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previously on “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…

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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.

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).

previously on “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.

Previously, on “the first 23 gigs I can remember going to”

I ended up signing on at the local Higher Education College to study for ‘A’ Level resits a year later. Having done a round of visits to Universities and Polys I’d had a taste of student life and was all the more keen to get my head down and escape work and my parents for another few years.

Physics had been my worst failure – a “U” grade (Unclassified) indicating that I was now worse than when I’d passed a physics ‘O’ level two years previously. I tried to swap it for Philosophy, but nobody else wanted to take that, so I plumped for Psychology instead.

My other two subjects were retakes of Maths and Chemistry. On reflection I should have torn everything up and started from scratch.

College was a breath of fresh air after school – there were girls there and the staff mostly treated you like adults. My classmates were in the same situation as me – people who had screwed up their exams and were giving it another go. People who had learnt a bit of humility.

I responded quite well to all this regime initially and got my head down. This meant less gigs, not least because everyone I used to go out with had fucked off to a better life somewhere else. Wal had headed for Manchester, Peter had jammily managed to set himself up in Vienna. And so on.

I can’t really remember, but I might have gone to this by myself:

15. SWANS, Dave Howard Singers, The Sugarcubes. Town & Country Club, 14th October 1987.

Something of a dream line up, really. The Sugarcubes were of course “Bjork’s band”, evolving out of Icelandic anarchopunks Kukl. There was quite a buzz around them and I think this might have been their first or second London gig.

They were pretty upbeat and poppy and odd, especially in terms of banter. I guess it seemed obvious that they weren’t going to remain a support band for very long.

The Dave Howard Singers were most famous for their indie chart hit “Yon Yonson”. I have previously written about them here and the Yon Yonson backstory here.

To quote myself: “Much madness ensued as Dave ran around the stage with his acetone on a wheelchair. He also dragged some unsuspecting guy out of the audience to do a keyboard solo.”

SWANS had just released their “Children of God” double album. This was a turning point for the group as it combined the brutal sludgy minimalism of their previous work with the more folksy material which was to come.

I’d been fed tidbits of gossip about their previous live shows – people running out with hands over their ears, lots of stuff getting thrown, that sort of thing. This was also really really LOUD. Apparently some poor punter kept falling over because the sound messed up the balance control in his inner ear. The noise aspect has inspired some wimp at Uncut to rate this as one of the worst gigs ever. Pah!

It was pretty intense. Pounding. Gira was possessed. And he had a rug. A large rug covering most of the stage, which allowed him to pace up and down barefoot, wearing a thong. Intoning balefully. He stuck his arse in the first few rows of the audience. I don’t really know why.

It was hot and sweaty and a crowd surfer managed to dislodge my specs, which then got trampled under the feet of other audience members. I managed to retrieve them. They needed some serious attention from an optician the day after – she seemed pretty impressed with my account of the gig. As was I.

You used to be able to buy “Time Is Money(Bastard)” t-shirts in Carnaby Street. They were grey shirts with the text and iconic dollar sign in purple if I remember rightly. Not wanting to antagonise my Mum and more than I had already, I plumped for a “Greed” one instead with a nice gold dollar sign on it.

Peter went one better by acquiring a “Public Castration Is A Good Idea” shirt which caused our boss some consternation when we worked alongside each other in some shit temp job at a warehouse.

I don’t think I fancied any of the shirts at the gig, though, possibly because I was skint or more probably because I didn’t want to be wearing anything with “Children of God” written on it. I do seem to recall having this poster on my bedroom wall at some point, though:

Previously, on “the first 23 gigs I can remember going to”.

10. Psychic TV with With Tiny Lights, Zoskia Meets Sugardog, English Boy On The Love Ranch, Webcore. Hackney Empire, July 3 1987

June 1987 was taken up with hay fever and sitting my ‘A’ levels. I wasn’t very confident. I’d managed to pass nine ‘O’ levels a couple of years before but hadn’t dealt with the increasing demands of the sixth form all that well. I was doing subjects that didn’t suit me, I hated most of the teachers (and indeed a good few of the other pupils) and was easily distracted by music, fanzines and mad stuff I’d got out of the library.

There was a fair bit of parental pressure to knuckle under and succeed. I didn’t respond well to that either. So I sat in the exam room nervously and did what I could. The stakes were pretty high – if I got good enough grades then I could leave the parental home and live somewhere much more exciting as a University student. If not, well I was fucked. Maybe, it was suggested, I might consider working in a bank?

I left school for the last time and tried to put all of that to the back of my mind. The results weren’t due for a few months. Time to cram in as much as possible.

This gig was a BIG DEAL. After a couple of years of being obsessed with Psychic TV (even more than I was obsessed with lots of other things) this was the first time I got to see them in the flesh.

Various envelopes with funny symbols rubberstamped on them had been winging their way to me in the post from PTV HQ and I’d amassed a fair amount of literature and interviews with Genesis P-Orridge also. Not to mention faithfully trogging down to Our Price every month to see if they had the latest installment of the Live LP Series, and slowly amassing the back catalogue via 2nd hand shops in London and classified ads in Record Collector magazine.

Psychic TV were still flush from the success of the “Godstar” single (“It’s about Brian Jones, the one of the Rolling Stooooones”) and surrounding exposure. This “hyperdelia” was a definitive break from their previous “skulls/skinheads/scarification” phase, although the sub-VU influences were present from day one. I seem to recall that people attending this gig were encouraged not to wear black. Which probably means my clothes were even shitter than usual.

We knew which direction to go in when we got out at Bethnal Green tube because we’d been to the Empire already to see Test Dept. Oh how we delighted in pointing this out to anyone who looked vaguely like they might be going to the gig, which generated a singular lack of acclaim. We didn’t care, we were just well up for it.

I’d rung up the venue several times before the tickets had even been printed, such was my youthful eagerness. We’d been allocated seats in the 3rd row. I was very very excited. The audience was a suitably mashed up selection of mid-80s London subcultures – goths, punks, industrial skinheads, traveller hippies, straight looking types. A lot of weird t-shirts, a lot of tattoos and piercings. A lot of people clamouring around the merchandise stall, myself and Wal included.

I spent as much money as my zeal allowed. Wal bought a black t-shirt featuring two people shagging on a psychic cross (like on the yellow flyer above. “Oh… That’s, ah… nice, Wal…” – my Mum). I got a more modest one with the cross hidden behind some psychedelic flames. Plus a sew on patch, plus some badges and probably some records as well. If they had been selling Psychic TV fag lighters and car tax holders then I would have bought them too, even though I didn’t smoke or drive. I was so ripe for manipulation it must have been hilarious. Or terrifying. Or perhaps just slightly endearing.

We wandered around, soaking it all in. I spent as much time looking at my fellow gig goers as I did the acts on stage. Most of the support bands were on PTV’s own Temple Records.

I think we must have headed up to the balcony to check out Tiny Lights (quite good psych folk), English Boy on The Love Ranch (synth pop / proto techno / hi-nrg, featuring Dave Ball out of Soft Cell) and Zoskia Meets Sugardog (industrial funk with live sampling, featuring the legendary John Gosling). I don’t think any of them were on for very long.

None of them were all that memorable I’m afraid. The non-PTV Temple Records roster was a regular fixture of the MVE bargain bins in the late 80s and does contain some jewels as well as some nonsense. Turning Shrines were always a favourite of mine – an early project by Fred Giannelli, who would go on to collaborate with Richie Hawtin on Plus 8 records

Webcore were pretty great – electronic psychedelia which encapsulated PTV’s ideas about making “acid dance” music. I know Genesis P-Orridge has tried to blag his way into history by inferring that he had quite a lot to do with the creation of acid house, which is pretty spurious – but PTV were most definitely talking about making “acid dance” music around 86/87. (See also “Dr Ecstasy” on the flyer above). Webcore were definitely a product of the free festival Hawkwind/Ozrics traveller scene but were using drum machines instead of wibbly guitar freakouts. That eventually bled into things like The Orb, Club Dog, Spiral Tribe and perhaps even (shudder) Goa Trance over the ten years that followed.

Webcore had a nice manic edge to them and my mate Wal was well into it. Yet another stamped addressed envelope was sent off and I got back a nice letter and load of very hippyish flyers. I sent off for their “The Great Unfolding” cassette, which the good people of Kill Your Pet Puppy have duly uploaded here. Worth a listen if the above hasn’t put you off.

And then, Psychic TV. Why did I like them so much? Well, I think they were just a really good window into several other worlds. The ideas were more important than the music for me (which, I have to say, explains a lot when you hear some of the records!). I liked all the subversive anti-religious stuff, I liked the pseudo culty vibe to it, I liked all the stuff about self exploration and sexuality. I liked noise and William Burroughs and all that stuff. There was a wide streak of compassionate libertarianism running underneath the brutality, at least I hoped so. If I’m honest I liked the obscurity of it all, the vast amount of things which could be collected – records, books, ideas.

I wasn’t even doing it to annoy my parents – after the numerous arguments around the dinner table I went for the quiet option for a lot of what interested me. Eyebrows were raised a year later when a really heavy 10 inch psychic cross made of solid steel turned up in the post. Not to mention what I was posting to people myself, but that’s a digression best left for another time.

At his best, Genesis P-Orridge is one of the most charismatic people I have ever seen on a stage. He came on to rapturous applause, took a look around the Empire and said “Well they were saying in the music papers that nobody would come to this, I don’t know about that…”

I can’t remember the line up but I don’t think either Alex Fergusson or Fred Giannelli were involved that night. Gen was pretty intense, getting right in people’s faces. Including mine, as I was pressed right up against the stage, soaking it all in like a true believer. Wooo! Musically this may not stand up as their best gig, but it was a pretty intense experience for an intense teenager.  I am sure the set included a couple of live fixtures of the time like “Riot in the Eye” and also some new takes on old tunes like “Unclean” and “Twisted”. There were also some wibbly ambient pieces which I remember not liking so much. Psychedelia maaaaaaaan – and I still thought I was more of a punk than a hippy, of course.

I do remember being profoundly affected by the massive projections, however. I’d never seen imagery like Catalan before – an incredible dreamy surrealist piece shot by Derek Jarman in the outskirts of Barcelona  and starring Jordi Valls of Vagina Dentata Organ. All of the early PTV films were really powerful back then – we didn’t even have a video at home so the only way I could check this stuff was on a massive screen with the band doing a live freakout soundtrack.

There was also some heckling – people shouting “Godstar” and other stuff (“Weetabix!” for example – wtf? Presumably a rubbish pun on “porridge”). I have a memory of Genesis being pretty adamant that they weren’t going to do Godstar. Which is pretty odd for a gig organised on the 20th anniversary of Brian Jones’ death. Maybe they were sick of it, or maybe it was too much of a product of the studio (and the absent Rose MacDowell’s harmonies?). I enjoyed the banter between Gen and the audience anyway – this was a fucking great gig.

But then I discovered that my wallet wasn’t in my trouser pocket any more. The gig was over, I was scrabbling around an emptying venue trying to find my train ticket. And the remainder of my money. And feeling a bit scared, frankly – how the fuck was I going to get home? Had I dropped it amongst the dancing throng or had one of these sinister hippy occultists nicked it? My partner in crime had spent all his money as well so a loan was out of the question.

There was talk of an after party around the corner at Club Mankind (a squatted venue where the Hackney Central Club is now located). We had no idea where that was and didn’t fancy wandering the dark streets trying to find it and blag our way in. A vague plan about walking back to Kings Cross and bunking the train was hatched.

But then Peter Rehberg showed up and heroically mentioned that he could give us a lift home in his car and why the fuck hadn’t we mentioned that we were coming anyway?

After that Peter’s beaten up blue VW Beetle became my preferred method of transport to London gigs.

And my wallet? The next day I pestered the Hackney Empire again, on the off-chance. It was posted to me a few days later, completely intact with my bank card, remaining money and even my new psychic cross patch inside. “Yes we’ve got it. Apparently it turned up backstage.” Hmmm, I thought. They can’t be that bad then…

Looking chic at the G20 protests [pdf]

Or maybe:

Dress like a banker to fool G20 cops demonstrators warned; fear of attacks as old bill plots violence.

I realise I’ve been a bit heavy on the spoken word and theorising and teenage nostaliga recently so here is another post about celebs and t-shirts for you, what with it being London Fashion Week and all.

Previously on “the first 23 gigs I can remember going to”.

2) Midge Ure Wembley Arena 23/12/85

Back to the Arena, two days before Xmas. I had another school friend who was a big Ultravox fan. He used to regularly curse Joe Dolce whose accordion-bothering “Shaddap You Face” had kept “Vienna” off the number 1 spot in the UK charts.

I thought Ultravox were alright – all those moody synths, overcoats and big words. More on them anon, though. I vaguely recall the queue being flyered by young women in skimpy Santa Claus outfits. Stuff like that makes an impression on you when you’re 16.

The support act was Belouis Some – the great wannabe pop star of the era who never really made it. His one big hit “Imagination” has the classic first line “she lit a cigarette, both hands behind her back” which sounds either glamorous or like a fire hazard depending on your cynicism. It’s here on youtube, but any info on what he is doing now has eluded me. His set was alright but I remember being quite down on his attempts to get everyone to put their hands in the air.

This gig was part of Midge Ure’s post-Live Aid solo career and wasn’t really all that. The place was half full and lacked the atmosphere of the Howard Jones gig. We were sitting up in a balcony miles away from the stage, so we had a better view of the gaps in the audience than the, uh, “action”.

I couldn’t remember what was played, but a quick google turned up “Sleepwalk” (Ultravox), “Fade To Grey” (Visage, which Midge was also in) and “No Regrets” (Scott Walker, which he had released as a solo single many years earlier). I remember quite liking “The Gift” (the album Midge was promoting), but the setlist looks like a bit of a crisis of confidence in retrospect.

The graphic for the hit single off the album (“If I Was”, Number One for a week) was one of those desk toys where you have a load of shiny silver nails in a frame that you can put your hand in and “wooh!” it leaves an impression of a hand in there. That probably sums up a lot of the stadium pop of the time – executive desk toys. Youtube link.

A dodgy download of the album confirms my worst suspicions – dangerously portentious wordy business. There are a lot of cringeworthy lyrics about teenage alienation though:

“She tries to understand what her father preaches / She wants to live a life that a new world teaches”
(She Cried)

“The boy is listening to those records from the past / he wants to make them last / for they make him feel alive / they are the voices of the faces on the wall / he listens to them all / hangs on every little tale they tell [...] one day he even cut their names upon his skin / they mean that much to him / his bedroom window opens to the evening air / the fox is in his lair”
(Wasteland)

I even bought a Midge Ure t-shirt. I managed to drop it a few months later whilst walking somewhere or other and by the time I’d retraced my steps someone had ripped it to shreds. (Or maybe it was “the fox out of his lair, walking in the evening air” eh?). I don’t remember being particularly upset by this.

I didn’t know it at the time but somewhere else somebody else was skanking to untold versions of King Jammy’s “sleng teng”. I had a long way to go…

3) Marillion, Milton Keynes Bowl 28/06/86

Yes, yes, what were we thinking, eh? I spent my 17th birthday here. There was a coach from St Albans to Milton Keynes and four of us from my school got on it.

My main memory is that there were loads of blokes with long hair and denim. In fact I have a horrifiying suspicion that my own barnet had moved beyond Howard Jones spikey into a mullety type affair by this point.

Jethro Tull played “Living In The Past” which I suddenly realised Midge Ure had also covered at the previous gig. I remember someone referring to them as “The Tull” in a Brummie accent.

But I can’t remember anything about the Mama’s Boys, which either means they were middle of the road nonsense, or were so dire I have blanked them from my mind in an act of psychic self defence. Things improved slightly when we struck up the courage to try and get some cider. In retrospect it’s pretty obvious that nobody at these events really gives a toss who they are selling alcohol to as long as you can physically see over the counter. At the time it seemed very daring, ha ha.

Magnum were OK, my rockier mates liked them and they’d even played St Albans Civic Centre I think. (Other fixtures including Hawkwind and Dumpy’s Rusty Nuts – all these rockers would come out of the woodwork from surrounding villages…)

Six years after the great secondary school two tone / heavy metal wars, we were a lot more tolerant of musical diversity. I was never that into “rock” and I’m sure some of our crew were never convinced by Marc Almond. Everything was a negotiation, alliances shifted. But a day out was a day out, always riddled with exciting possibilities.

Having said that, Gary Moore was fucking bollocks, obviously. Wanking about with a guitar and big hair. Parisian Walkways and all that. I liked to think of myself as open-minded back then, but I was 100% certain about that not being my bag.

I liked Marillion though.

Perhaps it was that faux sophistication thing again – lots of wordy lyrics and worldly songs about the horrors of war and bad women and messed up situations. And weird proggy little musical freakouts. Oh and those dark bits of sleeve art with jesters lurking in dark bedsits looking abject.

Marillion was the first thing I ever heard on a Sony Walkman. Some kid smuggled his onto the school sports field and we sat around waiting patiently for our turn. It sounded pretty amazing – properly inside your head, loud and majestic and all that. Another dodgy download confirms that it was in fact a load of boshing drums, senselessly tweaky keyboard solos and sixth form poetry.

Marillion were the antithesis of punk (apart from the odd “fuck” in the lyrics), but you forget how popular this stuff was (and is) when you spend your time on more tasteful pursuits – Milton Keynes Bowl has a capacity of 65,000 and it was pretty rammed.

I bought a t-shirt, yes sirree. It had a little drummer boy on it and big yellow Marillion logo. Somewhere there is probably photographic evidence of me with a mullet, wire-framed specs and a Marillion t-shirt. I’ve always had that kind of effortlessly stylish glamour about me, I can tell you.

I think I knew all the words to the songs as well. In fact I can still recall something like “gracefully polluting satellite infested heavens” right now, 23 years later.

We were half cut by the time they came on. I’m sure everyone over 18 was ripped to the gills. We were all outside, under clear skies as the sun was setting – watching one of our favourite bands. Fish was a great frontman.

So we all sang along to all the wordy words in every song. Except “Kayleigh” – even Marillion fans refused to stand for that.

So (deep breath) here is the first installment as promised…

1) Howard Jones, Wembley Arena, 17/4/85

My first ever gig, at the tender age of 15. Me and some mates from school. We were all very excited.

Howard Jones, though? Well, I’d been obsessed with “synth pop” since seeing Soft Cell and The Human League on Top of The Pops, but hadn’t been of the age to go to their gigs, right? And to the teen me, Howard Jones seemed like a continuation of that.

For those who don’t know him, Howard was a solo artist from Aylesbury (another London commuter-belt town) who experienced quite a bit of chart success in the mid 80s alongside similar artists like Nik Kershaw. I hated Nik Kershaw, though, obviously, because he wasn’t as good as (i.e. was too similar to) Howard Jones.

I even spiked my hair up like him and took to wearing an overcoat (no blonde for me though, that seemed like a step too far). It was to be the first of many unfortunate hair choices in my life, more about which in due course.

Anyway, the video for his first single “New Song” is on youtube. It features some nice footage of Holborn tube station and some digs at grown ups in suits, ha ha.

It was pop, it was of the moment. It has of course aged particularly badly. You can see with these early gigs, how the teenage me was into stuff that seemed sophisticated but was actually really trite. Howard had a load of songs about the injustices of the world and how everyone should just get along or see through their petty materialist illusions.

The first album, Human’s Lib, had been on rotation on the family cassette radio when I was washing up. Except I had to turn it off when one of the tracks on side two came on because it started “sometimes I’d like to go to bed with a hundred women and men”. I also used to own all his singles on 12″ and as previously confessed, this picture disc:

This gig was part of the tour to support the second album Dream Into Action, which included tunes like “Like To Get To Know You Well” and “Things Can Only Get Better” that in retrospect are a bit more “stadium synthpop” than his debut.

The gig itself was the loudest thing I’d ever heard at the time and there were loads of girls there. I was well happy. I bought a shit load of merchandise including a t-shirt, a metallic badge and a tour programme. I shudder to think how much money I’ve put in Howard’s pockets over the years, come to think of it.

I really enjoyed myself, we all did – finally seeing someone you’d listened to on a daily basis in the flesh… Our idol dedicated one song to all of us in the crowd who had fallen for our mate’s girlfriend/boyfriend. We all cheered, even though we hadn’t.

I love how this crap photo of the gig has now come into its own because it clearly shows the dodgy haircuts everyone had in the audience. It says here on the envelope that it was taken by my friend Tom.

As you can see, we were in the fourth row at Wembley Arena. How come? Well, because a mate and me were both in the Howard Jones fan club. Christ, how bad is that?

I guess that was the beginning of my musical nerdery and thoroughness – it wasn’t like you could just get on Howard’s myspace in 1985. Smash Hits only came out fortnightly in them days! You’d end up sending away a lot of stamped addressed envelopes and hassling your parents to write cheques for you just so you could be sent the odd badly photocopied newsletter. Which, without belabouring the point, you were chuffed to receive. There was no information overload, so the gaps in our knowledge were filled with speculations, fantasies. That gap is pre-filled these days with all the usual trainspottery dross on tap, with added celebrity culture if you are especially unlucky.

Anyway, for the sake of a few quid we got some fantastic seats.

We walked back to the tube station very happy, amongst a throng of people singing songs we’d all just heard. Somehow we managed to balls up reading the timetable and missed a few trains back to Hertfordshire. We didn’t care. My ears were ringing for a couple of days afterwards.

Howard and me slowly drifted apart, but my parents still receive the occasional postcard from his agents about what he is up to, two decades later. Listening to some of his tunes today is quite jarring – I still know many of them inside out, but they are remarkably shrill and preachy, even by mid 80s standards. Perhaps the most lasting legacy was that one of his instrumental b-sides was called “Tao Te Ching” and got me interested in the works of Lao Tzu…

Obviously part of me would rather that my first gig was something like Paul Meme sneaking into The Clash, but I’m too old to worry about my past. Writing this has brought back all sorts of memories – you forget how intense everything is when you’re 15. Howard Jones wasn’t cool even at the time – and neither was I.

And yes, the gig did feature rather literal performance artist Jed “throwing off” his “mental chains” woo woo woo.