Extreme Noise Terror Over Teesside

Growing up on Teesside did not exactly place me and Duncan at the centre of the musical universe. However, there were enough fellow freaks and a thriving pub music scene to ensure that the opportunity for us to hit the stage soon emerged. Over the course of a year in 1981-2 there were four gigs which served to establish a modus operandi which we still stick with today, albeit with a little more consideration for the audience.

At the age of 18 we discovered the joy of going onstage with an attitude and improvising a truly offensive racket. It was bliss ! This was the way to make music. No tiresome rehearsals, no songs to learn and practice over and over again, no cover versions of `Alright Now' or `Smoke On The Water' to please the guitarist and the audience. Just turn up, set up and turn up.

There were a few good bands in the Redcar and Middlesbrough area at the time, and lots of awful ones, heavy metal ruled OK, punk had disappeared up it's own arse and denim was largely still the order of the day. There was rubbish like Carl Green and the Scene and several other bands whose songs were so lame it's little wonder none of them were ever heard of again, but it at least made for a thriving music scene with several places to play.

Prince Toad couldn't be sure if they were hippies or punks, and were probably both, but they had a bunch of good original tunes, an attitude and a following to boot. The young folks were up for live music in them days, aye lad. No mobiles, no computers, no mp3 players and nowt on telly, (3 channels !) and as everyone still lived with their parents it made sense to meet down the pub, where unlike today you could actually afford a pint or two, even if someone who'd just had their giro ended up standing the round. One Saturday night I'd been out with another mate, and by chance bumped into Duncan in Marske square with my tray of egg fried rice. He'd just returned from Redcar where the upshot of his evening was that we'd been offered a gig. "When is it ?" I asked with interest. "Tomorrow night, supporting Prince Toad" he replied.

Thus a career on the fringes, in the fringes, and nowhere near the fringes of rock'n'roll was born. It was to be our first gig, save for a somewhat fraught attempt earlier in the year at our sixth form college, for which we had made the fatal mistake of rehearsing some songs. It hadn't quite gone according to plan thanks to a combination of acoustic feedback and new strings which went horribly and habitually out of tune....and the fact Jon Davis (who we were basically backing), had consumed `a few' in The Coble, a Sam Smiths pub near the college where a pint was about 35p. He was 18 and drank beer, we were 17 and didn't, although we soon learned.

This time it was to be out in the world proper, namely the sea spray swept environs of The Dolphin on Redcar prom. Sunday 6th September 1981. Bloody hell that's a long time ago. The band was immediately christened `Purple Roof' by bassist Mark `Sandy' Sanderson. These days he's a viking you know....but I digress.

After struggling down there on the bus with as much gear as we could carry we realised that we'd forgotten any means of recording the thing, and both of us stubbornly refused to trudge there and back on the bus for a tape deck, sadly therefore the events of that night remain lost in the sea sprays of time...what I do recall is feeling that this was possibly the best night of my life so far. (I hadn't yet hit the jackpot with those mysterious creatures known as girls...)

I got to thrash around the Prince Toad drum kit as I still didn't have my own, and I got to wear eyeliner. Who could ask for more ? I've always found having make-up applied by a young lady a very sweet experience. Goth pillocks Bauhaus were very popular at the time, so make up was `in'. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

It's hard to describe how we sounded, sitting back there on the drums in the corner of a pub floor with no monitors there was no chance of hearing what Jon Davis our vocalist (above, with Christine) for the night was actually singing, all I know is that the racket we were all making sounded thrilling and new in the way that it always does when you're making a racket that is thrilling and new. There's just something I love about beginning a performance not knowing what you are going to do. I can still remember the train-like beat I was banging out on Dave's toms to this day. It was the only time we played live with Dave Conn, Robert Linus and Mark Sanderson and certainly the only time they were all in the same band, so here's to them.

Live music was immediately banned from The Dolphin after that because Jon's lyrics based on the sex life of fictional couple Gerald and Cynthia was deemed obscene by the landlord. We were off to a good start, even if I hadn't been lucky enough to hear it all for myself.

It was the summer of 1982 when the next opportunity for extreme noise terror presented itself, this time at the Hydro in Redcar, a fantastic pub and regular haunt for the golden youth of the era. It was small and carpeted, having a balcony area running around the upstairs looking directly down on a space which while not exactly a stage, could at least be called a focal point . If there were a few people in the band, the keyboard man often found himself setting up on the balcony and looking down from above. Downstairs were a series of booths just like `Happy Days', and happy days they certainly were, this time being the occasion of Duncan's 19th birthday.

We now had guitarist Steve Roberts in tow. He was an art student with big hair and a penchant for all things gothic. He was certainly noticed by all on the Marske to Middlesbrough train as he made his way to art college every morning. This was of course in the days when nobody had dressed like that before. It was Steve who christened us The Whores Of Babylon, which I'm sure you'll agree is a great name.

He played guitar in a good way, ie he hadn't learned how to play the bloody thing properly, and was therefore free of all those rock'n'roll cliches. His combination of a cheap effects pedal (Colorsound I think) gave off a powerful swirling vibe of howling banshee horror. Duncan had built a little box of tricks of his own, basically a hand controlled oscillator and busied himself with that and bass guitar while I tossed about with the Roland Dr Rhythm Drum Machine and an impossibly crappy Italian synth whilst making aircraft crashing noises with an echo unit. The power was in our hands for half an hour of glorious fun.

There may be no photos of the gig but there is audio. We were always very good at recording things. Come with us now on a journey through time and space!

Whores Of Babylon , Hydro Redcar 30/6/82 (It's an edit, it was originally 30 minutes)
http://www.box.net/shared/3hmrnghc9f

If you make it through to the end, listen for the chorus of cheers which dies down only for an annoymous lass to declare it "Shit" with impeccable Teesside timing. Roadie `Nog' can also be heard giving his verdict, before signing off with a brief profanity delivered in a textbook Redcar accent. The Whores made a return visit to The Hydro in August when I was on holiday, I was gutted to have missed it. This time amongst the source material was a heavily processed interview with Pete Murphy on wonderful Radio One. Funny how Bauhaus figured so much in things back then. People actually used to like them you know.

A lunchtime in October of the same year: I was meeting Jon Davis and Tim Love in the Hydro and when I walked in, right smack bang in the middle of the band platform was a massive, ugly and immovable video jukebox. All of a sudden it was possible to watch Peter Gabriel's `Shock The Monkey' (as good as it got really) and unfortunately Duran Duran's `Rio' which looked even more absurd than it already was when viewed from grey, rainswept Redcar. The punters and the landlord agreed; the future had arrived. If ever there was a moment when the world changed, it was then. I have always hated music promo videos with a passion. 99% of them are an utter waste of time and vast amounts of money. It's a record for God's sake. You're supposed to listen to them, not watch them.

We rarely made it into the great metropolis of Middlesbrough (a mere 10 miles or so) even to see whatever top pop band was in town, our impoverished status as students put paid to that,
and there was a better than average chance of being beaten up if they found out you were from Redcar. We did however have one final clinching glory at Ossies nightclub on 24th August 1982, and even lived to tell the tale. Ossies was in that district of Middlesbrough which resembled Beirut on a bad day, and was usually a straightforward nite spot/copping-off dive for the cognoscenti of the area. Tuesday was a quiet night, so they decided to let somebody book bands.

Tim Love from Shock Headed Peter had sold his band to the venue as `modern dance music' to clinch the gig. `Modern dance' was Haircut 100 and all that shite at that particular time, but at least the Shock Heads had songs you could move about to and clap at the end of.

Unlike The Whores Of Babylon who were now augmented by Jonny Neesham from the art college. He could be heard reading from a prayer book through an effects pedal. (9 minutes into the audio). His startling entrance sounds like an invasion from the planet Endrogynon.

As we shuffled on to that stage a most fearsome racket ensued from the outset. Tim from the Shock Heads was heard to shout "DUNCAN!" in desparation for us to turn it down on more than one occasion. The audience were unusually close to the band due to the layout of the place, and believe me, conversation was not possible. Drinking was difficult enough, with the waves we were creating, and I'm sure if we'd `Memorexed' it, glasses would have shattered too. (Pete Murphy was in that ad too wasn't he ? He gets everywhere). There was me playing in tapes of a French brass band I'd recorded on holiday, Duncan working wonders with whatever instruments of terror he had at his disposal and Steve Roberts chipping in with his Tonebender pedal and guitar of disgrace (rather than `bend' tones it heated them up to meltdown temparature before hammering them completely out of shape).

The game plan for the gig was to eventually bring the Roland drum machine into the mix and then climb up to the drum kit and join in, but just as I'd finally set it off and made myself comfortable at the kit, the landlord decided he'd had enough. It's brilliant that it took him this long to decide that this was truly an unacceptable racket, (14 minutes !), but the drum machine was seemingly the last straw for him and he cut the electricity unceremoniously and without explanation.

On the recording you hear the drum machine start up for a short while, the juice then goes off causing the cassette motor to grind to a halt. The recording therefore speeds up, and just at the last instant I make my one and only contribution on the drums by playing a single crash on the cymbal. A big beautiful full stop on the brief career of the Whores of Babylon.

Power is soon restored and life carries on....the strains of floppy fringed flick-head* anthem`Favourite Shirt' by Haircut 100 fills the dance floor and civilisation is restored.

Listen for yourself here:
Whores Of Babylon: Ossies, Middlesbrough 24/08/82
http://www.box.net/shared/13g8tm8bgd

Quote from `Ossies' manager the next day when another Teesside band fancied a gig and called them up: "After the bands we had in last night from Redcar, we're only booking agency acts now".

That's three venues we'd never play again...we came, we saw, we made one hell of a racket.


(*Flick-heads were those fashion victims seen around the pubs and clubs who had that one sided floppy fringe which required them to forever be flicking it out of their eyes with a jolt of the head. They often had a single ear stud to go with it, the tossers.)