The flat in Sandringham Road in Dalston was a great place. Lots of people lived there over the two years in which our gang occupied it, including myself briefly, and fantastic, all night, chaotic parties were held. When I first visited the house it was Nick, Dino, Lisa and Robin who lived there.
I went to meet Dino and Nick and, to my dismay, I was being invited to the living room and everyone was there plus a few guests.
Nowadays I might be described as being extroverted but at this time I was really unsure of myself and unused to being in a group of people. I was tongue tied and mumbled and said things that, and I realised at the time, sounded odd.
Lisa recalled saying to herself 'oh my God, who on earth is this?' and thinking that I was one of the most awkward people she'd ever met.
Showing posts with label Dino. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dino. Show all posts
Sunday, 3 July 2011
Friday, 17 June 2011
Tear Gas At The Laurel Tree
The Laurel Tree in Camden is where all the indie kids would hang out in the 90s. Jane and I discovered the place by accident when we decided to run away from our flatmate one evening. He was queuing in the chip shop beside Camden Tube and, although it was a mean thing to do, I am glad that we did it. Parsley's band 'Dutronc' were playing cover versions of Jacques and I thought that the whole place was just fantastic. I returned the next week and met Morgane, the first of all of the people that would become my friends in London. I proudly let it slip that I was playing bass for the Television Personalities but she beat me by letting me know that she played keyboards for Stereolab, who I thought were just fantastic. Morgane introduced me to Nick and Dino who became great friends with whom I'd go to lots of parties with and with whom I'd start the band Miss Mend (and later play in The Projects with Morgane and later still Dino.)
One time I was at Chris and Loretta's 'co-op' club night and I found myself wanting for cigarettes. I drunkenly pushed my way through the crowd to the stairs. The ground floor hosted a depressing pop disco and the dance floor was heaving with fake tans. I pushed my way to the cigarette machine and allowed it to prop me up as I slowly filled it with all the coins that I had, searching every pocket for extra five and ten pence pieces.
Eventually the packet of cigarettes was in my hand and I turned on my heel to find the whole place absolutely empty. The few hundred people had disappeared. It was quite a dream like experience. The room that had been a heaving, sweating, drunken mess was, to my surprise, deserted. Then I began to taste what I assume to have been tear gas at the back of my throat. I returned upstairs. It seemed that It couldn't have been a large tear gas canister that had been thrown down there because it didn't have much of an effect on me.
One time I was at Chris and Loretta's 'co-op' club night and I found myself wanting for cigarettes. I drunkenly pushed my way through the crowd to the stairs. The ground floor hosted a depressing pop disco and the dance floor was heaving with fake tans. I pushed my way to the cigarette machine and allowed it to prop me up as I slowly filled it with all the coins that I had, searching every pocket for extra five and ten pence pieces.
Eventually the packet of cigarettes was in my hand and I turned on my heel to find the whole place absolutely empty. The few hundred people had disappeared. It was quite a dream like experience. The room that had been a heaving, sweating, drunken mess was, to my surprise, deserted. Then I began to taste what I assume to have been tear gas at the back of my throat. I returned upstairs. It seemed that It couldn't have been a large tear gas canister that had been thrown down there because it didn't have much of an effect on me.
Friday, 10 June 2011
Tony P.
One summer’s day, when I lived on Camberwell New Road, I was walking through the churchyard near Oval Tube Station and a couple of drunks sitting on a bench asked me for change. I had none but we chatted for a while and they seemed like nice people. They were very surprised when I returned a few minutes later with a can of Special Brew for each of them. They were surprised that I didn't want to drink one myself on such a beautiful sunny afternoon. It turned out that Rocco, who Tony P. would later tell me was losing his mind through drink (he was chuckling constantly) needed to use a telephone. Since none of us had a ten pence piece I invited them around to my girlfriend Jane’s flat, where I was sharing her room. Caroline, Eve and Jane were at home, everyone got along fine, Rocco made his call and soon they went on their way.
Shortly afterwards I received a letter through the post from Tony, inviting me to his house that following Sunday in Colliers Wood, South London.
I remember the journey there well. I was in the habit of always leaning out of the open window in between carriages (possible only with the low windows of the old style trains.) I would enjoy the wind in my hair as I listened to my walkman very loud. I was admiring the art deco fixtures and the unusual configuration of the platforms on some of those stations South of the river on the Northern Line where both North and Southbound trains share the same tunnel. The journey was not memorable because of this though, rather because whilst I was marvelling at the architecture a mad man tried to strangle me through the windows of the doors, from the neighbouring carriage. I hit him in the face and he lost interest. I hate violence and I found the need to punch the man disturbing.
When I got to Colliers Wood I found that Tony had cooked me a roast chicken lunch. His welcome was so warm and I found his cooking for me so touching that I didn’t have the heart to let him know that I am a vegetarian, and ate with him all the same. Neither did I have the heart to tell him that I wasn’t an alcoholic but since he had gone to all the trouble to buy eight cans of Tennents Super, we drank all afternoon.
I saw quite a lot of Tony after that. He introduced me to old friends in Brixton (where he wanted to be rehoused after having been forced to move away,) and we’d make journeys to the West End. We looked quite intriguing walking down the street I think, an immaculately dressed older Jamaican man wearing a Panama and a young, middle class white boy with a stupid haircut. In fact Tony’s daughter was quite suspicious of our relationship, especially since I was in the habit of sleeping on the sofa after not being able to contend with the mental cosh that is Tennents Super. Once we had both assured her that there was nothing out of the ordinary going on she remarked that I looked like Hugh Grant and said that I’d be quite handsome if only I cut my hair. Tony then rolled a joint. I hate getting stoned but I had a drag or two all the same. His daughter asked me if I had ever slept with a black girl. The grass was strong and so I found it difficult to react coherently when she suggested that I could sleep with her if I painted her kitchen which badly needed redecorating. I turned down the kind offer but I was so stoned that it felt awkward to turn it down politely.
"Oh Graeme," he would often say "when we touch down in Montego Bay, we'll pick the fruit straight from the tree." He was a very good man, Tony P. full of enthusiasm for life but life was just too difficult for him. He had been found asleep at the wheel of his car, an empty bottle of rum in his hand and the keys in the ignition a few years before I met him. They took away his driving license which meant taking away his job as a bus driver. He said that he had enjoyed driving buses, although the pre pneumatic assisted clutch had given him problems in the joints of his left leg.
He began to lose his mind, Tennents Super, a drink marketed at alcoholics, has odd additives in it that have this effect. Eventually I had to break ties with Tony P. He was just too much of a handful. The last time that I saw him was at my second flat in Stamford Hill. He was being very rude to Dino who had dropped by and, four times in a row, he couldn’t get down the stairs and into the cabs that I ordered for him. Eventually I had to get rid of him by giving him this acoustic guitar that I owned. He had been remarking all evening as to how he would very much like one and, after hours of him overstaying his welcome, I told him outright. Get in the cab, I’ll pay for it, I’ll give you an acoustic guitar, if only you get in the damn cab.
I know that a woman called Darlene wished to save him, picking him up and trying to take him to church once a week providing he was sober enough. He wasn't interested in the church but he liked Darlene. I hope something good came of all of that but, since we have lost touch completely, I shall never know.
Shortly afterwards I received a letter through the post from Tony, inviting me to his house that following Sunday in Colliers Wood, South London.
I remember the journey there well. I was in the habit of always leaning out of the open window in between carriages (possible only with the low windows of the old style trains.) I would enjoy the wind in my hair as I listened to my walkman very loud. I was admiring the art deco fixtures and the unusual configuration of the platforms on some of those stations South of the river on the Northern Line where both North and Southbound trains share the same tunnel. The journey was not memorable because of this though, rather because whilst I was marvelling at the architecture a mad man tried to strangle me through the windows of the doors, from the neighbouring carriage. I hit him in the face and he lost interest. I hate violence and I found the need to punch the man disturbing.
When I got to Colliers Wood I found that Tony had cooked me a roast chicken lunch. His welcome was so warm and I found his cooking for me so touching that I didn’t have the heart to let him know that I am a vegetarian, and ate with him all the same. Neither did I have the heart to tell him that I wasn’t an alcoholic but since he had gone to all the trouble to buy eight cans of Tennents Super, we drank all afternoon.
I saw quite a lot of Tony after that. He introduced me to old friends in Brixton (where he wanted to be rehoused after having been forced to move away,) and we’d make journeys to the West End. We looked quite intriguing walking down the street I think, an immaculately dressed older Jamaican man wearing a Panama and a young, middle class white boy with a stupid haircut. In fact Tony’s daughter was quite suspicious of our relationship, especially since I was in the habit of sleeping on the sofa after not being able to contend with the mental cosh that is Tennents Super. Once we had both assured her that there was nothing out of the ordinary going on she remarked that I looked like Hugh Grant and said that I’d be quite handsome if only I cut my hair. Tony then rolled a joint. I hate getting stoned but I had a drag or two all the same. His daughter asked me if I had ever slept with a black girl. The grass was strong and so I found it difficult to react coherently when she suggested that I could sleep with her if I painted her kitchen which badly needed redecorating. I turned down the kind offer but I was so stoned that it felt awkward to turn it down politely.
"Oh Graeme," he would often say "when we touch down in Montego Bay, we'll pick the fruit straight from the tree." He was a very good man, Tony P. full of enthusiasm for life but life was just too difficult for him. He had been found asleep at the wheel of his car, an empty bottle of rum in his hand and the keys in the ignition a few years before I met him. They took away his driving license which meant taking away his job as a bus driver. He said that he had enjoyed driving buses, although the pre pneumatic assisted clutch had given him problems in the joints of his left leg.
He began to lose his mind, Tennents Super, a drink marketed at alcoholics, has odd additives in it that have this effect. Eventually I had to break ties with Tony P. He was just too much of a handful. The last time that I saw him was at my second flat in Stamford Hill. He was being very rude to Dino who had dropped by and, four times in a row, he couldn’t get down the stairs and into the cabs that I ordered for him. Eventually I had to get rid of him by giving him this acoustic guitar that I owned. He had been remarking all evening as to how he would very much like one and, after hours of him overstaying his welcome, I told him outright. Get in the cab, I’ll pay for it, I’ll give you an acoustic guitar, if only you get in the damn cab.
I know that a woman called Darlene wished to save him, picking him up and trying to take him to church once a week providing he was sober enough. He wasn't interested in the church but he liked Darlene. I hope something good came of all of that but, since we have lost touch completely, I shall never know.
Tuesday, 31 May 2011
Living City Plan
The first experience that I had of playing in a band was when Patrick, who was working as an engineer at The Strongroom Studio on Curtain Road, offered me an afternoon recording there in his free time before the pop group Spiritualised came in for the night. They had taken weeks, and would take weeks more, finishing an LP there. Lisa and I had worked out a few songs which we rehearsed a couple of times with Nick, Howard and Dino and then persuaded Joe to come along and play drums with us.
Recording was new to everyone except Joe who had seen it all before and who sat on his drum stool in between takes reading the paper. The results from The Strongroom weren’t that great. We didn't really know what we were doing after all.
Not long after came our first gig. It was downstairs at the Hope and Anchor in Highbury. The guitarist from Blur came but was turned away at the door since it was sold out. Is that note worthy? Probably not and it didn't seem so at the time either.
I made the mistake of taking some cocaine that Howard passed around. Aside from the fact that I don't like cocaine and I don't like people on cocaine and I don't like myself on cocaine and generally hate drugs, it proved to be a bad idea because it amplified my nervousness to the extent that I literally could not speak. My brother Adrian tried to make conversation and I had to run away, Lisa introduced her father, who was on holiday in London, but I couldn't reply to him.
After playing half a dozen shows I had no pre-performance nerves whatsoever, providing that I stayed away from Howard whose stage anxiety was so overwhelming it was contagious. It took me a while to realise this but, before I did, we'd always go to a pub together after the sound check. I'd enter feeling clear headed and leave, destined for the stage, a nervous wreck.
So, by the time we went to the newly opened Milo's studio on Hoxton Square (Howard knew someone who worked there perhaps) we had a name, Miss Mend, had rehearsed and had played a few shows. We hadn’t realised that we ought to have booked an engineer, it was a Saturday and for a while it looked as though we wouldn’t be able to get hold of anyone at the last minute. When we finally did get going it went smoothly. Listening to the record it seems like the studio must have had a great set up. At the time I really wasn't interested in the process of recording and just wanted to finish up and get to the pub but I’d love to know now what desk they used, what equalisers and compressors, which reverb unit.
Mixing the record was a pain. First of all we tried some people who had a studio set up below Proud Gallery (when it was located just off Villiers Street.) It was hot, cramped, humid and dusty in the cellar there, the environment was unbearable and the results were dreadful. In the end Clive Painter, who had recorded with the band Tram with whom we played many shows (we were label mates) mixed it at his home studio (where we would subsequently record our second single.)
Lisa sings the excellent A side, Living City Plan, and I one of the two songs on the B side. It really pains me that I sing with a slight inflection to some of the words like I’m pretending to be Stephen Pastel. Which, I am so sorry to say and it pains me on so many different levels to admit it, I probably was.
We were awarded 'Single Of The Week' by the New Musical Express but assumed this to be a fairly normal event for a new band, or I did at any rate, and so when the label Independiente summoned us for an interview at their Baron's Court office none of us put in any effort to impress them at all.
Myself and Lisa visited my parents house shortly after it was released and my parents' friend Cliff was also at the house as a guest for dinner. He'd played drums in jazz bands throughout his life. He asked to hear the record, I had given a copy to my mum and dad and so I put it on the turntable. It upset him, he didn't think that it qualified as a real song he said, he said that it was not music. He got quite agitated so I changed the subject.
Recording was new to everyone except Joe who had seen it all before and who sat on his drum stool in between takes reading the paper. The results from The Strongroom weren’t that great. We didn't really know what we were doing after all.
Not long after came our first gig. It was downstairs at the Hope and Anchor in Highbury. The guitarist from Blur came but was turned away at the door since it was sold out. Is that note worthy? Probably not and it didn't seem so at the time either.
I made the mistake of taking some cocaine that Howard passed around. Aside from the fact that I don't like cocaine and I don't like people on cocaine and I don't like myself on cocaine and generally hate drugs, it proved to be a bad idea because it amplified my nervousness to the extent that I literally could not speak. My brother Adrian tried to make conversation and I had to run away, Lisa introduced her father, who was on holiday in London, but I couldn't reply to him.
After playing half a dozen shows I had no pre-performance nerves whatsoever, providing that I stayed away from Howard whose stage anxiety was so overwhelming it was contagious. It took me a while to realise this but, before I did, we'd always go to a pub together after the sound check. I'd enter feeling clear headed and leave, destined for the stage, a nervous wreck.
So, by the time we went to the newly opened Milo's studio on Hoxton Square (Howard knew someone who worked there perhaps) we had a name, Miss Mend, had rehearsed and had played a few shows. We hadn’t realised that we ought to have booked an engineer, it was a Saturday and for a while it looked as though we wouldn’t be able to get hold of anyone at the last minute. When we finally did get going it went smoothly. Listening to the record it seems like the studio must have had a great set up. At the time I really wasn't interested in the process of recording and just wanted to finish up and get to the pub but I’d love to know now what desk they used, what equalisers and compressors, which reverb unit.
Mixing the record was a pain. First of all we tried some people who had a studio set up below Proud Gallery (when it was located just off Villiers Street.) It was hot, cramped, humid and dusty in the cellar there, the environment was unbearable and the results were dreadful. In the end Clive Painter, who had recorded with the band Tram with whom we played many shows (we were label mates) mixed it at his home studio (where we would subsequently record our second single.)
Lisa sings the excellent A side, Living City Plan, and I one of the two songs on the B side. It really pains me that I sing with a slight inflection to some of the words like I’m pretending to be Stephen Pastel. Which, I am so sorry to say and it pains me on so many different levels to admit it, I probably was.
We were awarded 'Single Of The Week' by the New Musical Express but assumed this to be a fairly normal event for a new band, or I did at any rate, and so when the label Independiente summoned us for an interview at their Baron's Court office none of us put in any effort to impress them at all.
Myself and Lisa visited my parents house shortly after it was released and my parents' friend Cliff was also at the house as a guest for dinner. He'd played drums in jazz bands throughout his life. He asked to hear the record, I had given a copy to my mum and dad and so I put it on the turntable. It upset him, he didn't think that it qualified as a real song he said, he said that it was not music. He got quite agitated so I changed the subject.
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