Birmingham, UK '89-91

More Music. Why not?

I remember the late eighties as a great time for live music and beautiful rock chicks jumping on me. Birmingham was fantastic for both. Great venues. Great pubs where, pre-exstacy, drug dealers stood in the gangway between bars. Rastas put on "blues" parties in their gardens. If you wanted hash you didn't have to move. You passed your money one way, the dealer by the speaker passed the ganja towards you.

A friend of mine and I took our girfriends to see Killing Joke not really knowing who they were, the ghostly drive of "Love Like Blood" made us curious. We stood on the balcony totally blown away by the sheer driving force of musicality. Later Youth, the bass player from the band became one of the pioneers of Goa Trance in India.

Another band I remember well from the time was Soundgarden. One of the stars of Spinal Tapp introduced them live on stage. Chris Cornell was like a new Robert Plant. I did a lot of crowd surfing and almost bit my tongue off being dropped on my head. I was also lucky enough to see Nirvana twice. Once on the Bleach tour before they were famous with L7 suppoting them infront of 400 sweaty Brummies and once after "Smells Like Teen Spirit" became an anthem. They were crap both times, but Nirvana were always deliberately crap live, parodying the "rockstar" image and concept.

At the time British bands used to sell a contrived, tepid image to a music journalist and then pretend to live it. US bands mastered their instruments and lived the life full on. The best of these were the Chilli Peppers. They might be a bit old now, they were memorably superhuman back then, especially Flea who played bass like a motherfucker, arms and legs flailing everywhere. Great energy. Great times. I enjoyed toking in those days. We used to laugh all the time giving each other rising blowbacks, upsidedown blowbacks, hot knives, the only drug problems I had was getting good ones at the right prices.

In the mid nineties I put down my guitar and got seriously into Psychedelic trance music. The concept of facing the front watching bands seemed passe. Under lasers and smoke and with all the drugs everyone on the dancefloor was a rockstar, living the rockstar lifestyle. But London was different. There has always been an impersonal vibe which I've struggled with in social situations. People seem to be more of a commodity to be consumed. Now if I go to a commercial trance party everyone is facing the front like a rock gig, but there is still a good energy at the odd trance squat party. I'm beginning to wonder if I am going to come out of this ganja haze with a new energy to put into live music. I hope so.