Gigs in Bristol in the late 70s and early 80s were secured
by dropping in a cassette tape into a disinterested landlord. Few pubs put
bands on that were playing original music. The landlords would always ask if
you had a ‘ following’ and make a joke about the bands ‘groupies’. The Plume of
Feathers on Hotwells Road was one of the first pubs I ever gave a tape too. However
they favoured Metal through the week and jazz on Sunday lunchtimes. I remember
gingerly giving a tape to the landlord when Iron Maiden were doing a gig.
Pretty sure it was them. Naturally the landlord never contacted us.
The Wheatchief was a pub that put us ( The Hybrids) on with
a band called ‘Gus Bus’. This pub was where the magistrate’s courts are, bang
in the centre of Bristol. If I remember rightly we got the gig because one of
the female bar staff thought me and Chris were funny and cute and we were coming a long way to play.
(Avonmouth was about 8 miles out of the town centre.) I remember the gig well. Phil
Wilmot who plays bass in the experimental pop band played guitar in Gus Bus.
They were terrific; they had a Mark E Smith type singer who kept shouting
‘Bastard Panzas!’
Burgundy leather was big that year , 81’ bum fluff
moustaches too, sleeves on jackets rolled up, pretty sure mullets were also in
vogue. So in this pub there is that kind of crowd versus the oddball post punk people that we had
around us. So it was like do a gig, get
insulted, try not to get ones head kicked in when going for a piss and try and
not take the piss too much with the in between song banter. Pretty exciting.
I may have mentioned Mistys night club in another post, there
was also The Ace of Spades nightclub. The idea these places had was to make money
from beer sales out of the post punks and oddballs, who were into the bands.
Get the bands off by 9 thirty and get the proper disco crowd in. Again this was
fraught with tension but excitement too. After one particular gig I remember this
woman taking an interest in me, she was probably only a few years older than
myself , but she seemed really grown up.
She was definitely a woman, not a girl. I am not quite sure what my definition
of a woman was back then but I can remember having a distinct coming of age
kind thrilling feeling. She was there for the disco and dressed for it. Lots of
spangled shit , may have even had leg warmers on. I do remember her having
heavy eyeliner and glitter on her eyelids that was sort of Glam rock but
not. She had a black bob hair cut which
was Immaculate and shiny, remember this
was before hair products were invented! So this woman had taken amazing care of
her hair, it was not fluffy and frzzy but straight and slick perfect! She was
speaking to me in Swedish or Russian, very exotic. I could feel my heart beat
speeding up like some out of control snare beat.Whatever she was saying it was
pretty obvious she was very interested in me. Very. We kissed once, twice, the
third time we kissed she threw up into my mouth.
At that instant I could hear Chris shouting ‘leg it
Dave’ (Chris shouting ‘leg it’ was a
constant phrase I would hear for many years to come). Next I could see a lot of
burgundy and a very angry face swearing at me in a broad Bristolian accent. The
angry man pulled at the exotic woman who un-exotically shouted at him ‘Get yer
fucking ands of me Gary yer prick.’ Whilst Gary was momentarily occupied by
this I fled the Ace of Spades with sick running down my jacket.
A few years later when The Brilliant Corners were looking
for gigs things were a bit easier. The whole Clifton band art scene helped a
lot. One could play the Lansdown pub
without fear of a kicking. The students union bar also put on bands. I
saw some really good bands play in that bar, the Electric guitars, Essential
Bop, The Art Objects (they later morphed into the Blue Aeroplanes)and we played
there too. Once actually then we got
banned . Because of us they stopped putting on bands in the bar, I did feel
pretty guilty about that.
Let me explain. The cheapest place to drink in Bristol was
the Epicurean bar in the students Union building.The snag was how would all of
us get in there when only me and Chris had student passes ( I was at Filton Tech, Chris at Brunel, both of us doing Art) , easy really you just
forge a whole lot of passes. The problem was none of us looked like students.
For some strange reason and I do not know if this was a Bristol thing only but
a lot of university students still wore flares ,trench coats and had long hair,
the ones that didn’t dressed really straight, straight back then was a v neck
jumper , shirt or a T shirt tucked into unflattering jeans, yeah like Simon Cowell. Those guys were
usually the rugby team boys and we were always getting into trouble with the
rugby team boys.
To be truthful we should have got banned before we even
played, the bar manager was sick of us
buying several snake bites when they called last orders and never drinking up
on time. Sick of Bob calling him a fat arse, sick of Winston telling him and
several bar staff that they were picking on him and us because they were
racists. Chris and me saying we would call the Evening Post and tell them about
all these racists at the university!
So on a Friday or Saturday for about 6 months there would be
a collective sigh from behind the bar when we showed up. There was also a fare
few disgusted looks from students but
there was also a another group of students we got on with . We got on but argued about politics, music,
anything really, there was also this rather tricky element of one of us lot
usually trying to steal one of their girlfriends too. However there was this pretty cool
alternative thing going on and for the first time in our lives I think we felt
that we were actually pretty hip, an outsider kind of hip, dare I say it sort
of cool, well that’s what the students who talked to us made us feel like, made
us feel so good that we agreed to play a gig in the bar.
It went like this. The amps were on ten. We channeled a lot
of our anger and frustration into rock n roll songs, that sounded like The
Cramps , a terrible sounding Cramps. We refused
to turn it down and played for maybe 20 minutes. The union bar received loads of
complaints and we got our ban and they never put another band on in that bar
again.
