The Ned Wood Archive

You’ll lose your mind and play.
Free games for May

It’s May. For post grads like me that doesn’t mean anything special. Just more work in the lab and the library. For undergrads, it means exams. And before the exams, one last fling. Pall goes to see Magazine up on Abbeymount. Nessie goes to see the League at George Square. Most of us see the Teardrops at Valentinos. In fact, I think, some are during the exams. I don’t know, like I say, I’m a big grown up postgrad now. I go to all of those gigs, with Pall or Nessie or Fi, but I can’t persuade anyone to go all the way over to Tiffany’s on the other side of town to see the mighty Only Ones.

Magazine played the Astoria with Josef K. That made it special for both me and Pall. We only knew the single, but of course we wanted to hear what else they’d got. Pretty good stuff. Same style: crashing guitars, bouncing bass, doleful vocals, but you keep them on the radar for whenever the next single or the album comes out. Only trouble was that the atmosphere was getting really heavy with smoke. I’d seen Magazine down in London the year before. This was at the Drury Lane theatre. They’d banned smoking there which was extremely unusual for gigs. Maybe the first smoke-free gig I’d ever been to. So I enjoyed it even if most of the crowd were whinging. Especially when Devoto lit up on stage. But the Astoria that night was pea soup thick with smoke. Made your eyes sting, never mind your lungs. I barely managed to make it through Josef K before I had to run outside for a breather. I think Pall had to escape, too. We missed the second band, whoever they were and then went back in for Magazine.

They’re a bit prog rock, aren’t they, Magazine. Let’s admit it. Not at all punky. All keyboards. Older brother music. But they had some really great songs. The Light Pours Out of Me has a great, Glitterband beat. Definitive Gaze is right funky and kosmische. Song from Under the Floorboards is great guitar pop. And, yes, the single version of Shot by Both Sides is punky. So, not all keyboards. Great variety. But Feed the Enemy is prog. They played a few new songs that night as well as the old classics. So we had fun, me and Pall, in between the nicotine poisoning, the lung cancer, the clogged arteries, and the coronary heart disease.

So, it was a relief to see the League in the comfort of the George Square Theatre. I’m getting old. Nothing I like better than a gentle five minute stroll across the Meadows and a luxurious seat to sit in while watching a smoke-free slide show with musical accompaniment. Except the first band were a dance band. The clue would have been in the name. Boots for Dancing. The sort of thing Pall might listen to. James Brown funk filtered through a post punky/new wave sensibility. And the second band were violent Gang of Four post punk guitars and confrontational attitude. The clue would have been in the name. The Scars. The sort of thing wee Fi would listen to.

And after the dance band and the punk band, we can sit back and watch the smoke-free slide show. There is something relaxing, meditative, and calming about sitting in a theatre in front of screens of stills, watching three blokes standing behind their consoles fiddling with whatever instruments or projectors they’ve got. We put our feet up and Phil Oakey sings all of those beautiful songs for us, while standing in front of the projectors and occasionally throwing his head to the side to get his asymmetrical hair out of his face like a horse trying to get rid of flies. This is the sort of thing I imagine English Kat might be comfortable seeing. And, I’m right, she’s there with Nessie, but she doesn’t say much when I talk to them on the way out. We hog the conversation anyway, me and Nessie, enthusing about the evening. The League had got a new album coming out soon, so they played loads of new tracks. Some austere, dignified, and almost mediaeval like the first singles and the first album. Some more poppy like Empire State Human or Being Boiled. And some great covers. Mick Ronson. Gary Glitter. Lou Reed. They were on their own doing what they were doing back then. That first incarnation should have been huge, but that was the last tour the four of them did together. They all got more famous after that, but none of them were ever as good.

The Teardrops didn’t have an album coming out. They just had their three singles. Each of them different. Each of them amazing. But they put on a great show at Valentinos, May 18th 1980.

The Teardrops were different. I felt an affinity with them. When you see a band at the beginning, you feel attached. Not like with the Scars or Josef K. That was “These are pretty good. I’ll have to keep an eye on them.” With the Teardrops it was “Bloody Hell. This is excellent. Hey everyone, listen to this band. They’re the future of rock n roll. All right people, you’ve got to hear these guys. They’re fantastic. I’ve seen the future of rock and roll and its name is Teardrop Explodes. Wait til the album comes out. You’ve got to hear this, etc, etc, etc.”

Those three singles were all great. Sleeping Gas – a bit kosmische. A bit dreamy. A bit League even. Especially the B side. Bouncing Babies more post punk. Insistent. And maybe some John Cale. With a bit of Nico, Desertshore on the B side. Treason starting the move to a poppier sound. They were evolving from psychotic shadows to slick hooks. And Treason even had some Bunnymen on the flip!

Adrian Thrills wrote an article about them in the NME that spring. He said they were both fun and arty. Happy go lucky and intellectual. Sounds about right to me. Morley said something similar: “The Teardrops are both a lazy cerebral pleasure and an innocuous pop sherbet. Highbrow and lowbrow.” He also said that Julian Cope was “an iconoclastic pop hero and too clever for his own good.” So that about tells you what you need to know. You get both sides of the coin.

Pall felt the same way, I think. We expected greatness at the gig. They didn’t disappoint. The new songs sounded just as good as the ones we already knew. They were maturing into a real band with real music. Copey was adding choruses and middle eights. Some of those new bands that sprung up were happy to have their fifteen minutes of fame and then go back to the day job. They just wanted to have their day in the sun. Delta 5. Essential Logic. Tontrix. Other bands were just going to keep getting better and better. Joy Division. The Bunnymen. The Teardrops. They were our great hope for the future, those three. They were the bands that were going to define music over the coming years. Set the world on fire. We didn’t see them as rivals so much as allies. Especially the Zoo bands. We didn’t care whether they slagged each other in the press. We didn’t care whether Balfe was a Bunnyman or a Droppy. We were the evangelists preaching the gospel. We knew, on the basis of a handful of vinyl and a handful of gigs between them, we just knew, that they were gonna reach the very top. All three of them. Higher than the peaks of the Spottiswoode Hall. More magnificent than the towers of Warrender Castle. More significant than the Palace of Marchmont.

Yep, that good.