A long time ago… in a town far away…
Posted by Andy | Filed under Music
After I’d finished design college I thought about getting a job. Then, 17 seconds later I decided I was too young to get a job and had some serious youth based anarchy to seek out. Whilst doing nothing on a lazy weekday, I was casually flicking through the Wigan Reporter’s music page, edited by Ed Jones and came across an advert for a singer/songwriter required for a local indie band called Monkeyland. I thought what the hell and rung up – got through to Neil, explained I’d ‘laid a few tracks down’ (how rock ‘n roll was I?) and we arranged to meet up.
I got the bus into Wigan and met up with Neil and Dixie and played a tape of some dodgy demos that I’d done. They seemed to like them (they must have been into white noise) and I was accepted into the pack. Fortunately there was no ceremonial initiation involving having my head dunked ito the toilet or anything like that.
We started practicing at some hell hole of a place in Westhoughton. It was so damp that sometimes you actually got stuck to the floor as you were seized by the festering week old beer, sick, saliva and urine. However, it had a nice car park.
Our first ‘gig’ was at The Den in Wigan which was the old Transport club near the bus station. We supported The Tansads and also on the bill was Peter James Mercer, who I went on to play some collaborations with. To be honest, The Den was a shithole, but it was packed out and it was a great moment. I hadn’t done any gigs before, but when the crowd responded positively rather than throwing faecal matter at me which is what I’d anticipated, I knew it was the right thing to do.
In fact I got so carried away with the moment that I mentioned to Neil that in 2 years time we would be on Top of the Pops. You know what? – we never did get on TOTP and Neil reminds me of this fact every time I see him, but that’s how confident we felt. It’s great being 21 cos you have no fear of anything – you are invincible!
We did a few more gigs and got some local press but we knew we needed some kind of management. We were approached by Paris Press (Paris Angels’ Management) and some guys who used to manage CUD, but we didn’t end up signing with them. We actually lied about our ages on one of the forms cos we were 22 and felt we were too old!!! That little lie has remained with me forever – 22 – too old – for god’s sakes!!! Now whenever I think I’m too old, or too young for anything, I think about that.
One guy who decided he wanted to manage us was a guy called Dan Tracker. I don’t for the life of me know why we went along to see him, but we did. He was a strange goth like creature who claimed to be an authority on all things indie music. We slowly discovered that he was an authority on utter bullshit. The final straw was when he suggested that we think about some ideas for ’stage costumes’… ok? say that back… ’stage costumes’. We made our excuses and left.
At the Den gig was a guy called Fenny who had a spot on Radio Lancashire. He’d recently been playing some of our demo tapes and was interested in what we were doing. He got in touch with his mate Mike Kelly who also happened to be the editor of Manchester City’s official fanzine. If you were a Man City fan then this would have been a notch in the headboard to seal the deal… but none of us were really into football then. Mike managed us for a bit, took us down to London and around the North West and round about the same time invested a bit into our debut record release – Placebo EP. This got airplay and interest from Mark Radcliffe and Mark Goodyear at Radio One and an interview with Terry Christian in which Terry asked questions and answered them all himself before I got chance to open my mouth. The gigs just weren’t happening for us though and we got sick of playing to the sound engineers in empty rooms, and so Mike was asked to step down.
Our new manager was Stump. Stump was called stump because he was small but like many small people he had a huge voice. Stump was like a compressed Morrissey complete with quiff, flowery shirts and DMs. He got us some good gigs supporting The House of Love and other indie stars of the time, but eventually we decided it’d be great to have lots of managers and drafted my sister Susie in to help out as well, and she got us a gig with Shed 7 at the Lomax, Liverpool.
Dixie left the band and we played as a three piece for a while – but I’m not great at multitasking so we were joined by Gary Aston on guitar. We did few gigs – places like the Boardwalk in Manchester, recorded some new stuff, but eventually things just kind of fizzled out.
I did a few gigs with Peter James Mercer – just acoustic and guitar and a few other small projects, but nothing much happened onthe music front between 1997 and 2000.
CANNULA…
Round about 2000 AD, we decided, after 3 years of talking about being in a band, that we should once again play some music. We got a band together with Dave Spencer who was the original Monkeyland singer before me, and Woody and Neil. We called it ‘Cannula’ – named after Dave’s predicamenet when a cannula actually broke while it was connected to his arm and a piece nested itself in his bloodstream. It was a pretty serious predicament as this piece of shrapnel could just one day decide to swim into his heart and that would be it… so this way at least he would have a band named after him. We did a few gigs and recorded an album called A Neon Serenade, embracing the luxury of digital recording (why couldn’t it have been around 10 years earlier!!!) but once again it just kind of fizzled out.
HEIFERVESCENT
After Cannula fizzled out I was at a loss to do. I love writing music, arranging it, producing and especially performing it, but now the performance side wasn’t so easy as I was on my own. However I still had to write, and started writing songs with no preconceptions or media influences – just innocent pop songs again. Great, this made me feel 10 years younger and I enjoyed recording. Neil played bass on a few tracks but all the rest is a solo effort.
It was still a nameless music project and I had no urgent drive to come up with some fake identity or pseudonym or whatever. For New Year we went away with some friends and stayed in a nice farmhouse in the Peak district for a few days. After a particularly heavy New Year’s Eve drinking session, the house was manic with the sounds of tidying up – bottles being thrown into binbags and hoovering. Everything was too loud and so I wandered outside and across the road where a herd of cows had gathered silently. I stood facing them and enjoyed a very strange sense of tranquility from attempting to stare them out. Who was going to crack first? was it me or was it one of the cows? Actually, it was me. I won! The cows couldn’t take it and off they sauntered. But for some reason that bovine staring competition was both relaxing and refreshing. It was like an effervescent – only with cows, and so I named it Heifervescent.
There are currently 4 full Heifervescent albums and a couple of smaller collections.
I have hundreds, perhaps thousands of unfinished demos from Monkeyland days and hadn’t listened to them for years, so I recently bought an old analogue multitrack so that I can restore all these old recordings and maybe re-record a few of them. May take some time, but let’s see what happens.
Tags: cannula, heifervescent, monkeyland, Music, wigan
