Tag: Wedding Present

London Fifth Trip

I headed down for a London weekend via a £25 Apex ticket on the 12.15 train from Preston on Friday 10th May 1990. My brother picked me from Euston in his mini and we darted back to his current digs in Woolwich. We grabbed some tea and listened to some Screaming Trees and Husker Du’s Metal Circus.

We headed out at 9pm and picked up my brother’s girlfriend from her workplace on some random industrial estate in Thamesmead on the way to London Subterania in the west of the city. The venue was opened the year before by the Mean Fiddler Group. It was subsequently closed in 2003 but relaunched in 2018. It has a capacity of 600.

We were there to see Thin White Rope, the Californian desert rock band who disbanded a couple of years later. It was my first gig for four months at that stage, so it was good to be back in the fray. Unfortunately, we were a tad late in arriving and the band were already 20 minutes into their set and the place was half full, mainly comprised of students.

I grabbed an expensive bottle of Newcastle Brown and headed down to the front. They were a laid-back combo and produced a reasonable set, including two encores.     

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Thin White Rope. Image Credit LastFM.com

After the gig we headed into the city centre to Tower Records which was open until midnight as my brother wanted to purchase the latest Thin White Rope release.

The following day was the FA Cup Final. That particular year we had endeavoured without success to obtain match tickets, in those days that option was more feasible than it is nowadays. Our alternate plan was to see the parade the next day if Crystal Palace won which looked likely when Ian ‘Je Na Sa Quoi’ Wright scored in extra time before Mark Hughes scuppered it with a late equaliser for Man United. We had a gentle gather in the local Poly Bar that night.

We lazed around on the Sunday morning prepping some Wedding Present and REM mix tapes. In the late afternoon we headed back into the city visiting Petticoat Lane and Camden Town where I purchased the Last Exit to Brooklyn novel.  We then drove to Notting Hill and grabbed some grub at a cheap as chips fab Indian restaurant called Khan’s where I ordered Chicken Shahi.

Post meal we headed over to Brixton Fridge landing about 8.30pm. The venue previously had a couple of homes, one of them above an Iceland store, hence the name. The location when I visited was converted from a 1913 cinema, the Palladium Picture House. The venue closed in 2010 before reopening the following year under the new moniker Electric Brixton. It was a large slightly soulless venue with a capacity of 1789 and was almost full that night.

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Brixton Fridge. Image Credit wikimedia

We handed over our £8 entrance fee and purchased a can of Breakers and caught the last song of Benny Profane’s set. The main support was the C86 Bristolians Groove Farm. I recall chatting to another punter who I jealously discovered had seen Minutemen and Husker Du in Washington in 1984 when they a support band.

Wedding Present came on at 9.45pm. They had been collaborating with Steve Albini and it had certainly resulted in a hardening of their sound. They played ‘Brassneck’ early in the set and Dave Gedge broke a guitar string due to some Hendrix impressions.    

They played ‘Everyone Thinks he Looks Daft’ and a seemingly endless but joyous ‘Favourite Dress’. It was stiflingly hot in the moshpit resulting in me re-emerging at the end as a virtual puddle when they left the stage at 11pm. I thought they were superb, arguably better then the first time I had seen them a couple of years earlier at Manchester University as their strengthened sound was of significant benefit.

Gig Miscellaneous – Part 2

So, once I had identified a band, how did I go about to listening to them as there was no Spotify in those days. Even though I had never heard one note of the bands I had become interested in, the only option was to buy a plethora of LP’s which involved many enjoyable Saturdays skulking around record shops. Thankfully most of the records were good, but naturally there some duds. Initially these were purchased from John Menzies and Brady’s. I then discovered Action Records, a jewel of an independent record shop, down on Church Street in Preston which has become a staple for me, and the indefatigable owner Gordon Gibson and his loyal staff have provided top customer service for over 35 years.

Action Records in Preston. Image Credit Yell

Having purchased and listened to recorded output from the band, how do you know when and if they are touring? In those days NME was an essential purchase in this regard and on the day of its weekly release (Wednesday) I scoured the upcoming gig list for likely suspects. I managed to catch a very early Strokes gig by being on the ball in this regard. Another source of fruitful information was from On the Wyre, a 3-hour Sunday afternoon programme on Radio Lancashire which played a wide range of obscure material. Also, when I began attending gigs the upcoming lists distributed by the venues were highly useful, the International and Academy in Manchester were especially key players in this.  

Word of mouth information was valuable, especially in relation of local gigs, and I garnered and utilised these communications to catch quite a few gigs. However, it could be erratic, and I recall somewhat annoyingly gigs were missed, namely early Wedding present and Mogwai gigs, at the Caribbean Club and the Adelphi respectively.  

How and where to buy tickets was the next conundrum. For Preston gigs Action Records or even picking them up from the venue box offices was the best option. For further afield, mainly Manchester in the early days I visited House of Records above the market in Preston who for a short spell were an agent for Manchester tickets. However, the main source of Manchester tickets was always Piccadilly Records who in the late 80’s were located on the corner of Mosley Street near Piccadilly Gardens. I used to obtain a suite of tickets from them and I was on first name terms with the lass who issued the tickets and my method of payment was the rather archaic cheques in the post!

Piccadilly Records. Image credit Local Data Company

In latter years, I tend to favour ENTS24 and SEES as reliable ticket agents, I am not a great fan of Ticketmaster and only use them I have no other choice.

Now people who know me will tell you I am generally chilled to the point of horizontal, however over- zealous unnecessary officialdom is a grouse of mine, so I have had the odd mild altercation with unreasonable bouncers.

My chief irritation though is saved for ticket touts. To a degree, I understand their function and accept that unfortunately sometimes they are a necessary evil. What really shakes my tree though is their complete inflexibility and greed. My absolute nadir in that regard was when I had a spare ticket for a  Black Rebel Motorcycle Club gig and the negotiation resulted in them offering me £15 for a face value £25 ticket for a sold out gig and they had the temerity to suggest I was being unreasonable to have the expectation that they would make a higher bid. My reaction was to outline to them unsavoury alternate uses for the ticket rather than them obtaining it! Later in the pub opposite the venue we encountered a girl who needed a single ticket which I sold at face value and it was patently clear she was a fan of the band. She had approached the touts who quoted her a mind bogglingly inflated price of £60. For the touts out there, I would quote a James line ‘You can do better that that’!