Nazis 1994

Like the late '70s and, well, RIGHT NOW, the early '90s saw the paranoid and pathetic rabble which makes up Britain's extreme right raise their potato-like heads above the parapet. The rise of the BNP was attacked in song by the people you'd expect: Chumbawamba, Credit To The Nation and Anglo-Asian hip hop crew Fun-Da-Mental were all ready to "Give the fascist man a gunshot", lyrically at least. But the extent of people's concern can be seen by the broadsides from voices you wouldn't expect to hear piping up. Pop Will Eat Itself, a band whose previous work included tributes to an Italian porn star-turned-MP (Touched By The Hand Of Cicciolina), their favourite pop culture references (Can U Dig It?) and, well, "go(ing) downtown to hustle chicks" (the pleasantly-titled Beaver Patrol), hooked up with Fun-Da-Mental for the anti-racist single Ich Bin Ein Auslander, sonically something of a companion piece to their Prodigy collab Their Law. Even more surprisingly, Roger Taylor released Nazis 1994. You know things are serious when Queen's drummer puts out a wholly uncommercial single about holocaust denial, although we could probably have done without his naming one of its versions Schindler's Mix.

In East London, the BNP had scored their first council seat when Derek Beackon won a by-election in Tower Hamlets in September 1993. This would have been shocking anywhere, but in a multi-cultural part of London it seemed particularly worrying; coming only a few months after the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence, it was further proof that the spectre of Nazism wasn't going to go away.

On the 28th May 1994, the Anti-Nazi League organized a march through South London, culminating in a gig in Brockwell Park. Depending on your source, the march attracted between 100,000 and 200,000 people, with up to 250,000 showing up for the gig. A small number of those folks were me and assorted chums, including members of Carp Fever and some of our mates from Chamberlain Hall. While we were all assuredly opposed to the BNP, it's probably fair to say that the music on offer played a decisive part in encouraging us to London for the day. Carp Fever faves The Levellers were headlining, alongside performances by the Manic Street Preachers, Credit To The Nation and Urban Species. Also listed on the bill was a special guest, which dedicated Queen fan Matt Ross assumed would surely be Roger Taylor. At one point in the day, he did surprise Lucy by exclaiming "Roger Taylor!", but he was only referring to a poster for Nazis 1994, and it turned out that the special guest was Billy Bragg. His wasn't the only disappointment of the day, mind; we had to leave before the Levellers to catch our coach back to Southampton, obviously booked by people who were more concerned with the march than the bands.

A less political moment of summer 1994 was the decision Sophie and I made to go to Reading instead of Glastonbury, thus establishing a pattern of alternating between the two big festivals which I stuck to throughout the rest of the decade. I suspect our choice in '94 was influenced by the festivals' respective bills; where Glastonbury's delights sometimes seemed to be spread thinly across a multitude of stages, Reading was all about the alternative rock that made up the foundation of what I was into. That said, one of the first bands I can remember seeing that August weekend was our old favourites Trans-Global Underground, clearly more of a Glasto-friendly outfit. But the festival's first day was somewhat dominated by the presence of Hole; Kurt Cobain had only been dead a few months, and what felt like the entire festival turned up to see whether his widow would implode on her return to active service. There was a weird atmosphere; if everyone was united in their love of Nirvana, they were distinctly split in opinion when it came to Courtney Love, and it felt like the rubberneckers who wanted to watch her public self-immolation outnumbered those who were looking forward to hearing Beautiful Son and Miss World. I certainly wasn't in the former camp, and it proved too painful to watch her stagger through her back catalogue in a wrecked, wretched state. To be fair, Courtney made it through the whole set, but I didn't. Not sure where I went, but I was back for Pavement's set, which made me smile a lot, particularly with the anti-Pumpkins and Stone Temple Pilots lyric on Range Life seeming so appropriate at the festival which had seemed like the UK's home of grunge. Eschewing the main stage headliners Cypress Hill, we went to see The Wedding Present close the first day on the Melody Maker stage. I was a big fan of their Bizarro and Sea Monsters albums, along with the twelve singles they'd released throughout 1992, but latest album Watusi, while still quite good, was clearly a more lightweight affair than its predecessors. Obviously, they played quite a lot of it, which made their set a little disappointing. That said, Weddoes frontman didn't deserve to get punched by Courtney Love, an event provoked not by poor set list choices but, according to legend, because he knew Steve Albini.

Saturday began with the Reverend Horton Heat, the sort of act which would never get on a Reading main stage bill in the 21st century...which is the 21st century's loss really, as hell-raising punkabilly is a good way to start the day.

Next up were Kitchens Of Distinction, who I maintain were a great band. I say this despite discovering many years later that my future bandmates Jimmy and Steen were watching them and considered them one of the lamest bands imaginable. A harder-hitting performance by anyone's reckoning came from Fun-Da-Mental, bringing their hardline politics and thrilling hip hop to the indie kids. I don't remember seeing anybody else on the main stage that day, despite the rest of the afternoon and evening including heavy hitters Pulp, Radiohead, the Manics, Ice Cube and headliners Primal Scream. The thing is, I also don't remember watching Superchunk, Compulsion, Elastica or Madder Rose on the Melody Maker stage. I don't think I was wasted, but I have no memory of seeing any of those bands that year. I do, however, remember who Sophie and I went to see instead of the Primals or Madder Rose: Frank Sidebottom.

As it so often was, Sunday was rock day at Reading 94, although the state of rock in those still-post-Nirvana years meant it was scarcely less varied than the other days. Soundgarden had pulled out for some reason or another, but instead of replacing them with a band of similar stature, the organizers moved the bill up and shoved Collapsed Lung on the bottom of the bill. These rock-friendly Essex rappers were a bit useless, but one of the two frontmen made me laugh by introducing himself as Chris Cornell... The only real mark Collapsed Lung left on popular culture was Eat My Goal, a tune which will probably still be getting included on football-orientated compilation albums released to cash in on the World Cup when we're all dead and gone. Incidentally, one Collapsed Lung frontman is now Radio 1/1Extra DJ Nihal, while the other is doing this...

To demonstrate the array of bands united under the rock banner that year, Cop Shoot Cop were up next with a nihilistic blast of pre-gentrification New York noise, the sort of act which would never get on a Reading main stage bill in the 21st century...which is the 21st century's loss really. This tune isn't the best they played, but it is the only one I could find, and at least Tod A's shirt fits into the title of this chapter...

We'll sweep Stabbing Westward under the carpet and pretend that the next act on was Chicago's premier noiseniks The Jesus Lizard. This band were just INCREDIBLE. Their music was at once slinkily rhythmic and prone to bursts of jagged violence, and I'd never seen a frontman quite like David Yow, a shirtless shit-kicker somewhere between Iggy Pop and Dennis Hopper's character in 'Blue Velvet'. At one point, I looked up from my moshing and suddenly realised that Yow's crowdsurfing body was inches away from my head. I don't think I was particularly near the front, so he must have gone on quite a journey. They really were the sort of act which would never get on a Reading main stage bill in the 21st century...which is the 21st century's loss really, as there was more danger and excitement in one of their songs than in most of the main stage bill of a 21st century Reading put together. One of the coolest things Nirvana ever did was honouring a pre-fame agreement and releasing a split 7" with the Jesus Lizard at the height of the former's success. As Nirvana didn't bother with a video for Oh! The Guilt, a few seconds of The Jesus Lizard's Puss made it on to Top Of The Pops. Here's some poor quality footage of them doing it at Reading. This is their hit, remember...

Professorial-looking New York riff-masters Helmet made it a hat trick of fantastic American alternatives (we're forgetting Stabbing Westward, remember), but I think by this point Sophie may have been experiencing noise fatigue, so we went off to do something less eardrum-battering instead. After that, The Wildhearts' set was notable for two reasons: the presence of one Devin Townsend, now a cult figure in his own right but then primarily known for singing with Steve Vai, on guitar, and the fact that bassist Danny dislocated his knee within the first few seconds of the set but managed to get through the whole thing before seeking medical assistance. This is that first tune, their 'Only Fools & Horses' theme tribute Caffeine Bomb, and you can see the point when Danny goes down about 35 seconds in (and the look of pain on his face whenever the camera returns to him).

I think while the Afghan Whigs were playing, we might have been having an argument. Sophie had a minor panic attack triggered by crowds and dust, and I reacted in the martyrish way which will be familiar to subsequent girlfriends (and possibly some workmates). "Well, we may as well just go back to the tent and miss the rest of the bands, then," was my thoughtful riposte. Luckily, Sophie didn't call me out on my bullshit (or my obvious bluff) and things were better by the time Senser came on. This band have been discussed at length in previous blogs, so I won't go on again, but it was great to see them so high up the bill and I danced myself silly. Here's the nostalgia bomb known as Age Of Panic.

Henry Rollins and his Band were a pretty intimidating presence, particularly when Hank did an impromptu speech about how much he liked England, its food, its bands, etc, leading sarcastically into Liar. Sadly, I couldn't locate any footage of that, so here's Disconnect instead. Its lyrics, all about wanting to pull one's own brainstem out, are clearly what sunsets were made for.

 

With Soundgarden out of the picture, Therapy? were promoted to the penultimate slot on the main stage, which could well mark the high water mark of their entire career. They were pretty much my favourite band at that point, riding high on the back of Troublegum. Page from Helmet and Lesley from Silverfish both came out for the tunes on which they guested on the album and it felt, to all intents and purposes, like a headline set, particularly as me and Sophie weren't too bothered about seeing the actual headliners and ended up watching the Chili Peppers disinterestedly from a point so far back we were probably nearer our tent. One thing about Therapy?, though: they did something I'm not too into, where they did a medley of some of their older tunes instead of playing them in full, a token gesture for the pre-Troublegum fans in attendance. Typically, that's the video I'm posting here, apparently recorded for Spanish (?) TV.

 

That was it for Reading, but as with the previous year Simon and I made it to Pilton for their end-of-summer village fete. I'm pretty sure Trans-Global Underground played, but I can't remember anyone else. This was entirely my own fault. Simon, his girlfriend Sarah and I had bought a quantity of booze, which we couldn't take into the marquee where the bands were playing. In rather gung-ho fashion, I mixed the rest of my cider (maybe a litre or so) with whatever gin Sarah had left and proceeded to down it. I then spent most of the evening sitting against the side of the marquee trying to hold it together. I think this was when Sam Ogilvy, a kid I went to school with between '83 and '88, wandered up to say hello, obviously discovering that I was in no state to maintain a conversation. When Simon drove us back to my folk's house, I got out of the car and immediately threw up. If my folks ever knew it was me - and there is no good reason why they wouldn't - they kept it to themselves. Embarrassingly, this wouldn't be the last time I'd be sick in the vicinity of Simon's car, but you're going to have to wait until we get to 1997 for that story.

Drawing a line under that unfortunate incident, next time I'll be striding manfully into my second year, asking Baby Chaos rude questions, falling in love with Drugstore, marvelling that funk metal is still a going concern with Rub Ultra, enjoying even more Trans-Global Underground and Therapy?, catching the tail end of the crusty scene with The Sea... and the small matter of my first DIY punk show. See you back then.

Sons Of The Stage Part 2: Carp Fever

When Nine Inch Snails split up at the end of the Sixth Form, it felt like we were beginning to get somewhere. Not in terms of any real success, of course; we'd only ever played within the school grounds, and it was unlikely that we'd attracted the attentions of anyone beyond our circle of friends. However, the small repertoire of original material we'd built up had given me a taste of being in a band, something at which I was keen to have another bash.

Consequently, when I got to university I was quick to drop into conversation that I played guitar and would really quite like to start a band. This rather backfired when a socially awkward character asked me to play in his industrial combo. I can't remember the guy's name now, but he was possessed of a blank-faced charmlessness which, as it turned out, was allied to an almost-total lack of understanding of how to go about putting a band together. My justification for saying this is that he also approached a guy called Andy to play drums. Now, by his own admission, Andy couldn't play drums, but to our now-nameless friend this was less significant than the fact that Andy was a burly fellow with a Travis Bickle-style mohawk. "All you'll have to do is hit a metal bin with some spanners," was the would-be svengali's advice, which almost says as much about the public perception of industrial music in 1993 as it does about the cretin that uttered those words. I'm surprised he didn't also ask around to see if anyone had any power tools.

It might not surprise you to learn that this band never actually happened.


Instead, I fell in with a group of eager young musicians from Chamberlain Hall. The line-up was Alex on acoustic guitar and vocals, myself, Lee and Andy (not the mohawked one) on guitars, Lucy on bass and Ella on drums. Those of you with a keen interest in counting will have noticed that this collective included a staggering four guitar players, and from this, anybody who knows the more extreme ends of my musical taste may be forgiven for assuming that this band would deal in apocalyptic soundscapes characterised by in-the-red volume and total sonic overload. It didn't, though. It really didn't.

The tastes which fed into our band were pretty varied, while rarely straying from the middle of the road. Alex was the biggest Crowded House fan in his home county of Cheshire. Lee and Andy liked Bon Jovi and could always be relied upon to whip out their acoustics for a run-through of Extreme's More Than Words. Lucy liked indie and funk and, having been drowned out by a guitarist in an old band back in Market Harborough, was keen to ban distortion pedals from our set-up (an edict which I'm afraid I ignored). I'm afraid I don't remember what Ella was into, but as she shared strong Christian beliefs with Andy, it's probably fair to assume that death metal wasn't really her sort of thing.

I don't remember the discussions about what she should call ourselves, but I do know how we came to choose our name. Our friend Matt Ross was keen on fishing and was accumulating knowledge from various published works, including the unmissable tome 'Carp Fever'. Matt thought this would be a splendid name for our band, and it appears that we agreed. After the various names used by my school band, I was used to a certain silliness in this area, and in truth I still kinda like it. It's got the right sort of randomness for an indie band, and if somebody were to emerge with this name in 2011 I could well imagine Radio One DJ Huw Stephens saying the name in his lovely Welsh accent. That said, I was always sensitive to the idea that sooner or later some wag would swap two of the letters around to pass judgement on our skills...

Incidentally, Matt also possessed another fishy book by Bob Nudd, by the name of 'My Way With The Pole', which I earmarked as a potential album title. As we shall see, however, its services were never required...

The public debut of Carp Fever took place in Chamberlain Hall, in a space which I don't recall having a name. It was the room between the dining hall and the bar, and as such was principally used by people waiting to get fed or shit-faced. One evening, possibly in the summer term, the six of us occupied one end of it to perform a repertoire of songs we could all just about agree on. I'm pretty sure we played a Crowded House tune. We definitely did U2's Mysterious Ways, because I overheard one of Andy's friends saying afterwards that we'd "murdered it". At the time, I thought this was a little unfair; the way I got round not owning a wah-wah pedal by using my distortion and some palm-muting was surely a new dawn for guitar experimentation. Looking back, however, I suspect Andy's friend was right. We also did some Levellers stuff, including a version of Sell Out in which I "took the mic" for the shouty bit in the middle eight, prompting observers to note that I handled it as if I was in Slayer. I'm fairly sure they meant it as a compliment. I know we did a version of Parklife with name-giver Matt Ross doing the Phil Daniels bits. Beyond that, I'm really not sure.

We did write some originals, too, which may have appeared on the setlist. I'd written a couple: there was Cornwall, which the rest of the band tended to refer to as The Oystercatcher, as the word Cornwall never figured in the actual lyrics - I think I thought that was quite a Wedding Presenty thing to do (as in their tunes Rotterdam and Granadaland). It was about the holiday I'd had in Cornwall the previous summer, and how friendship lasts forever. (This has proven true in part - of the people I went to Cornwall with, Simon was my best man last year, Ben has been a vocal supporter of this blog...Lucy's my friend on Facebook...and, OK, I have no idea what Natalie's up to these days.) Figure In The Landscape, meanwhile, was based on the novel 'Tess Of The D'Urbervilles' - clearly at this point in my life I thought that what rock music needed was more of a Thomas Hardy influence.

At some point towards the end of the first year, Lee and Andy both left Carp Fever. There was no animosity - they were both sweet guys, and Ella would live with them in the second year - I suspect their reasons went along the lines of wanting to concentrate more on studies and playing More Than Words, and maybe they were fed up of being drowned out by my cack-handed usage of a distortion pedal. The newly streamlined Carp Fever ventured out of our comfort zone to play a pub called The Dorchester Arms, which would assume greater significance for me many years later when venerable Southampton indie DJ Hammy started his Saturday night residency there. We got the gig because Lucy knew some guy in a local indie band who needed a support, and the whole affair was fairly dispiriting. Any of our friends in attendance were outnumbered by stony-faced locals who were watching some sort of sporting entertainment on the TV screen above the stage. Lucy's friend's band were entirely forgettable, and nicked my distortion pedal. (I don't think Lucy put them up to it).

That ended up being it for Carp Fever. Although Lucy, Alex and I shared a house in the second year (along with our friend Gail), we never quite got motivated to give it another go. I guess the convenience of having a free room in which to rehearse in halls meant it seemed a right old hassle to arrange practice space out in the real world. Students, eh?

A few years later, Lucy and Alex got another band together who continued in the indie/folk/pop vein Carp Fever had hinted at. They were called Barrington and did much better than us, getting a CD out and actually building some sort of fanbase. Here's their Last FM page: http://www.last.fm/music/Barrington. Don't be put off by the fact that "similar artists" include Kinky Brothers and Jock's Trap.

I've lost touch with Andy, but having made Facebook friends with Lee I'm delighted to find that he's as lovely a fellow as he was back then - and that despite living with Christians for most of his time at uni he's a self-proclaimed atheist/humanist. Hopefully he'll forgive me for the More Than Words-orientated mockery above.

Ella ended up being the most successful musician to have a stint in Carp Fever on her CV. After uni, she returned to her native Devon, where (curiously, at around the same time Lucy and Alex formed Barrington and I joined a band called The Gilamonsters) she ended up playing in Buffseeds, an indie pop band who came tantalisingly close to success in the early 2000s. Here's a strangely curtailed video of their best known tune...

And as for me... well, it was five years before I joined another band, which means I won't be writing about it here for some time. However, with tales of fetish nights, an altercation with the original lead singer of Iron Maiden, the offending of a Tom G. Warrior lookalike, the clearing of an indie disco, Valentine's Day in Camden, The Frequently Late Guitarist and communicating with Japanese musicians through the power of the air guitar, The Ballad Of The Gilamonsters will surely be worth the wait...

University Year One: The Boy's A Hack In Town

Ahem. Sorry about that subtitle.

Before we get to the main meat of this chapter - namely, 1994 and my first foray into Rock Journalism - I have a confession to make. Up until this point, my research has been meticulously conducted, apart from my inability to discover exactly when Bob played in Ilminster. However, I've come across a show where the internet directly contradicts my own memory. It appears that the Lemonheads played Brixton Academy in October 1993, which means I should have written about them last time; however - and I appreciate that this is a strange thing to remember - I'm sure I discussed the Tindersticks' debut album being Melody Maker's Album of 1993 with Simon in his university halls before heading down to Brixton, which means that the gig couldn't have taken place earlier than mid-December 1993, and probably not until January 1994.

Anyway, whenever the gig happened, the Lemonheads had a special place in our hearts. When we holidayed in Cornwall in summer 1993, a tape of their album It's A Shame About Ray played a large part in the soundtrack to our week (along with a compilation I'd made which featured Astralasia's Sul-E Stomp, New Model Army, Swervedriver, Aphex Twin and what I can say with some confidence must have been another twenty or so stone cold classics). ...Ray is a slight piece of work, unlikely to appear in many Best Albums Of All Time lists (although Pitchfork appear to have named its title track the 138th best tune of the 1990s, and the album was No.4 on the NME's list for that year). What it does have, however, is a hazy, sunny feel and a bunch of lyrics about love and relationships which made it perfect for what a devotee of American High School flicks would almost certainly have dubbed our Coming Of Age summer.

Simon, Natalie and I definitely went to see them in Brixton; I don't remember whether either of our fellow Cornwall tourists Ben and Lucy were there. We got to the Academy in time to catch a bit of the Senseless Things (different bits of the internet suggest that Drugstore and Eugenius may have also played, but if they did, we missed 'em). It was our first experience of the strange sloping floor of this venue, which did at least mean that we got a pretty good view for a set filled with much of It's A Shame About Ray, plus tunes off their new album Come On Feel The Lemonheads. It was a show that felt special due to our own associations with the tunes, and it was probably one of the band's last London gigs before mainman Evan Dando went properly off the rails, more interested in hanging out with Oasis than making his own music and pushing his substance intake until he became seen as a sad, shambling yesterday's man. I'd see him do a solo gig in Southampton in the early 2000s, by which time he'd overcome his problems to turn in a pretty good set, bringing back into focus just how good his best songs are.

Now, given that I've been filling your eyes with words all about me for several blogs now, it won't surprise you to learn that at some point I decided that my opinions on what people's parents refer to as The Music Scene were well worth foisting on the public. I decided that the best place to start was by writing for a local publication, of which there were a few. I was strangely reluctant to get involved with the university paper Wessex News at this point, perhaps thinking that after only one term of uni I'd be laughed out of the offices as a fresher with ideas above his station. A local listings paper called Sound Info had already become essential reading for me (and my stash of old issues has proved invaluable research for this enterprise) and did publish reviews, but I'd already got the impression that they might be quite a tight gang to infiltrate. That left another local free arts paper called Kavort (yes, I know, that's a terrible name). I can only assume that they were desperate for contributors, as they seemed to agree to publish me suspiciously easily.

Any lucky Southampton resident who happened to pick up a copy of Kavort between the 4th and 17th of February 1994 would have discovered not one but a whopping two reviews by plucky new writer Olly Thomas, sharing a page with a writer going by the name Mustapha Mosh (oh my sides, etc) and pieces on Tenpole Tudor, a punk covers band called Wile Coyote and, er, a performance of Shirley Valentine at the Salisbury Playhouse.

The first of these reviews, both on paper and in real life, involved me going to the Joiners to see the Wishplants. At this point in musical history, the influence of prog rock on indie was pretty minimal, but there was definitely a bit of Steve Hillage flickering around guitarist Ed's contributions. As a regular reader of Melody Maker, I knew that proper journalists never missed an opportunity to make a snide remark in passing, so I suggested that the Wishplants' tunes sounded "as if the Ozrics suddenly woke up and started writing tunes." A couple of issues later, Kavort printed a furious letter from one Clovis Patten of Southampton's Portswood area, who wrote "...but in a comparison to Ozrics, Ozrics will always be better, but they are just misunderstood by cynics like him (i.e. me)." Brilliant, I thought, my first review and I'm already stirring up controversy amongst the Portswood contingent of the Ozric Tentacles fanbase! The editor's reply was curiously unsupportive, but having suggested hoisting me up by my tentacles (I'm assuming you can see what he did there), he did go on to mock Clovis for his unusual Christian name.

Poor Clovis.

I don't recall whether I was also sent to interview the Wishplants - my small collection of Kavort magazine is missing an issue which may have contained such a work - but Sophie and I certainly got chatting to them. Later in the year, we'd arrange for them to play at my University hall's ball, an arrangement which caused some confusion when it was advertised as taking place at Southampton University rather than being a closed gig open to residents of the afore-mentioned Chamberlain Hall and their guests. I should probably give you some background info on Chamberlain. I'm pretty sure it was the smallest hall of residence at Southampton Uni. One entire side of the building was designated as a "quiet" space - no music, no parties, no fun - and proved popular with the foreign students who, unlike most of their British counterparts, had actually come to Southampton to study. There was also a larger-than-average contingent of Christians at Chamberlain. Infuriatingly, as is their wont, these people turned out to be universally good eggs - I'd even play in a band with some of them, about whom more will follow in due course - but you couldn't describe them as wild. So, imagine you're the Wishplants, and you've agreed to play at some ball at a University - you'd be a bit disappointed when turning up at the smallest, quietest, most Christian hall in the city, particularly when most of the attendees aren't too bothered by your indie-prog wares and are just waiting for you to get off so the DJ can play some hits, right? I seem to remember them enjoying themselves, though...well, I can remember them sitting "backstage" taking the piss out of my suit ("Look at your shoes, man!") and singer Saul making a casually offensive joke about rape which didn't go down too well.

Sadly, things never quite took off for the Wishplants. They don't appear to have an entry on Wikipedia, and I think you can tell a lot by the fact that my internet research has yielded the information that a fellow called Dave Guerin was their monitor engineer in April and May 1994 (don't remember him at Chamberlain Hall, sadly), somebody found a copy of their Tortoiseshell EP in their loft in March 2009, and, most distressingly, that Wishplants drummer Mick is now doing this...

http://www.slim47.com/Meet/Fritz.htm

Back to the pages of Kavort, and if your glance was to move one column to the right and down a bit from the Wishplants review,you'd be looking at some words I wrote about a band who are still at it in 2011, namely Cornershop. This assignment took me to Portsmouth's Wedgewood Rooms for the first time, and indeed to the faintly depressing backstage area thereof to conduct an interview with Tjinder and Ben. Now, if your experience of Cornershop goes no further back than the Fatboy Slim remix of Brimful Of Asha, it might come as some surprise that in 1994, Cornershop had been depicted in the music press as political firebrands, their most famous image a photograph of the band setting fire to a picture of Morrissey in protest at his alleged flirtations with fascism. These days I can't help but think of Moz like you would a slightly nuts old uncle whose opinions are more cringe-worthy than genuinely offensive, but back then it felt like a new frontier had opened up, with indie's old guard being held to account by a savvy new generation.

It turned out that, contrary to their angry image, Cornershop were thoughtful, friendly fellows who were totally welcoming to a nervous kid who, thanks to a sheltered upbringing, wasn't much more used to hanging out with Asian dudes than he was to interviewing indie bands. Unfortunately, as my review testifies, I wasn't too impressed by the actual music, which tended towards non-descript sub-Sonic Youth noise, although I did single out England's Dreaming as an unsung classic. It's an opinion I still hold - with its scrappy energy rush and hijacking of signifiers from Public Enemy, The Smiths (!) and (in its title) Jon Savage's seminal Sex Pistols book, it remains one of the best singles from the Riot Grrrl era (along with Huggy Bear's Her Jazz and Mambo Taxi's Poems On The Underground).

Also on the bill were Brighton's Action Painting! (who I thought were trying far too hard and didn't even mention in my review) and Breed, who were the band of the night by some distance. There have been many bands called Breed over the years (I even know of one from Portsmouth), but this was a trio from (I think) Liverpool whose sound I described at the time as "twisted late night blueswailing." Crikey! In practice, this meant that they shared characteristics with the Bad Seeds, Tindersticks and Gallon Drunk, producing sharp-but-stately tunes fuelled by life's darker side. Their album Wonderful Blade is highly recommended, and please don't be put off by the fact that their drummer Steve Hewitt went on to join Placebo. Singer Simon has kept it more real, as you can discover here:

http://www.myspace.com/simonbreed

The next gig I went to was Skyscaper at the Joiners. Kavort weren't interested, and to be fair neither was anybody else I knew. Sophie and a horde of my pals from Chamberlain were off to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Mayflower in full regalia, so I was saved from donning a basque and suspenders and chucking toast about that evening. Skyscraper was the brainchild of ex-Swervedriver bassist Adi Vines (don't worry, Swervedriver hadn't split up - I think Adi had already left by the time I'd seen them a few months earlier). I mentioned this to a girl called Thea who wrinkled her nose in disgust at the thought I was going to see a Nazi band, but I was quick to point out that she was thinking of Skrewdriver, and that neither Swervedriver nor Skyscraper harboured far right allegiances. When Swervedriver were called on by the music press to list bands and tunes they dug, Adi would always mention the likes of Killing Joke and Murder Inc, and this was the vibe that he was going for with his new concern. By this point,they'd released a couple of good singles (Choke and Lovesick) and made for a diverting live band, although I'm not sure their album Superstate has aged too well.

Nine days later, I was back at The Joiners for my next Kavort assignment. The Voodoo Queens were a big favourite of mine and Sophie's (and of John Peel's, natch) so we were stoked to be seeing them. Looking back, they were very much the lightweight option from the Riot Grrrl days; they might have had songs critiquing the supermodel-fuelled beauty myth and sexism in general, but they also liked to pen tunes about how much they liked chocolate, shopping and Keanu Reeves (on Kenuwee Head, a tune which I can now only barely believe actually existed). In my review, I argued that this sense of humour was important as it "destroy(ed) the myth that equates feminists with dour men haters", but I can see now that it also provided ammunition for anyone who wanted to shoot them down. Not that you'd want to, mind; another way they differed from, say, Huggy Bear or Linus was that their music was unapologetically pop, in a trash-punk-surf-bubblegum kind of way. With this in mind, whoever booked Submarine as their tour support was heroically misguided; their slo-mo shoegaze was probably quite good, but as I put it at the time, their "mournful basslines and doomy atmosphere str(uck) the wrong chord with the assembled pop kids, and ke(pt) on striking it for far too long." This ultimately didn't detract from the fun to be had with headliners, however, with Voodoo Queens singer Anjali impressing us with both her ability to deal with the sort of fuckwads who seemed to attend this sort of show just to heckle, and by her friendliness when we approached her afterwards to sign Sophie's t-shirt.

 

At this point, one of the hippest names in clubland was Megadog. Originally a club night in London which booked many of they key bands on the crusty/techno borderlands, it became a travelling roadshow which put on parties in tents at festivals and, by 1994, was doing tours, one of which pulled in to Southampton University on the 9th of March. The primary attractions were Trans-Global Underground and Banco De Gaia, along with founding DJ Michael Dog and the unforgettable MC Teabag. Other treats listed on the ticket included Dog Decor and the Woof Cinema, and if anyone who was there can remember exactly what these consisted of, I'd be grateful. Both of the main acts were fantastic: Banco De Gaia was the more techno-aligned of the two, albeit with a rich strain of Middle and Far Eastern sounds underpinning much of the set, while TGU were a glorious riot of party-starting colour and sound, putting music from across the globe (as, I'm sure you'll have noticed, their name might suggest) into a blender of dubby dance music. Members wore exotic masks and singer Natacha Atlas belly-danced. This was not the sort of thing you got at indie gigs.

Business as usual was restored the very next day, when I went to review Tiny Monroe at the Joiners. As one Jimmy Martin has pointed out, I neglected to mention them in the last blog when they supported Curve at the university, mainly because I literally can't remember a single thing about that performance. I can, however, remember their Joiners set, which I approvingly noted at the time was possessed of "a cool swagger" and "a wired, dark tension bubbling under." They were one of a wave of female-fronted bands which was just breaking at the time, but unlike their contemporaries like Elastica, Echobelly and Sleeper, they never really grabbed the attention of the wider populace. I actually compared them favourably to Elastica in my review, noting rather snarkily that the latter had less talent but better connections (no pun intended, then or now). In truth, Elastica had become an early example of my being put off a band on the basis of reading too much hype before hearing any actual music - they grew on me soon enough, and their self-titled debut is more likely to find its way to my stereo these days than anything by Tiny Monroe. That said, I did unearth a tape of the latter playing live on Mark Radcliffe's radio show while researching this blog, and they weren't half bad. Ska, or at least its up-stroke guitar style, was curiously in vogue in UK indie at this point - bands as varied as Kingmaker and Therapy? had appropriated it for Queen Jane and Turn respectively - and this was a technique Tiny Monroe were fond of, along with a spiky-yet-insouciant new wave sensibility. Their frontwoman, NJ, meanwhile, was almost certainly described as "striking" in every contemporary review (although, oddly, not in mine).

As I'm saving festivals for a later blog, there's only one more First Year gig to tell you about. It was time to rock, it was time to rap, it was time to crusty techno. Yes, it was time for Senser, although technically first of all it was time for New Kingdom. These were a hip hop group from NYC, centred on the vocal talents of Nosaj and Sebastian Laws, who had started to attract favourable notices from the more forward-thinking writers in the UK music press. Theirs was a fuggy, psychedelic stew, sticking out like a sore thumb at a time when G-funk was the dominant sound in hip hop - New Kingdom had more in common with Tom Waits than Snoop Doggy Dogg. They pretty much pre-empted the rise of trip hop, and the blunted paranoia of their records found a kindred spirit in Tricky, who collaborated with Nosaj for a b-side called Moody Broody Buddhist Camp. Years later, I would discover that my friend Benny Beats and his mates used to refer to them as "drunk hip hop", and that fits their slurry style pretty well, I reckon. They were an excellent support for Senser, but in the absence of any footage of that night, you'll have to content yourselves with this clip of them on The Word. Is that Lionel Blair getting down to New Kingdom? It ruddy well is.

 

Minds were blown accordingly, but at this point Senser were certainly capable of picking up the gauntlet laid down by their support band. This gig happened on the 11th of May, which would have been three days after their debut album Stacked Up entered the charts at No.4 - an almost unthinkable achievement back in the days when they were known primarily as the Ozrics' favourite support band. Clearly, they'd crossed over, and on their own terms too. This show felt triumphant, and came with the added bonus of Nosaj joining them onstage for a rendition of the Beastie Boys' Looking Down The Barrel Of A Gun. Here's them doing it (without Nosaj) on the telly. I think you get a good sense of how short singer Heitham is from this footage...

So that was it for my First Year at university - but hang about,. I also played in a band around this time! Looks like you'll just have to come back next time to hear about my several months in a 33.3% Christian folk/indie/funk/pop collective which was named after a book about fishing...

University Year One, Autumn Term: Southampton Calling

Regular readers with a keen eye for detail will note that up to Autumn 1993 I didn't go to that many gigs - I probably listed more in my end of 2010 round-up than I attended in the first three years of the Nineties. This is fairly understandable given that for most of my teens I spent two thirds of the year at boarding school in Dorset, and the other third in a village in Somerset, neither of which exactly threw up regular opportunities for the thrill of live rock music.

However, things were to change when I moved to Southampton to go to uni. At this point, given enough money and stamina, it would be quite possible to go to see bands every night of the week, although you'd probably have to be prepared to see the likes of Mother's Ruin (rock metal, according to contemporary listings) or Necropolis (indie rockers, no less), neither of whom let a little thing like sharing a name with a multitude of other bands the length and breadth of the country get in the way of gigging Hampshire silly.

Initially, though, I rarely made it as far as town. Both my halls of residence and the main campus were situated in the Highfield area, a bus ride or long walk away from the city centre, and consequently a lot of social activity centred on the university bar. It was here, then, that I went to my first show as a student.

It's pretty much mandatory that any discussion of Chumbawamba is prefaced by a reference to their faintly ridiculous spell as pop stars on the back of their much-despised hit Tubthumping. This gig was clearly a few years prior to them getting knocked down and then getting up again, but they'd already had a pretty strange journey. In their very early days they were acolytes of anarcho-punk figureheads Crass, and the ideals of that band formed the backdrop for much of what they went on to create (though clearly not their mildly embarassing decision to sign to EMI). Musically, however, they swiftly diversified, incorporating more post-punk influences as well as folk and pop; in tandem with this, they used sarcastic humour to parody the political and pop culture of their time. I first heard them when somebody copied me half of their Slap! album, the point where they began to move into the dancier sound which would ultimately lead to Tubthumping. In 1992, their sample-heavy album Shhh earnt plenty of John Peel play and therefore my attention, and the following year they released a collaboration with Credit To The Nation called Enough Is Enough. Though its catchiness would be eclipsed by Tubthumping a few years later, I nevertheless reckoned that this anti-Nazi anthem was sure to be a hit. In fact, it made it to the giddy heights of #56. Oh well - at least John Peel's listeners voted it No.1 in the Festive 50 that year.

The two bands went on a joint tour following the single's release, calling in on Southampton students on October 16th. Opening band The Sea were a reasonable crusty folk band in the Levellers style, and Credit were on their usual form, but Chumbawamba's live show was a spectacle quite unlike anything I'd previously encountered. With elements of cabaret, pantomime and music hall at play, the band found new ways to make their many points, with Alice Nutter and Danbert Nobacon (the latter still a few years away from emptying an ice bucket on John Prescott at the Brits) the ringleaders and principal agents provocateurs, whether decrying homophobia or pretending to crucify Cliff Richard for charity. On the strength of this show, they became my favourite band for a while; I even headed up to see them in Brixton at The Fridge on December 5th with my new girlfriend Sophie, where the great supporting bill included indie band Sidi Bou Said and prominent Brit rappers Gunshot.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves... back at the start of term, my second Southampton show, on October 28th, also required only a short walk to the University. Since I'd seen them a couple of years earlier, Curve had released two full-lengths, and I was therefore much more familiar with their stuff and enjoyed their set way more than the Exeter show. However, it was their support band who left the more significant impression on me that night. Swervedriver had been lumped in with the shoegazing scene, largely on account of their Thames Valley origins and a love of effects pedals (and the fact that they supported bands like Curve didn't exactly put people off this false scent, clearly). However, their psychedelic fuzz-rock was a very different beast, its car-fetishizing aesthetics (key song title: Son Of Mustang Ford) locked in on the romance of the desert highway. Closer spiritually to Motorhead than Slowdive, they were enough of a rock band to have been invited on tour with Soundgarden and Monster Magnet in the US, although I recall that particular jaunt ended badly after Swervedriver frontman Adam Franklin publicly denounced a member of the headliners' camp for some casually homophobic remarks. Anyway, while they lacked the glamour and precision of Curve, their music ultimately had more depth, and I've noticed over the years that they've become quite the cult favourite amongst those in the know. I'd definitely recommend that people check out their album Raise and the single Never Lose That Feeling.

While applying for universities, it had occurred to me that a few years of reading the music press from cover to cover meant that the name of any major town in the UK immediately made the name of its pre-eminent music venue jump into my head. You say Hastings, I say The Crypt. You say Dudley, I say JBs. You say Newport, I say TJs. You get the picture. Well, clearly, if you said Southampton, I wouldn't have said The University. Nope, the venue I really wanted to get to was The Joiners. The only snag is that it was in an area, St Mary's, which those with local knowledge were keen to flag up as a little dodgy. I was also aware that I couldn't yet find my way around Southampton too well; after leaving alternative club Marshall's on my own, it had taken me an hour and a half and a couple of wrong turnings to get back to my halls, which I later understood should have been a 40 minute walk, tops.

Essentially, then, I was waiting for someone to want to come to a show with me, and was pretty gutted when I found out that a new friend of mine, Jason, had been down once already, to see industrial/noise band Oil Seed Rape. However, my luck changed when Sophie agreed to venture with me into the lawless environment of St Mary's Street to check out Northern Irish band Compulsion on November 8th. Aside from the Bob and Gutless shows I'd been to in Somerset, my gig experiences thus far were restricted to university refectory/theatre-sized venues, so it felt exciting to be in a place the size of the Joiners, a feeling which was only enhanced when I realized that the dudes playing pool in the front bar, one with bright red hair and the other with his long hair in schoolgirl-like plaits, were actually guitarist Garrett Lee and drummer Jan-Willem Alkema. My research suggests that local ska/punk band Smog UK supported, but I'm pretty sure I didn't see them until much later. Compulsion were great, though. The press had lumped them in with the terribly-named New Wave Of New Wave movement, but in reality they were closer to a blend of grunge and pop-punk, with a particular debt owed to the Pixies, and as such were a fine band to welcome me to the Joiners, and I always thought it was a shame that they never really got their due. That said, I doubt Garrett Lee has too many regrets with the way his career turned out, given that he's now producing stadium-indie bands like Snow Patrol...

There was one more show to go to at the Uni in that first term, namely Teenage Fanclub. These amiable Scots had sort of shuffled their way into the indie big leagues, largely through the charms of their 1991 album Bandwagonesque. By this point, its follow-up Thirteen was out, and while it couldn't compete with the hit rate of its predecessor, it still had some zippy tunes like single Radio. Having seen them at Glastonbury that year, I knew they'd deliver an entertaining set, and the only disappointment I can remember from that night was when some nitwit called for support act Juliana Hatfield to "get her tits out". If I ever turn into one of those people who bangs on about how gigs used to be better back in the day, just remind me of that.

A rather tardy review of 2010

ALBUMS OF THE YEAR

I've divided these into the Top 10 I submitted to Kerrang! for their Writers Poll and a non-K! 10. The rules are that you can only vote for albums which have been reviewed in Kerrang!, so some of the latter list are noisy buggers which slipped through the K! net...

KERRANG! TOP 10
Swans, My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky
Electric Wizard, Black Masses
Grinderman, Grinderman 2
Ramesses, Take The Curse
The Dillinger Escape Plan, Option Paralysis
Deftones, Diamond Eyes
High On Fire, Snakes For The Divine
Trash Talk, Eyes & Knives
Kvelertak, Kvelertak
Cancer Bats, Bears, Mayors, Scraps & Bones

NON-KERRANG! TOP 10
The Fall, Your Future, Our Clutter
No Age, Everything In Between
Foals, Total Life Forever
Crystal Castles, II
Nails, Unsilent Death
Flying Lotus, Cosmogramma
Teeth Of The Sea, Your Mercury
Gorillaz, Plastic Beach
Kano, Method To The Maadness
Arabrot, Brotherseed

SONGS OF THE YEAR

I have to admit it, I've been listening to a lot of music this year which some might brand, well, cheesy. Hell, I'd describe some of the below as cheesy, but for whatever reason they've all made me happy...

The Dillinger Escape Plan, Farewell, Mona Lisa
Foals, Spanish Sahara
Magnetic Man, I Need Air
Doctor P, Sweet Shop
Danny Byrd/Liquid, Sweet Harmony
Darwin Deez, Radar Detector
Donae'O, Riot Music
Rolo Tomassi, Kasia
Gorillaz, Stylo
Everything,Everything, My KZ, Yr BF

GIGS OF THE YEAR

It feels like I went to fewer gigs than usual this year, partly because Gorse were more active, partly because I didn't go to any festivals, partly because I didn't make it to enough DIY punk shows. Nevertheless, there were some right old nights out in 2010, I can tell you. Here they are in alphabetical order, RIP some of the venues listed...

Art Of Burning Water/Jovian/At A Crawl @ The Cowley Club
Beirut @ Eastbourne Winter Gardens
Comanechi/Divorce/Fat Bicth @ The Hydrant
Converge/Kylesa/Kvelertak @ The Concorde 2
Crippled Black Phoenix/Blackstorm @ The Free Butt
Dethscalator/You're Smiling Now...But We'll All Turn Into Demons/Gum Takes Tooth @ Hector's House
The Dillinger Escape Plan/Rolo Tomassi/The Ocean in Brighton and London
Electric Wizard/Moss @ The Electric Ballroom
Facel Vega/The Sceptres/Regimes @ The Cowley Club
Family Man/Bloddrunk @ The Cowley Club
Sage Francis @ Audio
Grand Magus @ The Forum
The Guillotines @ The Hydrant
Ihsahn/Shining @ The Electric Ballroom
Jovian, plenty of times in Brighton
Les Savy Fav @ The Komedia
Melt Banana/Drum Eyes @ Jam
Mudhoney @ The Concorde 2
No Age/Male Bonding @: Audio
Part Chimp/Lamp/Jovian @ Hector's House
Pulled Apart By Horses/Gay For Johnny Depp @ Audio
Resurrectionists/Battle Of Wolf 359/Attack! Vipers!/Plague Sermon @ The Hobgoblin
Rolo Tomassi/Trash Talk/Throats @ The Engine Room
Shearwater @ The Free Butt & Audio
Spectrum/Medicine & Duty @ The Free Butt
Swans @ The Concorde 2
Torche/Jovian/Dopefight @ The Prince Albert
Unkind/Gascoigne/Brutal Regime @ The Cowley Club
White Hills/Pontiak @ The Engine Room
Wolves In The Throne Room @ The Hobgoblin

1993: The Year Crusty Broke

It's hard to fathom now, but in the year before Definitely Maybe and Parklife were released, the pages of the music press were full of pictures of dreadlocked ladies and gentlemen wearing combat trousers and ratty jumpers. It's a moment in the history of '90s music which tends to get airbrushed from most overviews of the decade, which usually reduce ten years of alternative scenes to the familiar framework of grunge, britpop and nu-metal. So what the jiggins was going on?

Crusties, travellers, call them what you will, but clearly a bunch of likeminded folk had been dropping out of the mainstream to meander around the country and attend Glastonbury, Stonehenge and many smaller events since at least the mid-1980s, some inspired by the lingering hippy dreams of the '60s, others by the alternative lifestyle choices promoted by Crass and their anarcho-punk brothers and sisters. I'd argue that things stepped up once acid house started morphing into rave at the decade's end. At this point, the natural home of house and techno wasn't in a superclub, and Ibiza hadn't yet become the holiday destination of choice for half the country's ravers (the Club 18-30 hols satirized by Blur in Girls & Boys were the norm for many kids back then). Demonized by the tabloids on account of acid's none-too-subtle exhortations to chemical indulgence, rave went underground, with clandestine parties set up out in the countryside and communicated to potential attendees through secret channels. With plenty in common, not least self-sufficiency and a disdain for the moral hypocrisy of Tory Britain, the rave and crusty free festival scenes met in woods somewhere in the English countryside, and got on famously. Things weren't to remain on the down low for long, however...

In May 1992, techno collective Spiral Tribe organized a rave at Castlemorton in Worcestershire. The scale of the event, with tens of thousands in attendance, the fact that it literally went on for days and its proximity to the village of Castlemorton itself made the rave a lead item on TV news bulletins, perhaps the first time a musical event had achieved this since Live Aid - although, needless to say, this coverage was a little less positive, Ironically, the more the media frothed at its collective spout, the more publicity the seemingly endless rave received, and the more carloads of ravers descended on the site. Things were PRETTY CRAZY, as you can see here...

At the time, it seemed like the ravers had well and truly won; Castlemorton went on for nearly a week with no major police interference, but the forces of law and order were merely biding their time. A bunch of Spiral Tribe members were arrested immediately after the event and dragged through the courts, while part of the collective were effectively exiled to mainland Europe. More seriously for everyone, Castlemorton directly inspired a section of 1994's Criminal Justice Act which was pretty expicitly intended as a crackdown on the outdoor rave scene. Along with increased stop and search powers, the police were now able to turn people away from areas where a rave was suspected to be planned - and a gathering of a mere ten people was all the coppers needed to declare that a rave was about to take place. Resistance to the Act ranged from the sublime (Autechre wrote a track with totally random drum programming to take the piss out of the Act's definition of dance music as featuring "repetitive beats") to the ridiculous (seriously, have you seen the artwork on the inside of The Prodigy's Music For The Jilted Generation?).

When the then-bill was first drafted, this counter-backlash inevitably earnt the entire crusty scene a certain outlaw status, which meant in turn that it received plenty of attention in the now-sympathetic music press. By Autumn 1993, when I went to Uni, the word 'Crusty' was appearing on flyers for alternative club nights alongside the usual metal/indie/goth/punk/industrial signifiers. But what exactly was 'Crusty' music?

In truth, it ranged from the hippy prog instrumentals of Ozric Tentacles to Senser's rap/techno/metal fusion - and the fact that the scene was based on common ethos rather than musical similarities was underlined by the fact that the former band, who had a huge profile in underground circles, were enthusiastic patrons of the latter. Folk-aligned bands like The Oyster Band and The Sea followed The Levellers into the public eye, while outfits like Zion Train, Dreadzone and Revolutionary Dub Warriors favoured a souped-up-form of dub. Techno was more than adequately represented by clubs like Megadog and acts like Banco De Gaia and Ozrics offshoot Eat Static, while its influence was cross-pollinised with various strands of world music to create the international rave sounds of Transglobal Underground, Loop Guru and Astralasia; Orbital, while hardly crusties, were also a key influence on the techno end of the scene, while also making head torches a fashionable accessory. Hawkwind, Gong and The Magic Mushroom Band functioned as godfathers of the scene, inviting many of these bands to play at their shows, while plenty of punks found a common ideology with the free festival scene, meaning that the likes of Citizen Fish, Blaggers ITA and anarcho-popsters Chumbawamba were all sharing bills with crusty bands, while labels like Words Of Warning encouraged dialogue between the two scenes.

Perhaps the ultimate crusty band, for better or worse, were Back To The Planet. Their mixture of punk, dub, indie and dance was pretty ill-served by pisspoor commercial production on their first official album, Mind And Soul Collaborators, a release which is now all but disowned by the band. That said, production wasn't to blame for the genuinely awful lead single Teenage Turtles, a tune which took a surpisingly Daily Mail-style lyrical slant by literally blaming the problems faced by the nation's youth on, er, well...the cartoon Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

At the time, however, this single was sufficient to lure Kieron Maguire, Bens Moores and Rowlett and myself to see Back To The Planet at Portsmouth's South Parade Pier at some unrecorded point in 1993. They were much more impressive live than on record, a fact that was underlined both by Kieron and at least one Ben mounting a stage invasion (almost certainly to that ruddy Turtles song) and by the live tape I bought after the show.

It seems quite appropriate that in the year of crusty's ascendance, I went to my first festival. That Back To The Planet crew was expanded to include Andy Bell and Kieron's brother, who was young enough (13 or something, I guess) to get into the festival for free. It's hard to write about Glastonbury without lapsing into cliche, but the point where you get to the brow of the hill and get your first view of the festival site is something everyone should experience at some point. The sight of a town-sized festival nestling in a Somerset valley, like a cross between a giant carnival and a Middle Ages battle encampment, is quite unlike anything else. And for a sheltered eighteen year old like myself, wandering around this huge site surrounded by like-minded folk and all the signifiers of an array of alternative lifestyles felt like returning to a home I'd never visited before.

As it was right in the middle of our A Levels, we didn't get there until Friday evening and at least two of us had to leave on Sunday night, but those 48 hours were still full of delights, both predictable and unexpected, and the occasional disappointment. Falling squarely into the latter camp were sets by The Velvet Underground and The Kinks. The idea of seeing these legendary outfits was sadly better than the reality, with Lou Reed sabotaging some of the best VU tunes by singing them in an inappropriately jaunty manner and The Kinks still stuck in their 80s soft rock phase. More reliable fun came from Belly and Teenage Fanclub, the latter band ending their set by kicking a load of footballs into the crowd with the assistance of John Peel. The set I came away enjoying the most was, believe it or not, the Stereo MCs, whose good times hip hop just worked perfectly in front of an up-for-it festival crowd. More baffling were The Orb; I went to watch them on my own and found myself in the middle of a field of people staring at a stage featuring a giant rotating sun and plenty of lights but very little visible human activity. I don't recall any dancing where I was stood, just a bunch of people drinking cans and smoking. It felt a little like being at the site of an alien spaceship landing. Obviously, the Ozrics also played. At the time they'd recently released the album Jurassic Shift, and from the point when they introduced one song as being about a dinosaur, Ben Moores repeatedly hollered requests for a cover of the Was (Not Was) tune Walk The Dinosaur.

Perhaps the funniest part of the festival occurred on the Saturday night, when Kieron's younger brother was the last man back to our tents. Left to wander the site on his own, he'd evidently had a great time and had way more stamina than us elderly 18-year olds.

A band so un-crusty they once suggested onstage at Glastonbury that somebody should build a bypass over the place, Manic Street Preachers should have no place in this blog, but the fact is that Simon Hildesley and I went to see them in July 1993. I'd first becone aware of The Manics when they appeared on the front cover of Sounds, probably in 1991 or so, when they looked and sounded like this:

That first Sounds interview kind of left me cold. Their sloganeering just seemed empty and I couldn't relate to their posturing. Anyway, I was more interested in the fact that I won a competition in that issue, bagging myself a selection of five horror videos (Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2, Basket Case, Brain Damage and Creepers). At this point, Sounds would give their competition results a little headline, so if somebody called Dave Roberts won some Del Amitri swag, it would be announced with the line "Dave Roberts is a Del Amitri fan." My taste of fame was communicated with the legend "Olly Thomas Is No Chicken", which became a minor catchphrase around the school. Some people would occasionally make chicken noises at me, indicating that they hadn't fully comprehended the meaning of the original statement.

But I digress... when I actually heard the Manics, I liked the fact that they were unashamedly influenced by cock rock and punk, and learnt to appreciate their attitude as something rather lacking in most of their indie contemporaries. By the time of their second album Gold Against The Soul, their sound had become somewhat slicker, but I shouldn't really have been surprised that they were still a rather rough and ready live band when we saw them at Portsmouth Guildhall. The support bands were trumpet-toting punkers Blaggers ITA and up-and-coming British rappers Credit To The Nation, and at the time we were probably more impressed with the latter than the slightly underwhelming Manics, even with Nicky Wire in his dress and headscarf-wearing pomp.

That summer, I took a job as an extra in a film called 'The Browning Version', which was being filmed in a couple of public schools in Dorset, a job which also employed a range of past and future friends including Finlay Stewart and James Tollow. The money I earnt helped fund my share in a fantastic holiday in Cornwall with Ben Moores, Simon Hildesley and his girlfriend Natalie Collinson, and my already-ex girlfriend Lucy Howard, a holiday worth mentioning in this blog if only for the memory of Ben Moores dancing to a tape of Astralasia's Sul-E Stomp on the beach. Shortly afterwards, the same crew went to the Reading festival for a day (which was pretty much all we could afford after Cornwall).
http://www.readingfestival.com/history/index.aspx?id=2568

The first band I remember seeing after we arrived was the Senseless Things, playing on the main stage. Ben and I wasted no time in making our way into the crowd. It's pretty hard to make out in this grainy video, but there is documentary evidence of us flailing about at the 2:02 mark... (N.B. This video is tagged as being 1994, when the Senseless Things also played, but I'm convinced that this is from the '93 set, not least because my hair would have been a sight longer in '94...)

 

Over on the smaller stage (this being the era when Reading had but two stages, along with a comedy tent), we enjoyed the double whammy of Credit To The Nation and Senser. The former were enjoying plenty of attention on the back of their single Call It What You Want, which prominently featured a sample of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit. As the opening bars were identical, this would cause widespread confusion on indie dancefloors for a few years, with a tangible disappointment in the air whenever Credit's rinky-dink bassline kicked in - as it inevitably did, given that for a while there most clubs had unofficially banned Smells Like Teen Spirit, what with feverish youth attempting to outdo the tune's mosharama video. Anyway... Credit To The Nation was essentially MC Fusion, a black teenager from the Midlands. His youth provided both the good and bad things about Credit - it meant that he was fearless in (lyrically) attacking the BNP, police, sexist rappers, etc, but also that he did so with the skill of a Fifth Form debating society. Also, by explicitly seeking a crossover with both indie and pop, he alienated the British hip hop community, who at this point were more into harder (and superior) outfits like Gunshot or Katch 22. For all that, we enjoyed Credit's set, though it's telling that the comment that sticks in my head is Natalie saying that she'd picked up some new moves by watching Credit's dancers.

Although also fronted by a rapper, Senser were very much a different kettle of fish. Not only were they an actual band, but they featured a metal guitarist, hippy female co-vocalist, influences from the crusty end of techno... and a bloke called Haggis. Unlike Credit, their best tunes still hold up today, and it isn't an exaggeration to suggest that they were the closest the UK got to producing a Rage Against The Machine - as well as their fusions of sound, both bands gave voice to paranoid agit-prop, and tunes like Eject and Age Of Panic shared the dancefloor-destroying rush of Rage's hits. At Reading '93, their fiery rap/techno/metal inspired kids to climb the tent poles and dive into the crowd from a great height, forcing rapper Heitham to stop the set as violence flared.

Obviously, the Ozrics also played. Where Glastonbury was their heartland, a billing on the main stage at Reading was a sign of how far they'd come, from releasing homemade cassette albums to music press covers and a No.11 chart placing for Jurassic Shift. While a large proportion of the crowd used the Ozrics set as a perfect opportunity to have a sit down in the August bank holiday sun, set-closer Kick Muck proved as much fun as ever.

After the Ozrics, Therapy? took to the main stage. Another band very much on the rise, they'd spent 1993 releasing a trilogy of classic EPs which gifted the world with the tunes Screamager, Turn and Opal Mantra. In the process, they'd begun the crossover into the mainstream which the following year's Troublegum album would complete. Their Reading set showed them balancing their more commercial material with noisy tuneage from their earlier days, like this one...

 

To be honest, I think we headed home after that. We weren't interested in The The and Siouxsie & The Banshees on the main stage, and I have a feeling Radiohead cancelled on the second stage, so rather than stick around for Blur, we decided to leg it. This may have been the occasion when Simon ran out of petrol a few miles outside Portsmouth, forcing us to hitch home (this being the days before widespread mobile usage, we couldn't phone his folks or anything...).

You might have thought that Reading would have been our last festival for the summer, but you'd be wrong... I'm not sure whether the Pilton Village Fete still happens, but back in the day Michael Eavis used to finish the summer with a little party on Pilton's playing fields to thank locals for their support of Glastonbury. Simon and I went in '93 and, obviously, the Ozrics played. (I think Senser did too, although that might have been the following year).

So, the summer of 1993 was done and I was off to uni any day... just time to go and see Yeovil band Gutless at local pub the Quicksilver Mail, though! I'd caught them supporting PJ Harvey in Southampton earlier in the year, and as local gigs in my Somerset stomping ground were few and far between I didn't want to miss this. Combining the slightly dour indie which populated the local scene with a more thrilling and noisy experimental edge reminiscent of Sonic Youth, I didn't really know what to make of them then - and with only a 7" single and zero internet presence now, I'm still none the wiser. I did, however, buy a t-shirt, only realizing after I'd bought it that it was emblazoned with the phrase "Townie Scum Must Die"...

And with that, I was off to mingle with the townie scum in Southampton...