Another Url, Another Planet

'Whatever happened to The Gaddafi Brothers?' asked my brother. 'If only they'd kept at it,' he said, 'they might have made a name for themselves.' I checked with Ronnie: 'They played one gig at Caistor Youth Club and split up.' This is a picture of a typical audience member:

Suitably inspired, Ronnie went on to play bass in GAS-S! 'We played three gigs, made an unnerving, feedback-drenched, god awful sound and bowed out, unknown.'

In later years, Ronnie and me would play in a number of equally forlorn bands together. But The Gaddafi Brothers and their honorary father's demise reminded me of my own earlier claim to fame.

Back in 1985, instead of studying hard for my A-Levels so that I could go to university, I was watching Stardust and dreaming of becoming a rock star with my mates. We played one gig outside our small home town, supporting Ghost Dance at Cleethorpes' Submarine, opposite the pier, and left for London shortly afterwards in a Toyota Hiace converted to hold our guitars and amps as well as sleep the three of us. We arrived in Poplar in the East End and met up with Dunc, who we knew from school, and who was now an anarchist. Dunc had told us on a previous recce that he could get us fixed up with a squat to live in.

I remember one gig we played at a pub nearby (The Buccaneer?) where the audience totalled the barman and a couple of people playing pool in the room next door. I also have a memory of spending the day recording our demo tape in a studio only to come home and find all our stuff in black bin bags outside as we'd been evicted. Still, we got a much nicer place by the canal instead.

By far our biggest gig, however, was at the Libyan People's Bureau, which a bunch of anarcho-punks had occupied as it was empty following the shooting of Yvonne Fletcher. I don't remember much about it, other than feeling quite terrified after soundchecking with our cover of The Jesus And Mary Chain's The Hardest Walk and one of the friendly new inhabitants warned us 'If you play that song tonight, we're gonna kill you!' And the stage was built out of Green Books. Listening to the thrash punk the DJ was playing, we decided to play everything quite a bit louder and faster and make a run for it as soon as we finished our set.

We escaped with our lives and our guitars, and it can't have been long after that we decided we weren't really cut out to be rock stars after all and headed back up north to the relative safety of home.

The Jesus & Mary Chain - The Hardest Walk from teokalz on Vimeo.

I never thought that this day would ever come
When your words and your touch just struck me numb
Oh and it's plain to see that it's dead
The thing swims in blood and it's cold stoney dead
It's so hard not to feel ashamed
Of the loving living games we play
Each day

And I'm stuck in a shack
Down the back of the sea
Oh and I'm alive and I'm alone
Inside a sick sick dream
Oh is it me?
Is it me that feels so weak?
I cannot deceive but I find it hard to speak

The hardest walk you could ever take
Is the walk you take from A to B to C

I walk
Oh honey I talk
Don't want you to want me
Don't want you to need me
Don't want you to need me
Don't want you to need me

And I walk