Tag: Venus Beads

East Midlands Gigs

I am heading over to the East Midlands this week to cover a further two gigs in that area, namely in Derby and Leicester.  

On 20/02/09 myself and my brother headed out to Derby on the train from Nottingham for a pub crawl incorporating a gig at the end of the evening. We did a circular monorail route starting and ending at the train station and found some decent old hostelries en route.

Our gig destination was Derby Victoria Inn, handily placed opposite Derby station. It was a traditional pub with a bar area and a function room at the back where the venue was located. It looks like the future of the pub is currently in doubt and is up for sale.

Victoria Inn pub in Derby. Image Credit whatpub.com

We arrived a tad later than expected but it worked to our advantage as we managed to wander straight in the gig without paying and the main band Switzerland were just about to start. They were only young scamps, but they created a hell of a racket and they were very good.

The only other attendees were patently friends and family and they were looking at us trying to work out if we were perhaps agents hunting for new talent, so we played on that clear misunderstanding and maintained an enigmatic presence at the back of the room. Unfortunately, the band due to their age and other constraints split the following year.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/derby/hi/people_and_places/music/newsid_8877000/8877874.stm

My only other visit to Derby was on another pub crawl spoilt in the middle by watching North End being battered 5-1 at Pride Park!

Husker Du were a seminal band of my youth and it is widely acknowledged that they were grossly underrated at the time. They broke up in 1988, and the two songwriters Bob Mould and Grant Hart subsequently produced sporadically decent solo material.

Bob then put together another three-piece combo called Sugar circa 1992. Their first album ‘Copper Blue’ was by far his most commercially successful record which was named the Album of the Year by NME. I distinctly remember hearing the chiming chords of ‘Changes’ for the first time and the album also contained their jaunty single ‘If I Could Change Your Mind’ which surprisingly but deservedly received airplay on Radio 1. I remember driving out at lunch one day and even that pillock Simon Bates was playing it!

The commercial level they reached was exemplified by a couple of reverential students approaching me around the time in the Exchange pub in Preston to wax lyrical on my Husker Du T-shirt.

So, we decided to stalk Sugar on their first British tour starting with a gig at Leicester Princess Charlotte on 25/09/92.

See the source image
Princess Charlotte in Leicester. Image Credit Flickr.

I set off to my brother’s current girlfriend Fiona’s parents house in Nottingham about 1pm on the Friday of the gig. On arrival I became the designated driver so drove the 30 miles over to Leicester in torrential rain with the Allegro making strange noises on the way over.

The venue was an old Victorian boozer and the music/gig room within opened in the 1970’s. It was a famous stop on the toilet circuit and Radiohead and Oasis played early gigs there, the venue finally closed in 2009.

Leicester legacies: The life and times of The Charlotte
A fascinating back story to the venue

The music venue was a cellar at the back with shared loos and a capacity of about 250 and served some very watery Ansells. Venus Beads supported with an ok set.  

I was very excited as it had been 5 years since the last Huskers gig. They came on at 10pm and in true Huskers style launched the set with the first five songs played non- stop. Bob still had the lowest strung guitar I have ever seen as it was virtually down to his knees.

Unfortunately, it was marred by an awful sound system, which the band picked up on and started to play louder which covered some of the impurities. I recall they played ‘Hoover Dam’ and then a couple of tracks off upcoming album ‘Beaster’. The bassist David Barbe had a great voice on a couple of tracks. They finished the set with ‘Man on the Moon’ and came off about 11.15pm. Fiona and Steph were completely bladdered and fell straight asleep on the back seat and we arrived home about midnight.

Sugar released a total of 3 albums before splitting in 1996.

My only other subsequent visit to Leicester was to visit their curry mile and I remember seeing a  shop there with the fabulous name of House of Sarees!

Manchester Venue 4 – Boardwalk

The Boardwalk was a small venue (capacity initially about 250 before increasing to 400) in an industrial area on Little Peter St behind Deansgate station. It was a stone’s throw from the Hacienda and was a fine venue between 1984 and 1999. It doubled up as a recording space and Oasis played their first ever gig on 18/08/91.

You went up some narrow steps to the main room with a bar on the left and I recall it was a very warm venue.

Picture of John Robb, journalist and lead singer of Membranes and Goldblade, who despite being a Blackpool FC fan is a genuinely good bloke. Image Credit mdm.archive.co.uk

Between 18/06/1987 and 09/10/1992 I attended five gigs there. The first being a very early fine gig by the Proclaimers supported by the Rhythm Sisters. They came on at 11pm with late stage times being a regular occurrence and they played the whole first album and then ran out of songs so played the first track again.

The second gig on the 18/07/87 was a proper event. On John Peel’s show on the Wednesday it was referenced that the legendary Big Black were playing their final ever British dates, the penultimate one being on the Saturday. I put a call into Piccadilly Records box office on the Thursday morning and was informed there were a handful of tickets and asked them to save me two which we agreed would be picked up in person on Saturday afternoon, but upon arrival we were informed that there had been an oversight and the gig was now sold out. Hope extinguished one might think, however there was a chink of light as we were informed that the venue always held 50 tickets back. So off we trotted and we were the first in the queue at 8pm to obtain said tickets. I recall a minibus arriving from Crewe with the aspiration of garnering some tickets.

Pubs were then visited in celebration and we returned to catch the support band Death by Milk Float. Big Black themselves were an intense slightly unsettling experience with their industrial noise, at one point in their enthusiasm the crowd pulled lead singer Steve Albini into the moshpit, causing a 10 minute delay. They were thoroughly worth the ticket palaver to witness them before the band disbanded, ‘Kerosene’ was outstanding. We returned home to watch a recording of Steven Roche wrap up the Tour De France which he won the next day.

Steve Albini of Big Black on stage. Image Credit blogspot.com

The third gig the following year was a band called Pussy Galore who were not that memorable.

The fourth in Sept 89 was Firehose supported again bizarrely by Death by Milk Float. My now wife Gill was studying in Crewe at the time and one of the ticket outlets was located in a record shop there. So on a weekend visit I scamped in to purchase some tickets completing the full circle of the Crewe/Boardwalk link. Firehose appeared out of the original band Minutemen after the untimely death of their lead singer D Boon in a car crash. A chap called EdFromOhio made an approach and encouraged the band to reform with him stepping in as lead singer.

When they came on stage we realised that we had unwittingly being sat near them in the Briton’s Protection pre-gig (very limited band photos available pre-internet to know what people looked like). They were a terrific live act and for some inexplicable reason I wandered into their dressing room and said hello to Ed who walked off without a word which I took as my cue to curb my interloping activities and go home!    

My final appearance at the Boardwalk was to watch Sugar supported by Venus Beads on 09/10/92. Sugar was ex Husker Du Bob Mould’s new band which finally brought him some much deserved critical acclaim. They produced a thunderous set which was a suitable epitaph to a sorely missed venue.