A Very Big Blouse Christmas

A mere 25 years ago this week there took place a significant musical event which resonates down the years, and here it is made public for the first time.

OK. Really it was a bunch of young people in the North East of England, getting up onstage and making a bit of Christmas entertainment for anyone mad enough to show up to a windswept nightclub on the Sunday before Christmas and party. Band leader and inspiration was Mark Raynes, who loved Marc Bolan and Marc Almond and spelt his name with a `c' too. I joined the band as you did in them days, by merely walking down the High Street in Marske at the right time. I bumped into old school mate Ian `Ely' Conlin, where it was quickly established that yes indeed I did play the drums and would be happy to join their band and make some new friends. They were doing their first show with a part timer on the skins , but had 2 more gigs lined up over the Christmas of '83, for which I had just instantly agreed to take over. I said I'd turn up for the first show and bring my Moog synth for a laugh.

As the band hit the stage on that freezing night in Saltburn at the legendary Philmores (not to be confused with Fillmores East and West which were in New York and San Francisco respectively) we didn't even have a name. It was to everyone's surprise that compere Tinker Dick took it upon himself to introduce us as `The Big Blouse Show'. Mark had a great collection of Glam style (OK OK, women's) clothes, which we all took great delight in wearing, and there were girls in the band too to do us make-up too. We kept the name.

Aaah the girls. I wonder where they are now ? Possibly mothers with kids of the same age as they were here. Before this gig, as far as I know none of them had ever sung into a microphone before, or indeed had experience of what is known in the business as a `desk tape' where everything they say or sing is picked up in brutal clarity. Throughout the gig, you can hear them saying things to each other "I was miming during that one", "I'm getting dead paranoid" and falling over giggling.

So, I give you a Christmas medley North East-style. We made our own fun in those days that's for sure. It's said that Punk instilled a DIY ethic in the youth of the day, and here it is in action. Those brassy Teesside girls bawled out `White Christmas' as if they were on the terraces at Ayresome Park. I love the way they are all singing different words at the same time too. You can almost taste the Cider and Black and Bacardi and Coke, and just about see the tinsel sparkling at the end of memory lane.

I was wearing some sparkly gloves I'd borrowed off my Nana, a colourful lurex `thing' and leather trousers. You can hear me swooping away for no good reason on the synth in the background. As the extravaganza finishes and we take a bow, on comes Tinker Dick, flat-capped MC extraordinaire who came to Saltburn for these gigs on his bike come rain or shine. A local legend who I am pleased to report is still around.

"A big bloody hand please !"

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Happy Christmas !