The Edge marked my return to interviewing bands, and for its first issue I shot the breeze with Smog (UK) (as mentioned in my Avail blog) and Headswim, who played The Joiners in late September. Incredibly, I got through both interview and live review without mentioning the word grunge; listening to them now, it strikes me that their first album Flood was pretty much evenly split between US grunge and UK prog influences. In person, the band were unfailingly polite, animated about their art, amused to be asked about their recent dates as unlikely support to Ice-T's Body Count and certain that wider influences would come through in their next album.
A band who might have been marginally more suitable for the Body Count tour were that night's support band. Even before the days of internet searches, fat B.A.B.E. was a truly awful name. I laid into them in print, dissing their lack of originality, synchronised headbanging and half-arsed cover of the Helmet/House Of Pain tune Just Another Victim, while pointing out that "Even the person in a fat B.A.B.E. T-shirt needs to go and get more to drink after their opening drummer." Music journalists are so cutting, aren't they? According to the band's MySpace, they lasted into the millennium, almost reaching infamy with a cover of Wannabe by the Spice Girls - until Simon Fuller threatened legal action and the single was pulled. I was hoping to find it on YouTube, but couldn't be bothered to wade through whatever else a search of their name might bring up...
Naturally, I gave Headswim a considerably more glowing review, praising new tune Evil Friend (which, as far as I know, was never released) and the band's "subtlety and depth behind the crashing chords and frenetic rhythms." As it turned out, their next album did reveal wider influences - released in 1998, it slotted into the scheme of post-Britpop melancholia, somewhere between Radiohead and Travis. These weren't quite the trip hop/prog rock sounds I'd have put money on three years earlier, but they did get in the Top 30 with the song Tourniquet.
From the second issue, The Edge began a brief incarnation as a stand-alone, 24-page A4 magazine. While Charmaine continued to push Celtic folk bands - The Dolmen, The Wolfetones - on an oblivious student body, I appeared to be catching bands I'd loved three years earlier, on their way down the slippery pole.
Exhibit A: Mega City Four. While never as big as their buddies Carter and the Neds, MC4 had once headlined the Astoria. In October 1995, severed from their old label and on the comeback trail, they were playing the Joiners. I interviewed guitarist Danny and drummer Chris in the grotty basement which served as a dressing room there. If the surroundings were insalubrious, the company was unpretentious, positive about their new label and forthcoming album. I'd see them again the following year, so I'll pick up their story then.
Exhibit B: Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine. They hadn't fallen as far as the Megas, but had downsized from Portsmouth Guildhall to the Pyramids. Matt and I went to see them there, accompanied by a couple of younger contributors to The Edge who were interviewing the support bands. On the way over, one of these two hip young gunslingers proclaimed that he didn't need to travel, as he could just see the world on telly. This became an in-joke for me and Matt for some time, though it almost seems a prescient remark given the increasing numbers of us content to experience life through a computer screen...
My Carter interview remains, amusingly, the only time I've ever written a cover story for any publication. I don't remember my state of mind beforehand, but I think it's safe to suggest that I was more nervous than when interviewing, say, Headswim. These were people whose lyrics I'd memorised, and whose gigs had at one point seemed to me the absolute apex of live entertainment. I'd recently reviewed their Straw Donkey singles compilation, remarking that Carter longsleeve T-shirts must surely have been hanging, unloved, at the back of wardrobes across the country, so completely had their allure to indie kids waned. This was a slight exaggeration, of course; the Pyramids might not be Brixton Academy, but they were hardly back on the toilet circuit. And, regardless of their present standing, I was about to meet two men whose music had accompanied a significant chunk of my teenage years.
They finished another interview and Fruitbat appeared, asking, "Where are the next victims?" Of course, they turned out to be friendly, likable geezers, and the conversation was certainly the widest-ranging I'd yet had with a band. Topics varied from the band Shampoo to the trial of OJ Simpson, while the pair proved to possess a wry wit, even when discussing grim topics (Jimbob, on playing gigs in Bosnia: "There are places we've played before that have been completely wiped off the map, so that's really sad. If you imagine playing Portsmouth, and then two weeks later it's flat to the ground..." Fruitbat: "Some people would say that's a good thing." Jimbob: "But not us, obviously.") My favourite answer at the time came when, in the wake of recent comments by Noel Gallagher that he hoped Damon Albarn and Alex James would "catch AIDS and die", I asked them if there were any musicians they'd like to catch a nasty disease (terrible question, I know). After mulling it over and maintaining there was nobody in the musical world he'd wish illness upon, Jimbob decided that he'd quite like Jim Davidson to get rickets.
The show itself was a reminder of why I'd dug them in the first place, but it was impossible to enjoy it in the way I'd have done across town at the Guildhall just a few years earlier. Carter's music provided a snapshot of a time of my life that was now done, and unlike some of the audience, I couldn't keep on pogoing to Sherrif Fatman like it was still 1992 or whatever. I guess this was my first experience of coming back to a band - it was only at this point that I was old enough for it to happen - and I couldn't get as excited by this as by going to see some exciting new outfit play a tiny venue. These days, I'm quite used to seeing bands I've been into for upwards of a decade, and have different expectations of them (not that that means it's never a let-down), but back then the feeling of being out of time proved a barrier to proper enjoyment.
The ever-simmering Portsmouth/Southampton feud had never particularly impacted on me before - it was hardly the east coast/west coast hip hop beef in terms of glamour and excitement- but Matt and I discovered that night that some people took it seriously enough to stitch us up proper. The other guys from The Edge had already split, probably seeing Carter USM as music for square grandads like us, and Matt and I didn't have long to get the last train, so we hailed a cab. Naively, we mentioned in conversation that we were going back to Southampton, and were rewarded for our honesty by being dropped off at Portsmouth Harbour - not the train station we'd asked for, and indeed one from which the last train had already departed. I maintain that this was not an honest mistake. Luckily, we managed to get another taxi to the right station in time. Bloody skates.
A week later, I was back watching well-established favourites, albeit ones who hadn't yet slipped from favour, when Therapy? played Southampton Guildhall. Since moving to the city, I'd given the bigger Guildhall shows a miss in favour of the Joiners, but the pull of Therapy? proved too much to resist. Southend hardcore band Understand opened the show, and while I was pleased to see such a heavy band getting a shot on a big tour, they seemed a little lost in a room that size. They would, however, be back in town within a month to play the Joiners, so we'll come back to them in due course.
The other support were Wonderstuff/Senseless Things/Eat supergoup Vent (later Vent 414). I'm assuming that many people reading this will not be overly familiar with the work of this particular power trio, which probably demonstrates how little anyone was bothered about a Wonderstuff/Senseless Things/Eat supergoup in 1995. I quite enjoyed them, though.
Therapy? are a classic example of a band at the top of their game who chose to follow their own path, as opposed to the one which their listeners might have anticipated. The album they were touring, Infernal Love, was a very different beast to its predecessor. In place of Troublegum's compendium of three minute pop metal bangers, Infernal Love was a partially successful attempt to go art rock, with several much longer songs, more airtime given to acoustic guitars and cellos, and cinematic interludes from David Holmes. It kinda worked, but for an album which was evidently sequenced to be a complete listening experience, it was actually harder to listen to all the way through than Troublegum. This had a knock on effect on the live show; it's reasonable that a band should feel sufficiently confident in and proud of their newer material that they want to air it, but the preponderance of Infernal Love tunes made the first half of their set hard to love. That said, an encore of Teethgrinder, Potato Junkie and Screamager sent everybody home with a song in their hearts.
You wait ages to go to a gig at the Guildhall, then two turn up within a week. For this reason, I can't quite remember whether this guy Alistair came with us to Therapy? or The Wildhearts. I also don't remember how we met him, but I think it might have been through Alex Furr. Alistair lived some distance from Southampton and had arranged to stay over at the house I now shared with Matt (alongside Kev, Nigel, Rebecca and Jane). Prior to the gig, Alistair announced his intention to "drink until I throw up." Matt and I exchanged glances and began working out who was gonna clear up. Luckily, the guy was all talk.
As, in a way, were the Wildhearts, as this was the first of their tours to be billed as their last, if you see what I mean. The story was that frustrations with label East/West had left the band ready to split, but in the end they were released from their contract and allowed to go on their merry way (it's quite likely that when East/West heard the eventual next Wildhearts album, bizarro distortothon Endless Nameless, they breathed a collective sigh of relief that it wasn't their job to promote the bugger)
Apes, Pigs And Spacemen were the main support, and at the time I was quite taken by their melodic, grungy sound. A year or two back, Anna was chucking out a load of tapes, and amongst the ones I rescued were the first two Apes, Pigs And Spacemen albums (I think she also saw them as a support band somewhere along the way). I recently listened to their first album again and, to be honest, it was hard work.
The Wildhearts set began, kind of, with Ginger strolling on wearing shades and a backwards leather jacket(?) to introduce a band called The Screaming Bastards, who turned out to be a trio of roadies covering Highway To Hell. When the Wildhearts did emerge, complete with new guitarist Jef Streatfield, they played a stellar set drawn mainly from Earth Vs The Wildhearts and PHUQ. The encore was a generous seven songs, including the spectacularly silly Geordie In Wonderland, the evergreen 29 X The Pain and the early classic Nothing Ever Changes But The Shoes.
A week or so later, remembering to watch what information I gave to taxi drivers, I was back in Portsmouth. Sunday night wasn't kind in terms of turnout, which was rather a shame given the greatness of the Young Gods. Support band Papa Brittle gave it their all, which in this case meant a mash-up of hip hop and industrial somewhere between Pop Will Eat Itself, Dub War, Senser and Consolidated. They'd never manage to garner as much acclaim as that lot, though, and would eventually split when dreadheaded vocalist Lloyd Sparks went to join kindred spirits Fun Da Mental. The sparse attendance and a bad head cold couldn't stop me being blown away by the Young Gods, however. At this point, they were touring the album Only Heaven, which in retrospect would mark the end of the band's early purple patch. The set accordingly mixed then-new tunes like Kissing The Sun and Lointaine with the old gold of Longue Route and Skinflowers, and it was outstanding.
The other side of my 21st birthday, I was back on familiar turf on the 23rd November. The fantastically-named Scum Of Toytown played the Joiners alongside Smog (UK) and space rockers Iowaska. I guess Scum Of Toytown were something of a throwback, albeit only to a couple of years earlier; Chumbawamba, Back To The Planet and Citizen Fish were bands I compared them to at the time, while somehow avoiding the word crusty.
Into December, and the last two gigs of 1995. Drugstore returned to the Joiners on the 9th of December, and I was there waiting for them with a tape recorder. Sometime before or after watching smouldering support band Linoleum, I caught up with Isabel, Daron and Mike in the Joiners cellar. They talked about liking the town and venue, being involved in all aspects of their band, Britpop, parachute jumps and... Thom Yorke. Drugstore had recently supported Radiohead and rumours had begun to circulate that some sort of a duet was on the cards. Isabel maintained, "I can't imagine two (such) moody people getting together. We'd probably end up slashing our wrists!" That wasn't how it went down, but we'll come back to that when we get to 1998...
The Drugstore show as, predictably, awesome, and I have to admit that songs like Superglider and their cover of Radiohead's Black Star brought a little moistness to my eyes. Along with the Avail shows, this was probably the best gig I ever went to at the Joiners.
Yes, even better than Travis Cut, Goober Patrol, Monkhouse and Stu Dent & The Wankers at the STE's Christmas show on December 16th. Stu Dent & The Wankers were a bunch of locals, fronted by Smog (UK)'s Stu, playing mangled, drunken punk covers, which proved a lot better than the equally drunk but slightly belligerent sound of Monkhouse. Goober Patrol provided a mood-enhancer with their conventional but fun melodi-core, while Harlow's Travis Cut closed the evening with a cracking set of gritty pop punk. Reviewing the evening for The Edge, I suggested that the last two bands, along with Hooton 3 Car, Broccoli, China Drum, Chopper and Skimmer, would make 1996 a golden year for homegrown melodic punk.
Was I right? Well, looking at my list of the first few shows I went to in the 9-6, I can't see any of those names, but I did interview two characters who'd end up major chart stars...
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