16. Suicide, Spacemen 3, Into A Circle, 999. Town & Country Club, 13th December 1987.

It was cold. Sign on the door of the T&C: “Unfortunately 999 will not be appearing tonight”. The general consensus in the queue was that this was fine by everyone. I associated 999 with the uncreative dregs of punk, purely because their logo (a raffle ticket) appeared on the back of leather jackets alongside the Anti-Nowhere League, Exploited and all those other bands I could never be arsed to check out.

So an odd choice for the lineup, but perhaps not as odd as Showaddywaddy supporting Einsturzende Neubauten around the same time. Which I missed out of guilt at my exam fuck ups. Bah. I suppose this gig was like an early xmas present to myself. I think I probaby went along with either Chris (an old school mate) and/or Martin (a mad Ramones fan I had hooked up with doing resits).

Into A Circle were on a psychedelic/pop/goth tip. They had evolved out of Getting The Fear, who had in turn spawned from Southern Death Cult. Bee, their singer, had some connections with Psychic TV which obviously piqued my interest. Their single “Forever” had been on the Chart Show and was pretty good. They had some nice collages as projections and tapes of flowing water between songs.

I picked up some leaflets from the stall and found you could order some demo tapes and collage artwork off them. They also had a pseudo-TOPY magickal group associated with them called “The Game” if I remember rightly. I ordered some tapes and a collage. The former was pretty good and even had a recording off them at the end talking about financial arrangements for a gig. The collage arrived in a clipframe which smashed into a million pieces in the post (it was just in a regular jiffy bag).

There was  buzz about In To A Circle, but they didn’t really get anywhere. Bee was rumoured to be the source of PTV’s “why don’t you just enjoy your own fucking body” vocal sample, taken from an answerphone message. (The other story I heard was that it was the bloke from Bomb The Bass.)

“1987 and all I want to do is get stoned
All I want for you to do is take my body home.”

Spacemen 3 were excellent. I’d first heard them on Peel (he’d faded a 25 minute track of theirs in and out a few times in between other records). I suppose the Spacemen were the flipside of the Butthole Surfers in the eighties psych revival. Dreamy gentle drones and some almost-pop songs with choruses vs the Surfers balls-out chaotic rock. I saw Spacemen 3 a good few times and they were always completely brilliant. They often finished up by taping down several keys on their synth and leaving this huge cavernous drone running. I’ve never really bothered with Spiritualised, though.

As I pointed out in a previous episode, I spent a large chunk of the summer of 1987 rinsing valve casings in paraffin:

1. Pick up one casing in each hand from the dirty pile on the left.
2. Rinse in small vat of paraffin.
3. Place carefully in the clean pile on the right.
4. Repeat.

To help pass the time I’d think about the records I was going to play when I got home. It only helped a bit, I was completely isolated without anyone to talk to and was probably going a bit mental. Possibly the actual records I was listening to didn’t help very much. “Industrial Music For Industrial People” sounds very evocative if you’re on the dole or in an office, I guess.

One of the records I was caning was the first Suicide LP:

“Frankie teardrop
Twenty year old Frankie
He’s married he’s got a kid
And he’s working in a factory

He’s working from seven to five
He’s just trying to survive
well lets hear it for Frankie
Frankie Frankie”

I probably tried to kid myself that I was having a really hard time of it like Frankie but the reality was that I was living with my Mum and Dad and was spending virtually everything I earned on records and gigs. But that Suicide LP is perfect – from the lush ambience of “Cherie” to the timeless astro-rockabilly of “Johnny”, it really has it all. The debut has been a staple of my late night listening for the last 22 years. In fact it is so perfect that I have studiously avoided hearing anything else by Suicide in case it detracts from my enjoyment of them.

They were awesome live. Martin Rev (basically Dr Teeth from the Muppet Show in a squatted space station) and Alan Vega (one of them androids out of Blade Runner channeling the ghost of Elvis) ruled the stage like they were a 32 piece ensemble. I’m not sure if Suicide or Sparks can claim to be the first synthpop duo but Rev held it tight, barely moving from his minimal equipment, yet conjuring up walls of incredibly rich sound. Vega prowled the stage, every inch the superstar.

Such was the iconic minimalism of the Suicide schtick that Vega decided they’d make up a song for the encore. How cool is that?

This was a Sunday night gig, so I think the place was half full. That didn’t stop me getting completely immersed in it all…

New address! Update your bookmarks and check  the latest entry on Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

» Blog Archive » Alien Kulture – R.A.R. Records – 1980.

Alien Kulture were a (largely) Asian punk band in the late 70s and early 80s. More info and a download of their single are over at the Kill Your Pet Puppy site. Well worth checking!

The band’s own website is at http://alienkulture.org/

UNITED COLORS OF BLAGGERS ITA – RE-RELEASE – Blaggers ITA’s MySpace Blog

Classic album now available again with bonus tracks.

Blaggers ITA on uncarved.org

14. Alien Sex Fiend, Psychic TV, Steven Wells. Hackney Empire, 30 September 1987.

Doing our bit for Biafra. Jello Biafra.

This was a benefit for the Dead Kennedys’ No More Censorship Defence Fund – the group were being done for “distribution of harmful matter to minors” when someone’s Mum had called the police after seeing some HR Giger artwork they had used. There was a fair bit of coverage about the trial in the UK media if you knew where to look. I recall the NME’s “Censorship” issue being especially good and to give them fair due they ran regular news updates about the case as well. I assume that this was largely down to the insistence of my favourite ranter Steven Wells, aided and abetted by Stuart Cosgrove (see what happened to him in a previous entry).

Rehberg struck up a conversation with Paula P-Orridge by the merchandise stall. She seemed fantastically nice, but I just lurked about in the background. Grinning like a moron.

I probably picked up a shit load more live LPs and other merchandise.

The crowd was a motley punky/crusty collection – more dyed hair than my previous time at the Empire when PTV were headlining, but actually less diverse. Swells was compering and was characteristically in our faces from the off. He dispatched some hecklers with aplomb, correctly identifying them as being try-hard punks with hilariously fake cockernee accents.

There was a small bunch of us down the front for PTV, who launched into a rendition of “My Old Man’s A Dustman” and complained about Alien Sex Fiend demanding a sack of cash for expenses. It ended up being a nice intimate set in a venue which was slightly too big. I was still fascinated by Psychic TV fans at this point.

We watched about five minutes of Alien Sex Fiend and fucked off back home in Peter’s car. I could just about tolerate their electro-crusty-gothness, but this was all a complete no-go zone for my designated driver. To give Alien Sex Fiend their due, it looks like they did a two night stint at the Empire. I have developed a soft spot for their drongo-disco anthem “Smells Like Shit” over the years.

After my exam failure I was trying to stay in my parents’ good books. They were very pleased to see me back so early. After all, I had work the next day…

NOT THE REAL BEYOND THE iMPLODE: BTi Anti-Art Department presents…2009, IN RUBBISH CARTOONS – pt 1.

Martin clearly had a good time at the Big Chill House in August. Proof positive that DJ set from me is an unforgettable experience!

Here is his latest rendition of the night. (I should perhaps point out for the record that I have never owned a Crass t-shirt, let alone worn one while playing out…)

Make sure you check Parts two and three also.

13. Butthole Surfers, Shamen, AR Kane. Clarendon, 6th August 1987.

Me and Wal were spending our hard earned at Record and Tape Exchange in Camden one sunny day when they started playing this insane freaky noise over the stereo at ear splitting volume. It was all screaming and deranged swamp funk guitars and mad samples and a whole bunch of other stuff that we didn’t even know what it was. It was ace.

Wal was considerably braver than me, so went up and asked the notoriously bullish staff what it was. He came back a few minutes later, looking chuffed. “It’s the Butthole Surfers! But they haven’t got anything by them for sale here!” Wal got his copy of “Locust Abortion Technician” as soon as was humanly possible (I suspect we scoured London for it that same day) and taped it for me. He gradually amassed a little stack of similarly wackily named albums like “Cream Corn From The Socket of Davis” (click that link for my man over at expletive undeleted and his take on all this).

We spent a short time trying to figure out what the hell it was all about before our earnestness dissolved in fits of giggles. The Buttholes were fucking mental and they rocked. Even saying their name out loud was fucking brilliant – annoying parents and rugby playing twats in equal measure. Only freaks liked the Butthole Surfers – and that was fine by us.

Inevitably Peter Rehberg had got there before us and played me the Buttholes video “Blind Eye Sees All”. From what I can remember it featured chaotic live performances mashed up with certifiably insane dialogue. “They’re playing soon – do you fancy going?”

AR Kane I can’t remember anything about. We were more excited at the prospect of having seen both John Peel and Coil lurking about the venue. With hindsight I should have payed more attention.

My cassette version of The Shamen’s debut LP “Drop” (official release, not TDK business!) hasn’t aged well, so I can only check out the first two tracks on each side before terminal tape wobble sets in. But tunes like “Something About You” have aged remarkably well – partly I suppose because of the debt they owe to “timeless” influences like Syd Barrett. Most of their songs were either about drugs or women or both, but there is a good one tearing into Thatcher and the tabloids also.

Between songs The Shamen berated us soft southerners for re-electing Maggie a few months previously when their native Scotlandhad rejected her. The group were still in pre-dance indie psychedelia mode. It’s easy to forget this incarnation in the face of their later chart success, but as Paul Meme says in the comments below – 1987 was something of a crucible for alternative UK music. In retrospect it is clear that some people were yearning for acid house before it was invented, almost willing it into being.

My regular readers will recall that the NME’s “Steal It” issue had appeared about a month before this gig. Copyright-violating anthem “Pump Up The Volume” by MARRS was released a few days before the Clarendon bash. MARRS included members of Colourbox and… AR Kane! The tune would be a seminal point in the pre-history of UK acid house. “Pump…” is also rumoured to be a key influence on The Shamen’s evolution. Backstage chats that night may have been interesting…

Whilst writing this I also dragged out their 1989 indie/acid crossover album “In Gorbachev We Trust”. It’s a weird hybrid with guitars sharing space with 808 bleeps. “Rasberry Infundibulum” could be off “Drop”, but the sampledelic single “Jesus Loves America (But I Don’t Love Either)” points to the way forward, controversial lyrics with biting pop backing. I’d forgotten how great they were pre-”Ebeneezer Goode”.

The Butthole Surfers did not disappoint. They were properly deranged. Sweat, strobes, smoke and a slideshow featuring all manner of strangeness. An emaciated woman dancing about naked. Surreal banter. Walls of whacked out psychedelic noise. Much weirder than Big Black, and the condensed sweat rained down off the Clarendon ceiling just as hard. Cathartic.

A few months later Wal and I were in the Virgin Megastore. The in-house DJ was having a charity-thon in which he’d do requests. We scratched around in our pockets for some loose change for a donation. Then Wal (still the braver half of our intrepid duo) took him the shop’s copy of “Locust Abortion Technician”. We could barely conceal our glee when the announcement rang out over the Megastore’s PA: “This is dedicated to the young man with red hair who just popped in and didn’t give his name. He’s assured me there’s no bad language in it…”

Around this time I also found out that I had completely fucked up my ‘A’ levels. Partly because I’d spent too much time sitting in my room listening to music and reading books out of the library, and partly because I’d ended up on an academic treadmill of hard science and just couldn’t hack it.

My mates generally did a load better and were flush with the excitement of heading off to Universities in big cities while I lurked in suburbia. Uncertainty had been injected into my life in large doses. With the prospect of an indefinite period of time in the parental home stretching in front of me, some things started to snap.

I began to have a lot more arguments. I got more politicised. The increasingly strange array of post I was getting was also a source of concern. The shelf of records got longer, the pile of fanzines got higher. Walls I built up around myself. I wasn’t going anywhere.

See also:

Recollections of a Butthole Surfers gig in New Jersey, 1987. (link courtesy of Agent Bauer).

via NOT THE REAL BEYOND THE iMPLODE: 7″ EXPLOSION – PT 15.

12. Siouxsie and The Banshees, The Fall, Wire, Psychic TV, Gaye Bykers On Acid. Saturday 25th July 1987, Finsbury Park Supertent.

My ears were still ringing from the Big Black gig the night before, but a handy crew had assembled for some post-post-punk frolics in Norf London. In a big fuck-off circus tent.

The promoters needn’t have bothered with the tent, the weather was fine. Quite a nice way to spend a summery Saturday afternoon in fact. I must have worn my gleaming new Psychic TV t-shirt because I remember we were accosted on the way from the tube station to the park by someone flyering for a squat gig who got chatting to us about the group. This confirmed my view that London was full of awesome freaks, but obviously he was there for the same reason we were, not just passing by…

One of the other memorable things from the gig is that I bought a copy of SMILE Magazine by Stewart Home from a bloke outside the tent who had laid out his wares on a blanket. I think he may also have run the “skidmark” t-shirt stall on Camden market, back when there seemed to be some genuinely subversive and sinister goings on down there. These days it’s all trance CDs and goth boots. It was in the eighties as well, so yes I was probably just young and naive.

But back then Camden did have stalls, like the aforementioned Skidmark, which gave me genuine “what the FUCK” moments. He had a nice hodge podge of t-shirts including Crowley stuff, Stewart’s “I love Hackney” design, and some off the wall things like the classic “Joy Through Disobedience” as modeled here by Stefan. Shirts like that weren’t band merchandise, they weren’t even flogging a political ideology. They were just weird and hinted at a whole subculture of weirdness which I was magnetically attracted to. And then you’d have the zines as well – strange occult stuff like Joel Biroco’s Kaos nestling up against “Towards A Gay Communism”. There was this spooky ephemeral undercurrent of ideological nihilism and polymorphous perversity. The zines and shirts hinted at people creating and consuming them: a whole mysterious underground culture – tantalisingly out of reach…

I’d read about SMILE in Vague and some of the Coil literature put out by R&D Group 28. It freaked me out a little when I read it the day after. My sister found the magazine hidden under my bed and got very disturbed by the de Sadean aspects of the pulp fiction and the “SAY NOT TO DEMOCRACY” centre spread. I was more bothered by the deranged manifestos and theoretical texts.

I met Stewart a couple of years later at Beck Road and later still hitched up to the Festival of Plagiarism in Glasgow in the summer of 1989. But that’s another story.

As for the gig, I remember watching Gaye Bykers On Acid from the back of the tent and not being overly impressed. I think this may have turned into a bit of a “wandering around with a beer” session rather than studiously watching the bands.

It is entirely possible that a vast quantity of goth girls may have had an impact on my attention span. To my eternal shame I didn’t make strenuous efforts to see Wire.

We all piled down the front for Psychic TV though, and eyed up the rest of the crowd. Genesis P-Orridge came on in a Siouxsie wig. Jokes! This gig was later released as part of the PTV series of live LPs and it sounds like a pretty good psychedelic freak out to these ears. There’s stuff on the net suggesting the Chaz Jankel was laying keyboards for them. Really? How did that happen?

The Fall were brilliant – John Peel had been caning their album “Bend Sinister” since it came out, so I was well up to speed with tracks like “Lucifer Over Lancashire”, “Hey Luciano” and “Mr Pharmacist”. I guess the line up included Brix Smith on keyboards and all that. I’ve never been obsessed with The Fall but have always had a healthy arms-length appreciation of them.

The first time I ever heard Siouxsie and The Banshees was during an especially dull Christmas visit to my grandparents in Weymouth. Actually that’s probably uncharitable of me, because they took us all into their home even when I would have been a snotty 14 year old. I’m sure I got some good presents as well.

But after that it seemed like nothing was happening and it was all really polite. For an eternity, like that Tony Hancock show about a Sunday afternoon. We went out for a walk. Somewhere, somebody was playing “Dear Prudence” really loudly. It echoed around the streets, filling the dead air with life and energy.

But this gig was four years on from that. The Banshees had just done their covers album “Through The Looking Glass” and were still touring their “Tinderbox” LP of original material (including the single “Cities In Dust” which I doubt many people remember, but it was pretty good pop-goth with BIG EIGHTIES STUDIO SOUNDS).

The well-worn formula of teenage drinking has eroded any trace of recollection of their set, so I am guessing it was passable but not especially good or bad. According to this link they did a bunch of older material, so I expect we were all pretty chuffed with that.

We got the tube back to Kings Cross and I sat there proudly with my SMILE “SAY NO TO DEMOCRACY” centrespread open on my lap. A woman next to me giggled about it, which was not the effect I was after.

Work work work work work.

I needed money to sustain my vinyl fetishism and fanzine habit, but I wasn’t after a career by any means. (In fact the only reason I have anything vaguely resembling a career today is because I’m lazy and just stick to doing what I know.)

There was an industrial temping agency about 20 minutes walk from my house so I signed on there. You had to turn up at 6 o’clock in the morning and they would dish out jobs to people they liked the look of. Then the lucky ones would pile in a couple of vans and head off to some grim industrial estate to sell their labour. If you were unlucky you’d got up at the crack of dawn for no reason at all, but at least you could go back to bed and doss about for the rest of the day.

... for industrial people

The work was basically the same wherever you went – moving heavy objects around, sweeping up or production line repetition. The only real variation was how much of a wanker the supervisor was. Bosses aside, the people were usually OK and took you under their wing. The ladies of the cheese factory were impressed by my polite manner and the guy who taught me how to clean out lathes at “Components and Linkages” said I should give him a call if I ever needed a steady job.

Some people are just shits though. I got sacked from a supermarket warehouse because I kept turning down overtime (“you’re no good to me if you don’t want to do seven ’til five”) and a couple of us got sacked from another warehouse by a jobsworth spotty middle manager because we’d swept the place clean twice over but hadn’t paid him due respect.

The maddest job was tarmac-ing people’s driveways. Four of us in a van – the boss was an old hand at charming housewives with the old “I’ve got a bit of spare tarmac missus, do you want your drive doing?” con. If he got a “yes” we’d get to work while he fucked off somewhere else for a cuppa or to drum up more business. I never mentioned to any of the good householders that their driveways didn’t need tarmacing because they were alreadyconcreted, or that we’d never done anything like it before and so the craftmanship might be a bit lacking… The police turned up a few times and we fobbed them off by acting dumb and saying that the boss had asked us to do x, y and z, so we were. Fortunately that only lasted a few days.

Usually the work was just dull and repetitive. I became increasingly reliant on the kindness and humour of others, or being able to enjoy my own company. The shittest job was rinsing valve casings in parafin. Put on rubber gloves, pick up two inch-square components, rinse in vat of parafin, put in a bucket. Repeat. For two weeks. Without anybody else nearby. I picked up my wages at the end of the week, reeking of parafin and social isolation. I had already organised and re-organised the list of records I was going to buy that weekend about a hundred times.

11. Big Black, Head of David,  A.C. Temple. Friday 24th July 1987, Hammersmith Clarendon.

Peter drove us down to the Rough Trade Shop  in Ladbroke Grove one sunny Saturday morning and we both picked up copies of Big Black’s limited edition “Headache” EP. It was rare, it came in a black vinyl sealed cover with brass embossing. It was on red vinyl. It had a really grim full colour photo of someone with their head caved in as the hidden inside cover. Essential purchase!

The music didn’t disappoint either – angular forceful bass guitar and thunderous drum machine, brittle screeching guitars. Brooding vocals. Tight as fuck. Oh, and they were playing live in a couple of weeks. Sorted.

Friday. Get wages, get home, get changed, get tea, get OUT.

Mmm the Clarendon. We zoomed down there in Peter’s knackered car – up and down the Westway, in and out the lights.

There was a nutter up the front shouting random stuff at Head of David, like “Jack Nicholson!”. (Actually it wasn’t that random, it turned out it was one of their songs). I met him two years later and we’ve been mates ever since. Head of David were good, but they were completely eclipsed by the headliners…

…”One, two, FUCK YOU!”

I hadn’t listened to much Big Black before the gig, just the EP and a Peel session. So the first time I heard tracks like “Kerosene” and “Fish Fry” was at the Clarendon, with sweat pouring of the ceiling and everyone in the place going mental. It was jaw-droppingly great, without question one of the most energetic gigs I have ever had the pleasure of attending.

Wire joined them for their cover of “Heartbeat” for the encore (which wasn’t all that, but I think everyone needed a breather anyway).

I added “Atomizer”, “Songs About Fucking” and everything else Big Black had ever done to my list of things to get at the earliest opportunity.

It turned out to be the group’s last ever gig. They just didn’t want to turn rubbish. Fair play.

It was recorded and released 5 years later as “Pig Pile”. Listening to the set again is great experience but it’s actually slightly tarnished my fuzzy memories of the event.