bitten lips

so going to gigs got me thinking about the best gigs that i'd attended and a few came to mind and since i'm talking to myself and two people who came in from the US hoping for something else when they saw the title, i reckon i can ramble. most of the great gigs happened about twenty or so years ago so forgive my memory. one that stands out involved the band that wrote bitten lips, the band of holy joy, that i attended with my brother at the university in cardiff. they were the support act to james, who feature in another great, when i saw them perform as the support to the smiths in 1984. like i said my memory may be letting me down but i'm sure that was the gig with the veggie sausage but it may not have been. the band of holy joy appear again at the university of warwick, 1989ish. we'd gone in (professor martin conyon and myself, look him up) to see the sundays and the band of holy joy was a completely unexpected support; one moment sitting in the bar, the strains of "what the moon saw" and then rapture. another that sticks for the wrong reason is the man from del monte, supporting the primitives at leeds uni. i'd spent most of the previous summer listening to the other orange juice (ha ha) in my jaunt around europe and so went to the primitives concert specifically for the support act. the problem was that we spent too long drinking and playing pool in the bar and missed half the support. on a similar note the lightning seeds had their amp blow halfway through their set when supporting the beautiful south at the cia. they in turn were then cut short by a power problem and did no encore.

back to the best of; many of these were when i used to help set up the bands at north staffs poly, '85-'87. the housemartins, the woodentops stand out but the best of the best, the boothill footappers, christmas 1985. the friendliest gig ever, everyone was drunk (it was christmas and the bar was the second cheapest in the uk) but when you fell you were helped by all. the music, folky bluegrass, meant that everyone danced. i walked home convinced that i had broken my leg because my right leg was dragging along the floor the whole way. it was only in the morning that i discovered that the heel had broken off my beloved winklepickers.

we play most of the bands that i mentioned but maybe not enough. i'm currently putting lots of my lps onto the computer so look out eardrums, here come the band of holy joy.