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The Official Crawling Chaos Website: Post Punk Alternative music from the North-East of England. -status report

Copyright © 1977 - 2008, Crawling Chaos
All persons and events mentioned in this site are real. Any resemblance of persons to themselves, alive or dead, is by design.

n.b. page changes after 5 minutes

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Miscellaneous

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Pits Studio

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Overwork Effects

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Travelling

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Other

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Live

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Contact

The Crawling Chaos can be contacted directly here:

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Script by Dagon Design
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Sex Machine/Berlin

Code: FAC 17

Original Factory front cover for Sex Machine


Sex Machine

1 hr jamming, 30 mins lyrics brainstorm and 3 months gestation created the “Factory” favourite, pop-pickers.Basic drive created by Strangely one night using fuzzed LFO-controlled VCA‘d keyboards. After a few minutes Doomage had generated the killer guitar tune to go with it. A work of genius as it lends itself very well to multiple overdubs. The tune stayed like this for a little while when it was decided to add some words and do it properly. On the final released version, this involved a serious amout of guitar overdubbing and a few extra keyboard bleeps. Words added by Strangely, Doomage and Errol. Fatso thought of the first line “I’ve got a brand new pair of genes”. The lyrics “pinch” heavily from the “My Mum” song by Dudley Moore on the “Derek and Clive Come Again” record. They started off as a prediction based on scientific progress and the natural human proclivities towards sexual enhancement(s). Our initial idea was that amputees and the like could “grow” new limbs or organs to replace damaged ones in the same way that a cell, containing all the info needed for a person, changes into a foetus and then a human being. There must be something that stops human cells doing this as salamanders can grow new tails and the liver can regenerate when only a third is left. In the pub this soon degenerated into the words as they are and what would probably happen. The words are now becoming true as scientific fact, first as gene therapy and very soon now, as gene modifications and designer babies become commonplace, as a “natural” way to enhance the sex organs. After all, all men want bigger cocks and all women want bigger tits and smaller bums. It’s what we are..However, it was a close run thing that the tune could’ve been based on Joan Crawford as we were quite fond of that track at the time as well.


Berlin

Live recording. I’m not sure if it’s an early one done at The Bridge, Newcastle or a later one there or somewhere else. I remember a tape getting accidentaly erased so that some plans had to be revised and decent stuff had to be done again. I’m 100% sure that beer was involved…

It’s a very simple piece that demonstrates the kind of jamming that was done live within a basic structure that could go on for any amount of time. For live recordings, most of the studio equipment would go on stage with the tape decks being used in innovative ways, different to their normal studio usage.

One thing IS for sure though - Ian Curtis of Joyce Division would never have volunteered his services to sing with Crawling Chaos.  It was indeed Strangely Perfect wot did it.

Tags: Artistic, Audio, Beer, Code, Crawling Chaos, Cunt, Doomage, Errol, Factory, Fatso, Foetus, Guitar, History, Keyboard, Khult, Lyrics, Machine, Newcastle, Recording, Sex, Sex Machine, Strangely Perfect, Studio, Tape

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Waqqaz

Code: Foetus 4

Waqqaz Front Cover


Remocarpet

Doomage inspired track based on a repeating C-A-E chord sequence played in 4/4 so that the chords appear to “rotate”.


1078-1082

Doomage creation. Strangely vocals with spooky spoken words added by Doomage


Oh Blasé

Doomage inspired chords and words. Strangely edited words to fit. First played live at an open air gig at Nenthead where it lasted about half an hour.


Fatso Died And Likes It

Simple tune, very soon written as a vehicle to transport football piss-take joke words. It starts fairly hard and then drops for the amalgam of poorly heard football commentary rising to another climax.

After the first serious mix-down we all sat down to watch the TV with this track in the background. The news was on with the Heysel disaster, almost live.
The news item lasted the length of the track and was a perfect audio accompaniment to the terrifying scenes. The hairs rose on my arms for that.


Trouty Hobin

Very disturbing. The madness starts here.
Holly created chord structure then everyone added a bit. Doomage created keyboard chords at end which Strangely played. Everyone seemed to switch places both playing and inventing the parts with this one.

Since reworked by Holly as “The Punk Trout” as output for his current project, The Symptoms.


Comrade Dolphin

Strangely inspired to investigate what would happen with two notes a fourth apart changing to another two so that the low one goes down a semitone and the higher up a semitone, thus producing a fifth. Progressed  to completion while Strangely was in France and very nice it is too. Strangely intends to do it again with the original “hard” version in his head.


Reg Vase

Doomage creation and one his finest in the opinion of the author. He spent about a fortnight working out every note for the multi-layered guitar-based track. Words added by Strangely for variety. They spell EYES by design.


The White Sybil

Holly based track (inc trumpets!). Strangely synthesiser is two-tracked with two notes tuned by ear EXACTLY a perfect third apart, with levels adjusted to suit. This gives the strange sound as usually the normal third would be used which is slightly atonal but our ears are accustomed to it, hence the perfect third sounds odd. This coupled to exactly the same notes on the organ makes it quite weird.


Yoni Suchon

Strangely originated. Doomage words (Yoni is rude, tut tut). Strangely plays keyboard through fuzz/VCA/echo as standard. Guitar power chorus. “Tengo mucho beber” is Strangely’s poor Spanglish for “I’ve had too much to drink”


Curling Sandwiches

Doomage main vocals on a joint creation(?). Multi-tuned synth goes through VCA for plinkity sound. Pinky and Perky on guest vocals.


Netwilf

Holly creation from Nothin’ days slowed right down for this effort, one of my favourite pieces.
Pamela’s Vile refers to Palmersville outside North Shields.


Bosumptwi

Doomage creation. We never could find any vocal inspiration for this one without being corny.  Later tapes may have some.


I Must Be Ambidextrous (I Can Smoke With Both Hands)

Holly music and words creation. The words refer to a (working) holiday he had in France when he ran out of dosh and was so hungry he seriously considered eating a packet of Henna hair dye he found on the street. Strangely created chorus made Holly smile.


Comrade Dolphin (Reprise)

- pretty obvious from the title really.


Me

Looking down, I saw that you are bleeding(,) awful.
Beginnings forgotten - the parts are a joint effort.



Tags: Artistic, Audio, Blasé, Code, Doomage, Fatso, Foetus, football commentary, France, Gigs, Guitar, heysel disaster, History, Holly, Keyboard, Khult, Music, News, North Shields, open air gig, Pets, Punk, Reg Vase, Remocarpet, Sounds, Strangely Perfect, Synth, Synthesiser, Transport, Vocal, Yoni, Yoni Suchon

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  1. [...] Finally started documenting Waqqaz in the same style as the others.  The page fits here [...]

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Private: Thanks for the Money

All the money raised will help towards keeping the works and memories of Crawling Chaos alive

cc_background1_hover.jpg
Picture of graffiti under Victoria Road bridge, Bridgwater, Somerset, UK © 2007 Strangely Perfect

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The Big C

Code: Foetus 3

The Big C - Front Cover


Gygno

Holly created guitar and bass. Bass was played by Doomage on this, Holly guitar. The rinkity-dinkity synth and plain distorted organ solo were added by Strangely with words and the original singing from Haircut. But we got fed up with his singing so Strangely did it, better. Certainly on this one. Gary invented the fantastic drums instantly. It’s a very precise piece with thrashing guitars mixed well back from the starting noise and stuff. Strangely uses the proximity effect on the microphone and stressed sibilance on the tape-echoed vocal very well. Doomage set the bass guitar sound up brilliantly and the drums come through nicely, especially the toms.


Urbane Encounter

Doomage riff inspired. Strangely orchestrated.
Nightmare in Eldon Square Shopping Centre. Played at virtually every gig. Took 3 years to record properly…Laziness I guess.


Wee Jimmy (Part II)

Strangely made. Re-jigged for daftness.
EFS kind of piece. Fairgrounds and Tom & Jerry are in this as well as classical diminished descents. Jim from Derrim let us down with his tape deck. So he got a daft tune named after him.


Worms

Originally created as a jam Doomage guitar jam voiced over round his mum’s place by Strangely who didn’t have any instruments or gear at the time. Developed and recorded at the Pits using special one-hit super-stereo echo on the drum toms as an experiment. I can smell the worms coming, Hah!


The Katrina Syndrome


Friends

Created by Strangely with extra clangy Crawling Chaos additions. Originally derived as a cross between “”Baby You’re so Repulsive” by “Crime” and “Andy Warhol” by David Bowie. Samples to compare are here.


Jhonn’s Angel

Doomage invention.
The vocals can be approached in many ways. This is one way.


The Vulva Boatman


Fraüline Le Moîne


D.S.S.


Skaill

Neat jam played twice, one at 2x speed. Stopwatch timed to finish concurrently. PLAY LOUD.

Skiall001.jpgFrom an atmospheric and powerful jam between Doomage and Strangely.
It was so good that the only addition needed was itself speeded up two times. It was copied onto another tape and then the fast one started at the correct time to finish concurrently with the slow (normal) one using a stopwatch. EQ and volumes were adjusted to suit the feel and pace. The piece sounded sea-like and Orkadian or Skerry-ish tied to the sound of ages. We pulled the right-sounding title from an atlas of the Orkneys, which is here. It’s quite close to Skara Brae.

I’ve turned the bass up even more here. It’s almost impossible to get it to sound like the PA in the room otherwise.



Tags: andy warhol, Artistic, Audio, Classic, Code, Crawling Chaos, david bowie, Doomage, Drums, EFS, eldon square shopping centre, Encounter, Fairgrounds, Fantastic, Foetus, Gigs, Guitar, guitar sound, Gygno, Haircut, History, Holly, Instrument, Khult, Microphone, Nightmare, organ solo, Pit, Strangely Perfect, Synth, Tape, Urbane, Vocal, Worms

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  1. [...] view this YouTube video This tune was the inspiration for me inventing the basic structure of the Crawling Chaos tune “Friends”. It’s bloomin’ marvellous. I heard it on Peely one night and that was it! Another bit [...]

  2. Strangely Perfect October 3, 2007 10:00 am

    Friends - again, more connections…

    Another bit of the “Friends” piece (and others) comes from Rachmaninov.  The first video is of his famous prelude (which he called “it” as he got fed up with playing so often).  This music represents corpses(ghouls) rising fro…

  3. Strangely Perfect February 12, 2008 11:27 am

    Gygno with Shieldsy…

    I’ve put an original “Gygno” on the Crawling Chaos site here.  The track is almost complete apart from the fact that Paul’s voice and singing weren’t right.  So I did it, and it was about then that Paul stopped singing w…

  4. [...] This track I’ve managed to keep a good controlling lid on the several different echoes. In Jhonn’s Angel and D.S.S., say, because of time constraints and other factors, the echoes are always just on the [...]

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Gas Chair Clown a.k.a. “The Gas Chair”

As mentioned elsewhere, this was released by Factory Records with their mistaken name of “The Gas Chair”. The band thought they were very clever getting a title as an anagram of the band’s name. There were several and the plan was for each to be used for a different LP release. After the first fuck up, we didn’t bother.

Code: FACBN 6

Gas Chair Clown a.k.a.


Macabre Royale

Recycled “Newspapers” (original lyrics on lyrics page). Slowed down and effected reworking of a Doomage creation, sans words.


Creamo Coyl

E.F.S. Union of “Out of the Blue” and a Nothin’ track.
Obviously a piss take. Started off with Strangely tooting on keyboards the chords to “Out of the Blue” by Roxy Music. Holly said he had one like it so we put the two together. Afternoon TV full of VO5 and Pantene Pro with micro-vitamins adverts shows this tune to be a premonition.


Left Hand Path

–almost an E.F.S. but what’s being forged?


Guinness

Definately an E.F.S.

Gary and Jeffs vocals emanate from an interstellar bar not far from the Arsenal. I’ve always been very wary of noodles since this.


Arabesque

Actually an E.F.S.

Strangely created. Tune is arpeggiated Adim and Ddim hence arabian sounding, hence the name. Haircut made up a few words. The tune was made on Strangely mother’s dining room table while testing the R1 and R2 combination. He was experimenting with fuzzed Adim, trying to get Aelonian and Dorian sounds. But it ended up Arabic… This mix has the snare drum alone using the long hallway at The Pits as an echo chamber again, with the other channels using our normal tape echo where appropriate.


Harry

Harry Secombe’s coming to tea. Holly creation. Woke up after a weird dream thinking that the now deceased portly comic and singer was arriving that day. For tea.
He invented this before he took drugs. It was a much loved and valued addition to the Crawling Chaos repertoire. We made a fortune doing this song again and again a charity collection in the streets of Morpeth. Me on vocals and mouth piano thing, Holly on guitar and a couple of others on bucket collection duty.I still play this every week; I love it!


Disierta Membra


Canadian Pacific

E.F.S. le grand plus en plus.
Doomage inspired creation with Strangely. Doomage & Strangely lyrics (for what they’re worth!) American gloomy country piss-take. Nice and short, fortunately. Aaah ma baabeez gorn and left me…


Breaking Down

Neat. Distinctive.
E.F.S.


Tags: Arabesque, Arse, Artistic, Audio, Code, Crawling Chaos, Creamo, Doomage, Drug, Factory, Guitar, Haircut, History, Holly, Jeff, Keyboard, Khult, Lyrics, Music, News, Pit, Singer, Sounds, Strangely Perfect, Tape, Vocal

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Homunculus Equinox

Code: FOETUS 0001

Homunculus Equinox expanded cassette cover A Foetus Cover Up! - original cassette format (somewhat worn!) Homunculus Equinox C60 casstte - Side 1 Homunculus Equinox C60 casstte - Side 2

What’s Your Noise


Fuel For The Blonde Ethiopian


Taste Of Honey

A fairly straight rendition of a classic. Loads of 7th’s.


Mummy’s Tummy

Doomage creation with mackie vocals. I don’t think we ever did it live.
Fast flanged vocals, fuzz bass, large depth VCA’d keyboards. Pretty daft. More a vehicle for mackie to relieve himself of some bizarre fantasy.


Valium B

School hymn reworked - why not?

Paul sung. The rest is normal Crawling Chaos fiddling. We did have plans to do a few more as a package to upset the “Songs of Praise” mob.


Ashen

Ashen fay-ace!

Basic structure was a Doomage invention, worked up by the other band members.. Single note keyboards on top with bass & drums. Unusual musical phrasing. Haircut words. The words in Ashen are based on Haircut and Holly’s observation of the bartender in a pub in Backworth called “The Deuchars“. The barman had really greasy, lank straight hair that clacked when he bent over to collect empty glasses. The Deuchars pops up in a few places. We never did get the Dyke Neuk fitted in anywhere. Anyway, it’s too posh now.

Ashen was in the set for quite a few years.


Tom’s Bum (There’s)


Stinging Gnats

Doomage inspired. The essence was to have each instrument do a closely related, simple and repeating phrase, each on a different time signature but in the same key. Every so often the music is in phase and true harmony. This is broken up with a standard block chord middle eight prompted by Clinka on drums so each “verse” is of indeterminate length, done on the nod.

This was in the set for years.


Heavy Lovin’

E.F.S. -which nobody can deny, which nobody can deny.

Heavy metal piss-take. Includes all the usual crap like riffs, solos, namings. A key part of the sound was Strangely’s use of a long hallway at “The Pits” with a cheap guitar amp at one end and a mike at the other. This was the Echo Chamber. Strangely implemented it after reading how studios did echo in the old days.

The live feed was fed through the amp and re-injected into the mix from the mike. Then this was continuously varied to get a live feel of the audience moving around and the PA mixer guy constantly battling against feedback. It is exactly what gigs sounded like at the “Mayfair”, Newcastle in the 70’s. They’re still doing it now in the pubs round here. Anth played on this and thought it was real.


The Mongolian Steak Bar

Strangely created. Comes from the verse intro of the Rod Stewart song, “If You Think I’m Sexy” mated to a few key Rachmaninov key changes. Fizz guitar works but Holly’s bass doesn’t. I just don’t think it should be a bass guitar, that’s all. Will redo bass part with a breathy bass saxaphone and low bass keyboard rumbles.

When this tune was named, the name seemed pretty wacky. Since then there has been a Mongolian Restaurant down on the quayside in Newcastle for some years. However, at the time of recording, you went down “The Side” to the Quayside at night in pairs at least and there were only the “Crown Posada” and my auntie’s pub, the “Newcastle Arms” right under the Tyne Bridge. The back alleys were really dodgy. Now they are trendy housing developments. You should see it…


Voedoux

Joint creation of Doomage and Strangely. Each had virtually the same effects. Importantly, a VCA/VCF with separate input and output for the internal LFO VCO. Also, a VCA fuzz box so that an input voltage would modulate the degree and tonality of fuzz.Each persons VCO LFO output was connected to the other’s VCA/ VCA-fuzz input.
Then the VCO speeds were set to be close but not exact so that long period beat frequencies were initiated. The input sensitivities were turned right up to amplify internal noise. Then the outputs were sent through the mix with lots of cross-echo for each heavily panned source and a bit of extra bass to get a better thump noise…It is a helluva good rythmn. The plan was to do loads more like this. Percussion and screeches/shrieks were added on top to add a bit more atmosphere. The name is a pseudy rendition of Voodoo, pronounced the same.


Tell Me Why


East Of West Alotment


Suck


One More Peso


Tags: Artistic, Cassette, Classic, Clinka, Code, Crap, Crawling Chaos, Doomage, Drums, Foetus, Gigs, Guitar, Haircut, History, Holly, Instrument, Keyboard, Khult, Mixer, Music, Newcastle, Paul, Photos, PHP, Pit, Recording, Sex, Site, Strangely Perfect, Studio, Vocal

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  1. Strangely Perfect October 31, 2007 3:57 pm

    Crawling Chaos - orig. artwork revisited…

    I’ve scanned some original artwork for inclusion on the Homunculus Equinox page on the Crawling Chaos site.  This includes the very rare “Foetus Cover Up” sticker. 

    ……

  2. Strangely Perfect February 17, 2008 12:10 am

    Joe Meek, Captain Beefheart, can’t play music, can’t read music,so what!…

    In last week’s webcast from Collective Voice, presenter Rory mentioned that Joe Meek, the iconic gay gun-toting creative genius couldn’t read or write music notation or even play an instrument. Yet he somehow made iconic tunes that most pe…

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Streaming Audio

Continuously Streaming Audio of Selected Tracks




Starts with a random song and continues…(you’ll need flash) :-)

Tags: Access, Artistic, Audio, Crawling Chaos, History, Music, News

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Anecdotes

There’s no order or sense to all this. It’s as it comes. All the music anecdotes are being moved to accompany the tracks as an entity, hopefully making a bit more sense. After that, this page will be repository of stupid things and remarkable feats - in other words, anecdotes, which will be added to over time.

Music:

Composition:
Info:
Loofas A Nothin’ originated tune. The only significant difference is the addition of keyboards by Strangely, especially the start which is G major and G Dim alternating chords terminating with a Bflat major then B major chord.Apparently, one day Holly and Shieldsy were going to put some flowers on his grandad’s grave. On the back seat of the bus they were travelling on was a bag containing a loofa. The bus was the 442*** (Ashington to North Shields via Deleval). They loofa and flowers were left on the grave as a gift together. Nice.***the 442 is no more since 2007. It’s now the 12 and doesn’t go as far. This means if the words are changed it’ll be crap.

Gigs & Happenings:

Location
Info
Strangely Perfect memory of the Leigh Festival.This is the text of a posting I made here.

Angst in East Lancs Wasteland

This was the banner headline in NME I think for the gig at the Leigh Festival. Either that or Sounds and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Sounds.

Two things stick in my mind about the gig apart from it being freezing cold and there being no-one there.

  • On the bus there were no toilets but there was lots of beer. So the empty tins were getting filled with piss (I think the bus only did one piss stop on the journey). Jeff had just filled one and Billy Connolly (Gordon) asked if he could have a drink because he was thirsty. So Jeff gave him the can and Gordon drank it remarking only, that it tasted warm
  • The second thing is the fact that Crawling Chaos had a song called “Merry Christmas, Prince Charles” which Jeff and me wrote in my bedroom in 10 minutes and embellished over time. The song started with a long monologue from me backed by mournfull keyboard and guitar sounds and a few cymbal splashes. The gist of the “speech” was about a fictionalised personal meeting between Strangely Perfect and Prince Charles which I always made up on the spur of the moment. Leigh Festival had some toilets (I’d just been and they were to the right when viewed from the stage) and I fitted them into the monologue. An hour or so later, when we’d finished playing, this beautiful girl came up to me and started talking about the Prince Charles song (I thought I was in there as I naturally thought she was chatting me up…). She said “You know you mentioned the toilets where you saw Prince Charles?” “Yes?” I feverishly replied…. “Well can you tell me where they are ‘cos I’m bursting?” she deflatingly retorted with her question.

Apart from that, we didn’t stay to see Joyce Division but we saw OMD and their spinny tape deck (we had one similarly but kept it out of sight)

Visit to Tony Wilson at Glossop: This is the text of a posting I made here In this review of the 24 hour party people film, the author, Miranda Sawyer states

So, the Tony Wilson of the film is constantly saying, ‘I’m a Cambridge graduate, you know,’ which the real-life Wilson doesn’t.

..er. That’s not quite true from my recollection , you know. Before “Sex Machine” was released by Factory we made a surprise visit to Wilson’s house in Glossop, (not the one in Palatine Road, Didsbury - that was another time when we got scowled at by everyone there except Erasmus and Wilson).

Initially, Wilson wouldn’t let us in. But we knew he was in, by the car, smoke from chimney, etc. He popped his head through a chink in the curtains to see who was there, and when he saw it was a bunch of scruffs, let us in.

It was a nice little cottage on the side of a hill and was a lovely sunny day. He told us “sorry… but I’m a bit worried after the Louis Edwards expose I’ve done on “World in Action” “. He presented/investigated for the show corruption in Manchester United and he thought the big boys were coming round to do him in. We got the picture from his end, this is someone’s view from Man U Trust.

After that, we got chatting and smoking. He had a huge video collection with all the “So It Goes” tapes, which was nice. He was especially pleased to show us some old Tiswas stuff which he droned on about. During the stay, Jeff and him started comparing degrees e.g. “wot you get - oooh, a first! Where d’yu geddit - oooh Cambridge, oooh Newcastle” etc etc.

At this juncture, some of the lads got bored and went to play in the fields. Me, the bleeze was too much and I passed into neverland.

The point of all this; well he did go on about his degree and he was immensely proud of it.

Gosforth Hotel, Salters Road, Gosforth, Tyne & Wear Site of early gigs on roster with The Noise Toys (TNT) etc. This is the pub where Chris Donald started his Viz mag.
The Russel Club, Mosside, Manchester Site of the Gratton “joke”. JD didn’t play too bad. There were a lot of really scary black guys wearing floor length fur coats looking like they were packin’. I remember “Echo Beach” being played a lot between bands. When Crawling Chaos found that Joy Division weren’t going to drink their post gig pile of “Pils”, we stepped in and drank the lot. This was when Curtis came up to me and said: “Well, I’ve tried to speak to you lot, but I just can’t get on with you…” in a very gay way.. Curly Jhon gave him the ritual tirade of “Joyce! Joyce De Vision!” whence he walked off. Two weeks later he hung himself.
The Bridge Hotel, Newcastle Site of first gig. Quite a bit was recorded here at various times e.g “Berlin”. First gig sucked Curly Jhon into into the fold. Doomage was really confident, so much so I was shocked by the looks on some audience faces. Strangely wore a home-made steel Viking helmet, borrowed from a biker bloke that lived in the flat below the Attic. He hung sanitory towels from the cheek pieces, dyed up to look used. It lasted two tunes as it was so fucking heavy; each time he tried to play keyboards it slipped over his face, bonked his nose and almost broke his neck with the weight of it. Last Exit played regularly there and thereabouts. One member was called Gordon Sumner.
Spectro Arts Workshop, Newcastle Played a few times there. Nice and clean and white inside.
This was the gig when Strangely realised that women didn’t hold all the sexual cards. As was normal at the time, Strangely would get his kit off down to his old man long johns. Whilst prancing around he became aware that all the women in the audience weren’t listening to the music, but just trying to get a glimpse of his willie if it popped out of the slot in the front (there were no fly buttons or other closure devices).
Guildhall, Newcastle Played as part of a big “Rock Against Racism“/”Anti-Nazi League” event. Other bands included The Mekons and X-o-dus. The Crawling Chaos played and the next lot came on. After about 10 minutes, an infiltration of thuggish types charged through the crowd, poured onto the stage and backstage as well. Strangely was pushed backstage while trying to shut the doors and hid under a table. Dozens of police arrived.
A burly copper replied to me when I answered his question with “It’s a rock against racism event. It’s supposed to be peaceful.”"That Peaceful!” It’s more like a bloody war zone here”. Fatso got hit on the head with a fire extinguisher although someone said they’d seen a speaker flying through the air in his direction. The legend continues. He got CIC money though.
Penmaenmawr, North Wales Fuckin mushrooms and beer.On the way to play at a nurses home in Wales, the hire van broke down just north of Tebay (where the services are now, more or less). While waiting for a replacement, a field of magic mushrooms was espied. Everyone started collecting “for later” but most put one in the pocket, one in the gob. By the time the new van arrived everyone was spaced out, possibly ‘cos we woz threatened by a big guy with a shotgun at
the old Tebay services . I have a lasting vision of Clinka strutting round lane one on the M6 with a cardboard guitar, getting nearly killed by the traffic.After stopping for (more) beer in Runcorn (luxury), we arrived at the nurses home, carried the gear up loads of stairs, set it all up and then went into a dark room for 12 hours without playing because we couldn’t see anything as there was too much spurious visual input.The next day we were still spaced out. I was shivering like mad in a crap seaside cafe thinking I was going to die. I think I took about 1