my parents’ letterbox. I scrambled upstairs with it before they asked me too many questions.

click to enlarge

It was a flyer. A flyer for an event. It used some graphics from a recent Vague Magazine cartoon which good-naturedly took the piss out of TOPY (a homage to “Apocalypse Now” set in Hackney, with Genesis P-Orridge as Kurtz, naturally). This suggested a sense of humour lurking in the Temple, which was encouraging. Maybe they weren’t slavish cultists, maybe there was something in this?

There was no mention on the flyer of Psychic TV or the P-Orridges, which also interested me. Perhaps TOPY actually had a life of its own after all? Or was this just a cunning ploy to lure the gullible in? I didn’t really give a toss either way. I was going up to London to meet some sinister sex-magickians and that was that.

The venue was a specially procured squat in Holloway. I got off the train at Kings Cross and walked all the way up the Caledonian Road, I was that hyped up.

When I reached my destination about an hour later there were about 30 people milling about with shaven heads, combats and occult jewelry. It was dark. The street was lit by flickering flames from a burning brazier. It was like a scene out of Jarman’s “The Last of England” and I fucking loved it. But I was on my own and everyone else seemed in deep conversation.

Luckily I was put out of my social embarrassment by a kind soul who came up and proffered me a welcoming smile and another flyer from amongst a pile he had hidden inside his jacket:

click to enlarge

I grabbed it with some excitement and probably gabbled away with about a million excruciating questions.

The flyer revealed that the venue had been abandoned because the police and fire brigade had taken too much an interest – they had actually contracted someone to demolish one of the building’s walls. This had undone weeks of preparation, but the resourceful old moles in TOPY had come up with another venue with a day to spare. I was told to get to Old Street and await further instructions.

I headed to Holloway tube station, eager to get to the main event. I found an equally earnest young man there, also covered in Psychic TV badges. Neither of us really knew what was going on, but we paired up and headed to Old Street together. I’d never heard of Old Street before. The tube station was deserted. But someone had sprayed a trail of psychick crosses to lead our way…

Outside the tube station, Old Street itself was also completely deserted. Seriously – a lot has changed in the last twenty years! There was literally nobody around and it was really dark. We followed the graffitti trail and carried on sussing each other out, chatting musical trivia ten to the dozen. The new venue seemed to be a massive warehouse. Which was also completely deserted and dark.

We found a pub called The Glue Pot and cautiously opened the door, not knowing what to expect – who the fuck comes to a pub in a deserted dark grim area of London? Did they like freaky industrial fanbwoys? If not, could we make it back to the tube OK? Luckily for us, the pub was also pretty deserted, except for half a dozen earnest young men with all the right insignia sitting around a table.

We sipped our well earned pints with some relief and bonded over tunes, gigs, weird ideas. Nobody there was actually involved with TOPY bar one older guy who I think had come down from Manchester. He seemed sound, as did everyone else.

After a few pints we headed over to the warehouse and were greeted by a squatter who I can only describe as resembling a Dickensian urchin – head to toe in dirty black rags, his face obscured by soot. He tried to sting us for an “entry fee” significantly higher than what we expected, so negotiations began in earnest.

There were a few people lounging around in the warehouse but it was mainly empty – the main mob from Holloway and/or Hackney was yet to turn up. It was the first squat I’d ever been in and curiosity was compelling me to have a wander. My traveling partner came along. The place was massive. Someone had sprayed “Foetus Art Terrorism” on one wall in huge black letters. It was, we agreed, a pretty awesome space.

We headed into yet another cavernous room with a low ceiling. At the other end of the room was a disheveled crusty. With an iron bar. The crusty started moving slowly towards us, brandishing the iron bar. Every time he passed under one of the  strip lights he smashed it with the iron bar. Behind him lay darkness, in front of him – us.

He got closer and closer – smash, smash, smash went the lights. Glass on the floor. Quickly exchanged whispers between two virtual strangers.

Run? Fight? Stand rooted to the spot, gawping? We went for the latter option.

So there we were – stood in a cavernous dark room with iron bar man in front of us. There was a pause. He muttered something incomprehensible and carried on walking. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

After that episode we decided to rejoin the main group, which had swelled in numbers. Scott Nobody from Psychic TV was around, as were some familiar faces from gigs. Some nice conversations were had. It turned out that the squatters were nothing to do with TOPY, which was something of a relief. Once again people seemed OK – impassioned and a bit eccentric, but they had their heads screwed on, for the most part.

I left before things kicked off properly – so I guess I wasn’t so far out that I wanted to miss the last train home. And I think I’d really turned up to check it out and talk to people rather than get down in an impromptu drumming ritual, so it was job done for me. The tube back to Kings Cross was deserted. I was buzzing.

20. Psychic TV, Spacemen 3, Hiding Place. Astoria, Sat Apr 30 1988.

So the Old Street happening wasn’t a gig, but it was the backstory to the Psychic TV Astoria bash which took place a week later. There were a few familiar faces there, so I had a bunch of people to hang out with. It was shortly before the proto acid house “Jack The Tab” album came out, so I remember a few of our number grumbling about the new direction. Which is funny, because we were all supposed to be about boundless experimentation and throwing off the shackles of conformity. But some people didn’t like deviating from the template too much.

I happened to love the Jack The Tab album anyway. As I’ve previously said, it did good things to my head – conjuring up an alternative reality where clubs were even greater and freakier.

I probably bought one of everything from the merchandise stall again. I used to enjoy wandering around St Albans of a weekend wearing a Psychic TV t-shirt and grimacing, so I needed to stock up.

I’m sure I enjoyed Spacemen 3. But I suspect PTV blew them away, because I remember this as being one of the best times I saw them.

The gig was released as part of the same Live Album as the Finsbury Park one. So I can tell you that it began with Genesis P-Orridge informing the crowd that Alex Sanders “The King of the Witches” had died earlier in the day so that the concert was dedicated to him and his battle to make witchcraft legal in the UK: “But the WAR goes ON!”

It’s a lot less “acid” than I remember, which is yet more proof that my memory of these things is much better than actual recordings of the events. Possibly because my recollection of the sound is more accurate, but more likely that my brain enhances both the sound and the other, social, aspects of what happened.

The gig ended with a long percussive freakout, a stage invasion, and large amounts of nudity. I’d come a long way since Howard Jones.

Click here for a complete list of entries in the series  ”the first 23 gigs I can remember going to”.

On the 1st of January 1988 my family had a discussion about our new year’s resolutions.

Mine was that I wasn’t going to go to church any more because I didn’t believe in God.

I had, to all intents and purposes, been living something of a double life for at least the previous year. Immersing myself in all this counter-cultural stuff most of the week but then going to church regular as clockwork on a Sunday morning. Even taking the plate round for the collection with a Psychic TV t-shirt underneath my Sunday best.

It had all become untenable. Anglicanism was more central to my family life than politics, and there had been enough rows about that already. So I wasn’t looking forward to breaking the news of my heathenism. My initial plan had been to slope off to University and then slide quietly into a life of decadent secularism, but I’d cocked that up with the exam failures. I couldn’t face the pretense any more.

To be fair to my parents, they took it reasonably well. My Dad recognised I’d been thinking about it all for a long time. My Mum went very pale. They told me that they thought I might find life very lonely without God. Fortunately I have since found things to be the exact opposite.

For me this was all a huge relief and I have never looked back. But 18 years of the Church of England is hard to shake off and remains one of my major influences for good or ill.

Martin is bang on when he describes me as “resembling a vicar”. I used to enjoy the singing but was pretty bored for the most part by the doctrine. I guess I still have a drive to do good work and not to be hugely decadent. I’ve spent the second half of my life so far working for various charities.

Feeling that there was a subculture of people out there who had thrown off the shackles of religion was very useful in helping me to strike up the courage to do it myself. A lot of those anti-religious punk songs and comments in fanzine interviews seem pretty trite now, but they certainly played their part at the time.

So that was the context for the beginning of 1988…

17. Glenn Branca: Symphony no. 6 (Devil Choirs at the Gates of Heaven). Queen Elizabeth Hall, 30th January 1988.

I don’t think I told my parents what the title of the performance was, it just wouldn’t have helped. I probably played up the neo-classical aspects of the gig and the auspicious venue. Eighteen and off to a Glenn Branca gig: fucking cred or what?

Say what you like about eighties electronica and industrial but it was a fantastic “gateway drug” for all sorts of avant garde ideas, art, music and people.

I’ve written before about chasing names dropped oh-so casually in interviews, or sending SAEs away for fanzines, but it cannot be overstated how important that little information network was to me. It gave me an appreciation or an inkling of all sorts of stuff which I then rejected or sucked up like a sponge.

Some of it existed solely as ideas for me, untainted by actual experience. So my mind was blown by the idea that Stravinsky (or was it Stockhausen?) would be able to compose a “Symphony For Metal Hammer”, but I never managed to track a copy down in the eighties and I don’t really want to these days because I doubt that it would live up to my expectations. (The work was referenced by industrial journo Dave Henderson once and has stayed with me ever since).

Unlike today, opportunities to check stuff out were very rare. I remember being transfixed as a teenager by an edition of the South Bank Show dedicated to minimalist music one Sunday night. We didn’t have a video recorder, so I knew that I would never get a chance to see it unless I checked it out right then. It gave everything an extra urgency.

The local library’s NMEs and Melody Makers provided some other context and gave me my way in to the whole New York avant/noise scene.

The library also had a copy of Experimental Pop: Frontiers of the Rock Era by Billy Bergman and Richard Horn which I devoured. Loads of mad stuff in there about Laurie Anderson using a violin bow made of cassette tape (with a tapehead on the violin, natch) and bits on hip hop, Eno, Neubauten, etc etc. So Branca would have been referenced in some Sonic Youth piece in the NME or MM and then there’d be a bit more mention of him in Experimental Pop. Slowly but surely more pieces would be added to the jigsaw which became my personal mythology.

The library also had records by Laurie Anderson, Brian Eno, Run DMC, Neubauten and a host of others to borrow. People generally treated them well. I still have some C90 cassettes of things recorded from the library – it was my 1980s Google. Say what you like about the Manic Street Preachers, but that first line of “Design For Life” is bang on.

Glenn Branca did orchestral works with up to one hundred electric guitars and had some involvement with Sonic Youth. And he was coming to London.

My college mate Martin came along with a friend of his who commented sagely “Looks like there are two types of people here tonight. People who like art, and people who know this is going to be REALLY FUCKING LOUD”. Sure enough the audience was evenly divided between well dressed couples and scruffs like us in leather jackets.

We all sat respectfully in the QE2 while a bunch of people onstage tinkered with horizontally placed electric guitars and built up this unbelievable wall of sound. Events like the Test Dept gig and even SWANS had opened my ears to what I can only call the transcendental properties of noise, but this was on a completely different level – not least because there were nothing like “songs”. I remember it being quite ordered, not like a jam session or anything. I just zoned in and out of it, transported by sonics.

It was one of those performances which left you a bit speechless. They were selling posters in the foyer, but one wiley leather-jacketed punter noticed a load blu-tacked up near the exit and got his own souvenir. We followed suit along with a dozen co-conspirators – simultaneously bolstering the avant garde and sticking it to the man.

I had a lie-in the next morning, a further pleasant side-effect of coming out of the closet as an atheist. While my family were at church I stuck my stolen Glenn Branca poster up on my bedroom wall.