Talk about a Tubeway Army - It was 1979, Wolverhampton, over there to visit my guitarist friend Andy Cairns and see the Specials / Selecter at the Town Hall. Andy was from Cov, and had a little jazz funk band with Horace Panter c 1975 - Rickys band (not mentioned in Horaces biography). They played for us at the Hobo Workshop, upstairs at the Golden Cross, 1975, a short lived band before Horace went on to Breaker. Andy was over there studying for his Bsc in Biology. I met him in the student union, OK Fred was playing full blast, John Foxx and Gary Numan. We walked through the subway, finally got in, standing in a Two Tone crush. It wasnt long before trouble brewed and No Nonsense Terry Hall stopped the show - the trouble makers were evicted and the show continued peacefully. Outside again in the square, remains of a battlezone that had disappeared through the subway into town; skinheads abandoned, handcuffed to fledgling trees, like a skinhead Calvary, sirens blaring like Gary Numan synths somewhere in the distance. We took our chance before the battle went full circle, headed down the subway, watching our backs and back to safety - the halls of residence. Andy returned to Coventry with his degree. We got up a little band, more Pentangle than the vogue for 1980. Our bass player was a Selecter van driver, his fathers long wheelbase and they stored their equipment in his fathers workshop, under railway bridge in Holbrooks. Desmond Brown used to pop in apologetically while we were practicing, alway polite. Soon Andy went off to Aberystwyth to do his Phd and I to Teesside to do my BA. https://youtube/watch?v=-0WNbm1jz6A
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 10:20:26 +0000