i-want-more

Look at us! We formed a band!

While googling old friends in an idle moment this morning, I found the myspace site of an old friend of mine. He is still making music, several years on from his first band, the amazing Andy Christ and His Biblical Mice. Dan Cray, I salute you.

Anyway, that reminded me of a time long ago when I too, made music.

After a fashion.

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It was 1991, the height of my Tank Girl/Kim Deal mode. I was going out with a metaller from a town in Devon called Crediton. [Before I start on this tale, I want to go on record and say that Crediton is a shithole. It makes the town I was born in, Tiverton, look like a throbbing, sexy metropolitan hub of art and culture. And that’s saying something.]

This metaller and I had a relationship that lasted about three or four months, I suppose, which was an age for me. He had the worst split ends of anyone I’ve ever met (man or woman) – they increased the volume of his hair about fourfold. He was also a guitarist, or so he said.

I’m not sure how I even ended up in the band, really. It may have been because I had a GCSE in music and was having singing lessons at the time. Not that either of these things made a damn bit of difference; because I neither sang in the band, nor had ever really played a guitar up until that point. However, I did have access to a car, which may have ultimately been the thing that swung it in my favour.

The line-up consisted of the metaller on lead guitar, his younger brother on drums (although definitely rhythmically challenged), another metaller on rhythm guitar, and a vocalist/shouter. I was on third guitar. This was because a) we didn’t have access to a bass, b) because we wanted to be a bit Cramps-y and c) because the lads thought that I’d add some novelty value.

A quick word about the vocalist. He too was rubbish, but he had a saving grace: he was cute. We used to flirt a lot. Sadly, his sour-faced girlfriend was a permanent fixture. Their relationship was on and off quite a bit, and I always hoped that one day I’d catch him at the right moment when they were on one of their breaks…it was never to be.

We also had a manager, Roland. He was a fat bloke and a mate of the vocalist. He was a laugh but he wasn’t really a manager in a traditional sense – he just used to like hanging about with us.

In essence, it was pretty much a doomed exercise from the start: two metallers who couldn’t play guitar, a drummer who couldn’t keep time, a vocalist who couldn’t sing, and me. The band was called Trash Culture Cannibals, or TCC for short.

Band practices were fun. There was a rehearsal space near the iron bridge in Exeter that we used to hire. These rehearsals mainly consisted of us trying to play songs, failing, giving up, the second metaller trying to persuade us to play Whole Lotta Rosie instead, me telling him to fuck off because there was no way I was playing any metaller shit, then playing lots of pool.

I played at least two gigs (there may have been more, can’t remember), one at Exeter Arts Centre and one supporting Mega City Four at a memorial gig at Exeter University Lemon Grove. So that’s one thing to be a bit proud of, I have graced the very same stage as Radiohead, Hole and The Fall.

Both gigs were atrocious. I didn’t even know where to plug my guitar in. The metaller and I had broken up along the way and could no longer stand one another. I’m not sure that I’m remembering this right, maybe an old Exeter-ite can confirm, but I remember doing some obnoxious stuff onstage – turning my back to the audience, gurning at the rest of the band, making rude gestures at the metaller, that sort of thing.

It all fell apart, of course. Having given up on trying to work my magic on the vocalist while his girlfriend’s back was turned, I started going out with someone who could actually play a guitar. He advised me to leave the band and keep my dignity (thanks Stu, you were right).

There is a postscript to this sorry tale. A while after I left TCC, they headlined a gig. Their support act were a German blues band who were, according to legend, amazing. They whipped the crowd into a righteous frenzy, then TCC went on and were unbelievably bad. The audience were rightly annoyed that their evening had been spoiled and bottled them off. A pal of mine, Koo, reckoned that they had lost their sense of humour/sense of proportion in my absence. For a while after that, anyone on the Exeter band scene who was out-classed by their support were known as having “done a TCC”.

I never picked up a guitar again.

posted by deafdisco @ 11:59 am