Seeing my chance, I went to speak to Rowland. I wasn’t sure how possible this would be but, for some reason, the ambition was there.Īt the gig, the crowd was sparse and the band were just hanging around. When I went to the These Immortal Souls the idea had formed that I wanted to buy Rowland a drink. I’m not sure why these ideas even came up, but both of these ambitions were fulfilled. Now, occasionally when I went to a gig I had an ambition to do a certain something.įor example when I saw Hanoi Rocks I wanted to have my photograph taken giving Michael Monro a hug, or when I saw the Au Pairs I wanted to share a spliff with Lesley Woods. Hindsight has led me to see this as an unexplainable and shameful neglect of a truly great and individual talent, but there we go, life’s like that sometimes. But even this venue seemed to be out of their reach as it was far from sold out, I’d played to bigger crowds there myself! I had headlined this venue myself (well, with my band) so I thought they should be playing somewhere much more prestigious. Bearing in mind that Nick Cave was by now playing some fairly big venues I found it a little sad that Rowland and TIS were playing at the tiny Planet X venue in Liverpool. I contacted my new friend and we got tickets for their Liverpool gig. This was quite an infrequent occurrence so I had to be there. Shortly after this, I saw in the NME that These Immortal Souls were on tour. We occasionally went for drinks and swapped tapes and tales. Fans of These Immortal Souls had to take company where they could find it, and as I mentioned earlier, this was a way of finding people who were on the same page as you. When he came to pick his CD up, we spoke again and arranged to go for a drink a few days later. I went against company protocol and asked him about it and generally struck up a conversation. I was amazed I didn’t know one other person who had this! So when I phoned the guy up to tell him his order was in, I couldn’t help myself. Part way through I came across a CD of Get Lost (Don’t Lie). One day it was my job to phone customers and tell them we had their orders ready to collect.
#Hanoi rocks christmas download
It actually turned out to be more concerned with shifting units and marketing the big sellers, but that’s another story.Īgain, this may seem strange in these download days, but it was tricky finding records and CDs by some bands, so customers would place an order and we would try to find it for them and then call them to let them know if we were successful. I remember thinking that all application forms should ask these questions if they were expected to reveal anything worthwhile about a person. I thought this would be my ideal job – there were after all questions on the application form asking me who my favourite bands were and what kinds of music I preferred.
I had a job in Our Price records – remember them? I did manage to drag a friend along to see Crime and the City Solution in Manchester, but no-one I knew liked or would listen to These Immortal Souls. This was obviously wrong and obviously a shame.īy now I was no longer in touch with my pen pal and finding fellow believers in the cause was even harder. Rowland on the other hand seemed to have been critically neglected and his stock was much lower. His shows were getting bigger, the critical reception was generally very good and the spotlight was firmly pointed at him. Moving forward to post-Birthday Party times, Nick definitely had the public’s attention. The next time he drank a whole bottle of Jack Daniels whilst performing, in less than an hour and finished the night collapsed at the back of the stage crying. The second time I saw the Birthday party Nick baited the crowd a little, but definitely led from the front. You never knew if you were going to get a conventional show or a violent confrontation, a kiss or a kick. I saw them three times and, at last, here was a band who were a truly unpredictable proposition. I had one other friend who I dragged to see a Birthday Party show at Liverpool Warehouse – he didn’t say he hated it, but he never came to see them again. However, we only met at Birthday Party gigs. At the time, I was writing to a girl who had placed an ad in the classified pages of the NME, wanting contact with fellow Birthday party fanatics, and we were in touch for many years. It seems strange in these Internet-enriched times, but finding fellow fans was not easy. Liking the Birthday Party became a badge of honour, a way of identifying like minded souls. On the other hand, I loved them! I loved them with an intensity that set them above other bands I followed.
I had friends who liked all kinds of noisy, out there music made by people who inhabited the fringes of society and convention, but none of my immediate social circle were Birthday Party fans. Or, more accurately, it was seldom a group activity. Being a Birthday Party fan was never easy.
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