I wouldn’t like to say for certain just how many gigs I attended at Riverside, but it would have to be pushing 1,000, not including the innumerable Friday nights I ended up there for a late one and sometimes, to my shame and amazement, even a dance. However, I was rarely if ever there on a Saturday as that was Newcastle United day. As well as gigs and club nights, there was the fact I wrote for Paint It Red from 1988 until 1997, which meant I was often on Melbourne Street for meetings or to drop off or pick up stuff to review. I even remember taking in handwritten articles, before I got a word processor, back in the days when email was a glamorous and unattainable technological marvel.
Basically I couldn’t even begin to guess my total number of visits to the Riv. The strange thing is that, despite the overwhelming importance of Riverside and the other activities that went on in the building, which was my social hub for around a decade, I was pretty much a latecomer to it all as I had not been involved in any of the planning that had gone in to the opening of the place, as I was living away at the time.
From the age of 12, on Christmas Eve 1976 when I heard John Peel play Richard Hell’s Blank Generation and Bob Dylan’s Desolation Row, music dominated the parts of my brain not occupied with football, ultra left wing politics or the opposite sex. Amazingly enough, I also had enough space enough in my head to be good at remembering dates and to appreciate books. Being a lazy bugger, the very last thing I wanted in life was to be forced get up early and work for a living, so my whole teenage ambition, aside from being invited to deputise for Andy Gill in the Gang of Four, appear for Newcastle United in goal and to go out with absolutely anyone who’d have me, was simply to go to University, preferably to somewhere that had a happening musical scene.
When it came to applying, I used the NME gig guide as an aide; my question was not about academic content or quality of teaching, it was simply a query about where could I see the most bands each week? The answer certainly wasn’t Coleraine Co. Derry where I somehow ended up studying Literature in 1983. While I was forced to hitch or organise Student Union trips to Belfast to see The Fall or That Petrol Emotion, something was happening on Melbourne Street that I knew nothing about.
Arriving back in Newcastle, the city I’d escaped from as there wasn’t enough musical action, at the end of each term, I’d always touch base with Has Gaylani in Volume, using my student overdraft to stock up on essential releases. In June 1985 he told me of a new club that was opening up. Having witnessed the supernova of Dingwalls (a lousy venue, but where else could I have seen The Gun Club, Orange Juice, Nico and Big Country at that time?), I was not convinced Newcastle could support another venue. However, as it was ex Fall man Marc Riley who was playing the opening night I ventured down, as he’d been brilliant playing the little room at Tiffany’s the summer before.
Frankly, it wasn’t an auspicious start; Mark E Smith’s classic description of the Riverside as a youth club run by Communists seemed strikingly apt that night as a kind of gentle chaos was the defining mood. The gig itself was good, with Riley dedicating a song to me, and I liked the ambience of the place, so headed back to see A Certain Ratio, Inca Babies and James over the next month or so. The place was never as full as that first night, possibly due to the disappearance of alcoholic drinks from the equation. Still, aged 21, I was still earnest enough to focus on bands as the reason to go out. How naïve I was back then.
Education called me back to Ireland for final year, meaning I missed out on seeing The Fall in October 1985, though the first solid gold classic gig I saw at the Riv was their performance in June 1986, when me and Paul Flanagan, subsequently the bassist in Puppy Fat and Nancy Bone were thrown off stage for dancing to City Hobgoblins. Around that time I also remember seeing The Mekons, one of my all time top 5 bands, pulling in a crowd of about a dozen; half of them went off to play pinball.
Again I moved away to London and then Leeds doing postgraduate study, but I did get back quite a few times to see dazzling sets by the likes of The Gun Club and Swans in 1987, before finally settling back in the North East in 1988, by which time Riverside had become the standard venue of choice for up and coming bands visiting the region.
As I’d developed an interest in writing about music and football, arriving in the north east at this time showed a great sense of timing; Paint It Red satisfied my musical inclinations and The Mag printed my jottings about football. I have mates who to this day will not miss a Newcastle game home or away, but last bought a record when coloured vinyl was the rage, while others will tour the country following obscure Swedish indie bands, but think Imre Varadi still leads the line for Newcastle. Personally, I’ve never been able to make a choice between football and music as the most important aspect of my cultural life; I wouldn’t know how to.
Luckily, I wasn’t asked and enjoyed being sent by Paint It Red, then still based on Claremont Road, to review bands. Over the next decade it is impossible to do more than scratch the surface when talking about who was good and who was rank, so I’ll pick a highlight from each year.
1988: Pussy Galore; A freezing Friday night in November and they turn up as a last minute thing as part of the club night and blow the place to pieces with a set of brutal, destructive NY attitude.
1989: Sonic Youth & Mudhoney: an ocean of sound as the walls expanded to allow a defining moment in time to be marked by all who witnessed it. One hell of an important night. More important than Tad & Nirvana? Just!
1990: Fugazi; they must have played the Riv half a dozen times, but touring Repeater they were at their very best. A Goth girl vomited cider & black down my arm in the mosh pit.
1991: Teenage Fanclub; not the first time they played here, but the first time it was clear they were geniuses. My all time favourite band.
1992: Mercury Rev; long before Deserter Songs, when they seemed to spend half their time on stage arguing and looking for the crazy singer who wandered through the audience, they produced one of the most eccentric evenings I’d ever seen.
1993: Huggy Bear; possibly only time I’ve ever wanted to fight a band. These original Riot Grrl clowns had a moronic bloke for a backing singer who managed to irritate me fairly comprehensively. The band themselves were calamitously crap.
1994: Killdozer; the slow, grinding, 16rpm recreation of Flannery O’Connor’s world, by a singer so diminutive he stood on a box to reach the microphone. Punishing fun.
1995: Black Grape; the hottest night in Newcastle for a decade, a crazy sold out crowd and Shaun Ryder in his pomp. One hell of a good gig!
However, just when the venue seemed to be at its most imperious, it all fell apart. Frankly, I would struggle to name a single gig I attended in 1996 and by 1997; everything had gone to pieces with Riverside after it stopped being a collective. The vibe had gone and the bands just stopped coming. Friends I’d known drifted away as we had nowhere to meet up.
Of course, as I was now a proud dad of a little lad (who’s now a 6ft 2” rugby player who is as mad about British Sea Power as I was about Joy Division back in the day), I had other interests. Also, I fell foul of the regime in charge. Hence….
1998: The Fall; as I was barred from the place, having made my views on Riverside’s transfer to private from public ownership abundantly clear, I was forced to watch this through the side of the building. Still sounded good I have to say.
1999: Fugazi: the last time I set foot in the place. They were brilliant, obviously, and as bemused as the rest of us exactly why it had to close down. As it was the dying embers of the place, I was no longer persona non gratia; hence I got to see Fugazi and my beloved Riverside one last time.
Now as I’m closer to 70 than the age I was when Riverside opened, I still see bands. I love the energy of youngsters falling in love with music and seeing bands in lovely venues like The Cumberland, the Star & Shadow, The Cluny, or even the magnificent Sage. However a part of me dies every time I have to pay £4 a pint for rancid slop in the corporate hell of the Academy. The beer was dismal in the Riv, but for most of its existence, the money it made didn’t go in the pocket of The Man and that’s important.
Like the author I spent seemingly part of my youth in The Riv, as it was and still is affectionately known. The list of bands seen is endless, the nights unforgettable (except I've forgotten most if them), the Red Stripe rank and the toilets an indoor swimming pool. BUT it was a always will remain part of my heritage and soul. How I miss it. It tears me up seeing it as flats or whatever it is now, much in the same way as seeing The Mayfair as the shit hole that is The Gate. Newcastle lost a bit of its heart when they shut The Riverside. You kids don't know what you missed out on and sadly now, never will.
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