Wednesday 31 January 2018

Gigging, ligging and leek pie



There have been a few snippets of conversation in this blogging corner recently about travelling with bands.  I did my little stint of it in the early ‘80s because my boyfriend was the guitarist in an anarcho-punk band, and the other day I happened to mention in a comment over at My Top Ten a particular memory from when I joined them on a mini-tour.

There we all were at the end of this little trip around various dingy dives scattered about the UK: four band members, four girlfriends and the 'roadie', sitting in a motorway service station a long way from home, hungry and miserable as hell.  Surely it shouldn't be like this?!  But it was.  We pooled what little cash we had between us - like the sticky twopence pieces you find in those fluffy far corners of inner pockets - to see if we could afford a few buns.  Maybe a chocolate muffin.  But we didn't have enough for more than a crappy cup of tea.  It was desperate - so desperate - the vocalist had a little cry.

And the stupid thing was that we were on our way back home and it wasn't like we didn't have money there.  Or warm beds and clean socks.  It was the tension that caused the tears. Being cramped up with other people for too long.  Sleeping on floors.  Inhaling exhaust fumes and the communal breath of strangers in unfamiliar venues.  The waiting about, so much waiting.  All those things add up.

Is it time to serialise some of those recollections here?  Not being a band member, my perspective may be different too -  I observed things, I felt things, I didn't have to perform.  Whilst I don't have diaries, I do have memories, so maybe I ought to jot a few down before they fade?  As I'm sure most people can say about certain periods in their life, there's almost a book just waiting to be written.  Or a sitcom -  one in which I could also explain the 'leek pie' reference in the title above.... (I will!)

Anyway, while I think about that, I remember that I'd written a post some years ago (slightly edited here, but apologies if you've seen it before) which might serve to kick-start some more.  And if it does, then please think of this as the introduction...!

Do you have any tales from the tour bus?  I'd love to hear them.

* ~ * ~ *

A smell of stale cigarette smoke lingers in the stingingly cold night air. The floor of the back of the transit van where I sit feels icy, even through my trousers. My back hurts, leaning against something hard and unyielding, its corner poking into my shoulder.

There are seven of us in the back of this metal box, trying to ‘snuggle’ down between amps, drums, guitar cases, backdrops and bags of leads and pedals, behind the cab, hoping to catch some sleep as the vehicle rumbles monotonously down the motorway in the bleak early hours of a winter morning.

Along with band members and the other girlfriends is another passenger - a stranger.  He's a ‘fan’ who is cadging a lift back home after the gig. Whilst packing up at the end of the night - always a long-winded business - he’d hung about and asked, “Any chance of dropping me off in Hull?"   With the band’s badges on his lapel glinting in the streetlights, the bass player and self-appointed spokesman for the group couldn't refuse. Never mind that this detour takes us an hour out of our way home and it feels like an eternity when we’ve got another 120 miles to go. But this often seems to happen; there's always someone in the van travelling back who hasn’t travelled out with us, and usually it’s someone who smells strongly of sweat and dope and farts, with limbs that are far too long and a bulky rucksack, taking up precious space and time. And space and time mean more than anything on the home-bound stretch, because everyone is knackered, hungry, dehydrated, cold, squashed up and grumpy. Everyone just wants to get home, longing for deep sleep in a warm, soft, bed.

For a while this became quite a frequent thing for me as I travelled with the band to venues up and down the country. We usually tried to get back the same night, which in reality meant arriving home just as the sun was coming up.  When we stayed over somewhere, there was no nice comfy hotel or motel.  This was anarcho-punk, after all!  So instead there was the damp squat in Bath – a condemned terraced house with no plumbing, and the floor of a tiny council flat in a high rise in St. Helens, which did have plumbing but, by strange coincidence, a broken toilet.

My memories of those days are a melange of odd moments and images. From being stopped and searched by the Mets as we travelled home through South London, to seeing a cow giving birth as we ventured through the Cumbrian hills on the way to a gig near Windscale nuclear plant. From hearing rumours that skinheads were going to throw meat (!) on stage at Grimsby (they didn’t), to paddling in the sea before a gig in Fareham. And there was the Gizzard Puke-styled punk in Burnley who was ‘wearing’ a condom attached to his face between safety pins (one in his lip, one in his nose. It was quite a look.) It turned out he was the singer in one of the support bands, whose only memorable number was a re-worded demolition of Eddie Cochran’s ‘C’mon Everybody’ endearingly entitled ‘Fuck Off Everybody’.

I remember the inter-band arguments, oh yes, plenty of them.  And the seemingly endless soundchecks, the listening in on fanzine interviews, and the way only Northern punks sported moustaches… Strangely enough, perhaps, the thing I probably remember the least about is the performances. They were good, though.  Of course.

18 comments:

  1. This is great C. Northern punks- a feature of every town and suburb until very recently. I'm ready for more tales from the tour bus.

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    1. Thanks SA, I'd like to write a few more. Don't see so many Southern punks either now - but they never had moustaches...

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  2. Oh C - Somehow the homeward journey was always gruelling and nothing like the feeling of heading off somewhere (in daylight). You certainly sound as if you well and truly did your time as a band girlfriend so I would also love to hear more tales from that time. As I know only too well from a source close to home, memories can go, so best to get them written down. A bit of cultural history.

    Northern punks had moustaches? As far as I can remember Scottish ones didn't!

    Great stuff.

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    1. Thanks Alyson, I can still conjure up the feeling of travelling back late at night and it seeming to take forever - horrible in any situation when you just want to get home. What was a particular pain was having to keep stopping to drop other people off first (me being one of the last). Very tedious.

      The moustache thing was a revelation!

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  3. Dundee ones almost certainly did!

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    1. Haha, interesting regional variations in species!

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  4. Brilliant! Looking forward to more. Can't believe that a "fan" would try to cadge a lift home with the band. The nerve of some people!

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    1. Thank you! And maybe it was the whole thing about anarcho punk beliefs, the politics and the idea that there should be no division between band and audience, no-one making any money, gigs being played for benefits and causes... some people seemed to expect a free ride.

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  5. What do you think? Time of your life or just a time in your life? I certainly don't believe you're romanticizing anything, but there is something so romantic about it all anyway... grime and all. I'm hooked. Must have more!

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    1. Definitely not the time of my life, and definitely not romantic, but glad to have had the freedom to do that stuff while I was young. I wouldn't have missed it for the learning experience alone!
      Will see if I can gather up enough memories to write a few more posts on it anyway. Thanks so much for your interest!

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  6. The band in question deserve to be written about and you're the one to do it, C. If not you then who else? When I wrote about the debut album some time ago, the response I got on Facebook was lovely, with a genuine outpouring of love and respect for it from people from all over the world. Do it. In your own time, of course - there's no deadline - but it will be worth it.

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    1. Ah thanks John, that's good to hear, much appreciated, and your comment about the album has been passed on too! I'm never sure about how to approach these thing whilst wishing to maintain a degree of anonymity because it's talking about real people, real events. But serialising a few litle snippets quietly here would be enjoyable and records them for my own reference, if nothing else.
      Still like the idea of an anarcho punk sitcom... !

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  7. Great post, C. In the early 80s I was working in an entertainment complex in Cornwall. Had a couple of offers of jobs 'on the road'. Never took them up.

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    1. Thanks Martin. I wonder how things would have panned out for you if you'd accepted those job offers. We'll never know, but it's interesting sometimes to imagine.

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  8. Just found you . Enjoyed this (married to a saxophonist).Liked the posts on the victorian cards too ..

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    1. Hi Angela and many thanks for dropping by. Hope the post rang some bells! Glad you like the cards too, I'm hooked on them.

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  9. Just marvellous C. Needless to say, I want to hear more tales too - many more. Oh, and if you ever get around to putting all the tales together in a book, you definitely stumbled on the ideal title for it... 'My Boyfriend Was the Guitarist in an Anarcho-Punk Band'. Perfect.

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    1. Ah thanks! I'll have to keep jotting them down before they fade - at least I have someone with whom to check the memories, he might be able to fill in some blanks!

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