Sock Free Hideaway

SONGS THEY NEVER PLAY ON THE RADIO 

10. THE FINE LINE BETWEEN ART AND FUCKING THINGS UP COMPLETELY

PART 1

AS I unceremoniously removed myself from my dream site in West Didsbury and into Jeff's back bedroom in a pre-riot unravaged Clarksfield, I still had an inflated ego and a pretty decent contact book but I just wanted to lie low and save up for a house deposit. However, just prior to moving in, I had my last 3 day bender, and I woke up utterly mind shot by a cassette given to me by Pete, inscribed simply with the words Casino Records, and Doves. That's what happened to me. I woke up next to records and cassettes but seldom women. It must've been played a couple of hundred times before I finally decided to get up for work at the tail end of the following week.

I was still naïve enough to think music could change society, or at least my own circumstances, and pushed this cassette onto people like a man possessed. My late brother-in-law loved it, which was encouraging. Jeff had his own blinding obsessions, of which Gabrielle's Wish were the most enduring, Chameleons, excepted. It became known to us that they were in the same studio, and Pete, the common denominator, was someone we could approach to put on a show. 

Other than the fact I was saving for a deposit, I was also given an ultimatum; either I stopped the amphetamines that made me so unpredictable in work, or going into business with Jeff and our venture, The Job Club, was off. So began a blurry 8 months of mixing lager with prescription drugs. 

Soon his house was full of drapery and lighting equipment and we had a meeting with Jon-Da-Silva and their manager, the maverick Rob Gretton at the Witchwood. Incomprehensibly, prior to the meeting, after just buying a Standells LP, from Echo records, I went into The Abbey to steady the nerves where I met Taff and for the one and only time since school Cozzy, the top-boy in my year. He no doubt thought I was still a fantasist when I said I was off to meet Rob Gretton. 

Pretty soon after 5 pints of strong lager had found their way down my neck, I was half-cut and on a bus to Ashton talking up our new record-label with Hip-Hop and Street Soul at its core, and dismissing New Order completely. Jeff was fighting a losing battle and should have gone alone but despite me being there fucking things up, we were still given a Gab's Wish gig to test our muscle and prove ourselves.    

Jeff was great with the practicalities, having managed an actual band, Lincoln, and I was good for odd ideas, like having a strobe facing the audience to make it hard for them to see. We worked a DJ set together that actually played well, and we both stayed in prior to the show. Jeff no doubt baby-sitting. Needless to say, the night was a fucking triumph with Gretton even patting me on the back, and with me and Jeff dancing uncontrollably in a way we had years earlier in private when the Rockingbirds were blaring out of his stereo.

Unfathomably, I had handed his mad ex a flyer and predictably she found her way to the show and then his house. Predictably, I gave away a strip of Prozac to oversee a party that went on for another 10 hours without both the host or his missus. Predictably, the writing was on the wall. 

 

PART 2

I HAD ceased venturing to Mancunia to see established bands and was instead just milling around what quickly turned into a revolving door of the same local acts and sixth formers. They were duly bored to death of hearing about the Doves by the end of April. A month before their secret show, that was finally granted us after a hundred or so calls to Dave Rofe. My record box hadn't been tempered by any divisions, so sounded somewhat disjointed as I tried to stay loyal to both the sixties underground garage scene and to dubby-techno pioneers. 

The energy and enthusiasm with my new work-spar was now strained and instead of baby-sitting me and corroborating on our ideas, I was instead given a free rein with disastrous consequences. 

However, not before seeing glossy professional posters advertising the Sea EP with our name emblazoned on it, which was a proper buzz. Hearing the local radio announce the show made it suddenly, frighteningly, real. 

Then, on the eve of the show, Gretton died suddenly. A crisis meeting was held in a Tib Street cafe when it was unfortunately decided the bloody show would go on. We spent the daytime erecting a wooden stage, the transportation of which nearly killed a pedestrian, and then we lined up a relaxing mellow night of guest DJing, only I turned up with moody-techno records.  

I still recall hammering out a Huggy favourite of mine full-blast, Hoth, to a busy bar for the second time, coz no one was in earlier, and dancing manically to it, so I must have by then been pissed. Later I retired with some friends from Royton for a lively lock-in, and then later still road tested a massage parlour that was across the road from the venue. 

I wasn't too happy dismantling our stage with a bear-head at the Doves' request the next afternoon. I wasn't too happy either at not being able to practice my DJing coz the FA cup final was on and was less happy still when by tea-time I was pissed again. Rather than go home for a lie down, which Jeff's missus was begging me to do, I instead sent her to get my Librium (my ill-fated Prozac replacement) and carried on drinking pints of Stella. 

Needless to say, the show was a fucking triumph, despite me being there, going through various dark psychotic changes that left me scared of my own records, scared of my friends, and, the final indignation, being unable to control my own bladder. I don't recall what actually went into my system that night or anything sequential, but I do recall hiding under a table at one point. 

Quite how I connected with Andy Votel and Jane Weaver because of this show will forever remain a mystery. I even changed my trousers and took my share of what little money we made off to the massage parlour, where I hugged a bewildered-looking lady in her 40s. Who later cried buckets with me after I regaled my sorry tale. 

Life would never quite hold the same possibilities again, and I understandably became reclusive.