Pretentious? Moi....

A gentleman called Desmond Hill asked me some questions about my time as a pubescent post punk. This is what I told him -:

I’d like to discuss this quotation of yours; "We were supposed to make our live debut in July 1979 upstairs from The Garage with The Prigs and Hepatitis."

Is it possible to identify where precisely? I used to know the area well. Many friends and colleagues were connected with: Bells Court, Carliol Square, Marlborough Crescent, Pilgrim Street, Them Wifies, Children's Warehouse, the Basement Group at Spectro, the Laing Art Gallery, the DeGiorgio family businesses, CNTL publishing and Mortonsound. Jeff Farrell sub-let rehearsal space on Bells Court and Them Wifies had keys for several places. Additionally, there were sometimes local bands' live shows upstairs at The King's Head pub, on Marlborough Crescent, so I’m curious to learn which place it was where Pretentious Drivel were due to play with The Prigs and Hepatitis. Did Pretentious Drivel ever play The Garage itself? If so, do you remember who else played that night? Where else did Pretentious Drivel perform?

The Garage opened in June 1980, hosted weekly events until August, closed in late September and October, then hosted weekly events in November and December, which is when I believe Pretentious Drivel could have played there, along with Emergency Exit and Total Chaos. Who else do you remember seeing at The Garage?  Around that time, APX, Blue Lights Flashing, Brainstorm, Disorder, Feeble Minded/Aaargh, Fisher, Parasites, Pig Sani, Pious Ejaculators, Reptiles, SPG and The Underdogs all played there (allegedly). Only one band was ever removed from the stage, though their name remained painted in pink on the external back wall, visible for years.

Goodness, you’re taking me back 45 years here, to when I was on the cusp of turning 15 in August 1979. Simple maths lets you into the secret of how old I actually am. Well, the clue to our performance is in the use of the phrase “supposed to” as, while the gig, which I’ll come back to in a second, took place, we weren’t on the bill. The truly punk rock reason for this what that our other guitarist, Chris Dixon, had gone away on a camping holiday in North Yorkshire. As a result, only The Prigs and Hepatitis got to play that night.

I’m racking my brains to remember the name of the actual space it took place in, but all I can offer is that it was on the top floor of where The Garage was to be. If you walked down the lane from Pilgrim Street, where Spectro Arts, scene of so many iconic left field gigs in that period, had an entry on the left and The Basement, where I saw the cream of crazy performance art for free, was at the end of the building where it took a right turn, then the place I’m talking about was immediately on the other side of the lane as it continued down the hill from that point. Remember, this was July 1979 and so The Garage almost certainly wasn’t open as yet. Does that help?

I certainly remember a couple of gigs at the King’s Head, which turned into The Courtyard about 40 years ago now. I first went there to see Treatment Room and The Willus Bnad, who I’d previously seen at Spectro, then in February 1980, my cousin Grahame and his band The Monoconics (one 7” single and a couple of Peel sessions) played with 7 Minutes as support. However, the King’s Head wasn’t near Spectro, which was close to Worswick Street bus station, not Marlborough Crescent. The fact I used to get the 59 or 60 back home to Felling from there probably assisted in me becoming familiar with Spectro and the associated performance spaces at such a young age. I’m afraid that several of the names you mention don’t mean anything to me. I certainly wasn’t aware of: Them Wifies, the DeGiorgio family businesses, CNTL publishing or Jeff Farrell.

In the event, Pretentious Drivel never played The Garage. Other than The Model Workers, I doubt we had much in common with the more aggressive, punky bands who played there as we were more into This Heat, The Pop Group, The Mekons, Gang of Four and that detached, emotionless post punk / noise experimental side of things. I remember seeing Emergency Exit, supporting Total Chaos on my first visit to The Garage, when I believe The Model Workers were still known as Surge. I liked them, but the rest wasn’t my bag, other than Revolution Part 10 by Total Chaos, which I remember as a brilliantly innovative song.

Regarding the other bands you mention, I do have a very soft spot for Blue Lights Flashing, who were led by Felling’s own Mala Reay, who is still making music now with Gary Chaplin as Quarterlight. I remember seeing Gary’s first post Penetration outfit, Iron Curtain, play Spectro a couple of times. APX were truly awful and my enmity towards them was partly caused by their singer (Rat?) grabbing a microphone at the Hepatitis and Prigs gig, then smashing it off a wall. I only saw him perform once, at Saltwell Park in July 1981, when APX were laughably bad. That was the last time I saw Total Chaos I believe, as Keeks went off to Lancaster Uni that autumn.

The second and final time I went to The Garage was in December 1980. It was a freezing Sunday evening and Pig Sani, slimmed down to a 4-piece Pink Fairies meets Here & Now long hair band from the 7- or 8-piece People’s Youth Theatre Pataphysical Klezmer troupe who had played the Eldon Square battle of the bands in July 1979. They were brilliant, but it was so cold I had to leave after them. God knows how anyone could play guitar in those temperatures. I feel I should know The Reptiles, but apart from that I don’t recall any of the other bands. By the time The Station and The Bunker opened, I was away at university, and so they didn’t mean anything to me. Indeed, as I didn’t land back in Newcastle until Autumn 1988, even the early days of the Riverside, apart from attending the odd gig when home for a visit, was outside my realm of experience.

However, I do think I should tell you something about Pretentious Drivel. Influenced by Fast Product, Rough Trade and the weird stuff John Peel played, especially the Swell Maps bedroom tapes, my friend Chris Dixon (guitar and vocals) and I started a project called The Modernists in January 1979, named after the experimental art movement. I’d seen a documentary about them, possibly an episode of Arena or an Open University programme, which really appealed to me. Of course, three months later the Mod revival movement, which involved people dressing like trainee accountants and listening to terrible music, made the name untenable. A friend of ours Pete Sumby (who I’m still in touch with and played bass for us briefly) came up with the phrase Pretentious Drivel to describe some act at Spectro and the name stuck. Come September 1979, we found ourselves a permanent bassist and singer called Rob Gosden and started looking for gigs. We were only bairns, so pubs were out of the question; it was youth clubs and church halls for us.

In no particular order we played: Felling Miners Welfare, Jesmond Parish Church Hall (at the Osborne Road end of Clayton Road; long demolished), a Community Centre in High Heaton and a Church Hall in Brunton Park. We didn’t get anywhere, the reception we got was always negative and we never recorded anything as the set evolved so rapidly. Things moved up a gear when we started our A Levels at College, which allowed us to add Andrew Wilkie (a proper drummer who had just moved up from Cambridge) and the aforementioned Carol on sax and vocals. By early 1982 we played a couple of really good gigs at Balmbra’s on the Bigg Market and The Newton Park in High Heaton, but I think we’d all recognised our time had passed. The DIY ethic had been replaced by the solemnity of Factory-influenced sounds, which we loved but couldn’t replicate.

We had a band meeting on the day the Malvinas War started, to decide on whether to go into the studio and record a single or to break up. We chose the latter and, within months, Carole started nurse training, Chris went to Sheffield, Rob to Manchester, Andrew to Brighton and me to County Derry to a variety of universities and polytechnics. I’ve not seen any of them since, except via chance encounters and, even then, not since the back end of the 80s. That makes me sad, but life has to move on. I’m not sure if the rest of them still listen to File Under Pop or The Door and The Window.

Did you attend The Garage/Station/Bunker exhibition at Newcastle Contemporary Art earlier this year? It was apparently well received and well attended, with folks travelling from outside the region, and the gallery welcoming their most popular exhibition to date. I’m sure you'd have recognised some old faces. Several are still making music sometimes, despite the aches and pains of ageing, and the challenges and changes of the modern world. 

Sadly, I didn’t make that exhibition, which was curated by a bloke called Sned (I don’t believe I ever knew his real name), who played guitar with Blood Robots and used to be the boyfriend of Pretentious Drivel’s singer / saxophonist Carol Rushbrooke. Send contacting me on Twitter and we had a famous time catching up and exchanging messages, but the exhibition just seemed to pass me by, which is a real shame. Incidentally, I’m still making music; I released a CD earlier this year of noisy, experimental, arty rubbish, called the earth is flat. Of course, I’ve pillaged a few old Pretentious Drivel riffs that slosh around in the sonic maelstrom. If you’ve an address, I’ll send you a copy.