Wreckless Eric / Southern Domestic

@ the Concorde, Brighton

supporting Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros

November 15^th 2001

It was well worth the effort. We got Annie Holland from Elastica to play bass with us because John Brown's a bit geographically challenged for gigs of this nature. Annie came with her Ampeg bass rig which I helped her to retrieve from the grubby clutches of what's left of Elastica the other week. I combined that trip with a Do Not Press (my book publishers) party at which I was a surprise guest, which meant that I had to play with my back to the fireplace, facing a bunch of, for the most part, bemused book people. We met a bloke from the Arts Council who lived in Brighton, so we offered him a lift home in the Transit van we'd hired to move Annie's amp in. He was thrilled to bits, and so were we, because he helped us to move the Ampeg into Annie's mother's hallway while Annie's mother slept upstairs, unaware that she was going to have a blue fit in the morning when she found the hallway blocked by an enormous flight case.

As we hit the A23 heading for Brighton, Annie turned to the Arts Council man who's called John Hampson, and said, 'you don't half smell nice - what shampoo do you use?'

The Humbermouth Literary Festival, Hull

- two nights at the Bull, "in conversation" at the EICH Gallery

It started on the Thursday. Amy Rigby was playing at the Bull that night and I was the guest DJ. It couldn't have been easier - all I had to do was to load the car with two guitars, one amplifier, a bag of records, a few bits of equipment to record the gig, plus a clean pair of socks and a toothbrush, and set off in time to get there at six o'clock. Except that I was having an incompetent day.

I'd parked the car the night before in the loading bay outside the house because I had to take some things to the dump. I figured I could chuck them all in the car, whiz round to the dump, come back, load up and set off to Hull. The loading bay restrictions start at nine, and you're allowed half an hour, so I'd have till nine thirty.. Except that they changed it without telling me. I looked out of the window at quarter to nine and there was the ticket. I was a bit furious. The day was on a downhill slope from there on.

I went to the tip and there was a huge queue - it must've been half term. I don't know if anyone else has noticed this phenomenon. At half term and during school holidays, particularly the Easter one, the municipal tips are always full of what are unmistakably school teachers - school teachers getting rid of privet cuttings, disposing of defunct TV sets, dumping the detritus from a garden shed, school teachers 'doing their bit for the environment' by popping some beer bottles in the bottle bank. Then I got told off for dumping cardboard in 'Cardboard' whilst parked in 'Aggregates and Hardcore'.

When I got back it wasn't possible to park outside because they were having a soft drinks delivery in the shop downstairs. I couldn't find anything and the phone kept ringing. What with one thing and another I didn't leave Brighton until two o'clock and I had to stop for petrol on the way out of town. I was going to be late, and I'd just realised that the reason I was in a foul mood was because I hadn't had any breakfast and it was approaching mid-afternoon.

I got myself sorted out and made it through the Dartford tunnel ahead of the rush hour. The afternoon settled down and I started to enjoy the journey. Driving to gigs is great - you don't have to think about what to do next, like should I mix this track now, or wait till I've made 434 words into something more like a thousand - you just drive. It gives me a sense of purpose without actually doing much. Everything was fine until I got to near Cambridge on the M11. There're loads of roadworks before that and I was congratulating myself on getting through them just before the rush hour, when I mistakenly turned off the M11 onto the A11. There wasn't anyway of getting back on to the motorway. In the end I had no choice but to drive down to the other side of the motorway to Stanstead, turn round and repeat the journey through the roadworks for a third time. I forgot to mention that the only other route open to me was in fact shut due to a hideous looking accident.

It was dark by now of course, and there was snow forecast. The military were on the move back at Stanstead - large armoured cars with guns on the top - and that caused a bit more hold up, hurrah for Our Boys. I hit Cambridge on the M11 in fine time to join in with the rush hour there. The snow hit in Lincolnshire, but I didn't notice it because I did most of Lincolnshire and South Humberside in the shelter of a large truck. When I finally got past it I was amazed to find myself in a fully flung Christmas card setting. On the approach to the Humber Bridge there was a large sign that said BEWARE OF FALLING ICE. As I drove along, the only car on the road, I became aware of something that look like a giant jet propelled gannet travelling in a horizontal manner from top left to bottom right. It shattered next to me on the other carriageway.

My second set was more esoteric - Sunday Morning by the Velvet Underground mixed with a Moog Expressions record, going into Where Do I Start by the Chemical Brothers, followed by a remix of Sunrise by Pulp. (There's a barely hidden Sunday theme running through all this - the only difficult reference being the almost nick of the Velvets Sunday Morning arpeggio on the album version of Sunrise - of course it isn't on the remix, which just makes the whole thing a bit more subtle. Especially on a Thursday night in the Bull). I pulled off a mix of Sunrise with Shoot Speed/Kill Light from the last Primal Scream album - unfortunately I fucked up the point of explosion, but I don't think anyone noticed. After that Ziggy Stardust for Mick Ronson (who came from Hull), and Hey Joe by Jimi Hendrix which mutated into Voodoo Child by way of Funkedelic - that's my real party piece but after such a hard day I could only approximate it. After that The Poet by Sly And The Family Stone, I'm Not Like Everybody Else by the Kinks with a bit of You're Looking Fine shoved into the guitar break, and Afrika Shox by Leftfield which I landed by way of more Moog Expressions as the promoter, Andy Richardson, introduced Amy Rigby.

I was really quite relieved because the journey was catching up with me and I needed a rest. Amy's set was most enjoyable - songs about relationships with fucked-up blokes, beer drinking low-life, that sort of thing. She was very nervous, I wanted to tell her not to be, that it was all OK, and later on when she asked me to come and assist her in her version of Whole Wide World I did. That was funny - she'd broken a string and was changing it while I got my guitar out, and Andy plugged my amp in. I explained to the audience that I was still driving a car through a Lincolnshire Christmas card, and Amy quivered. It was a great version - Dolly Rogers and Kenny Parton with a Latin-American edge and a hint of Velvets. I was thrilled - Whole Wide World was the last song I ever played in the Bull in the old days (1976) before I left for London. For those who don't know here's a bit of a press release:

I was really pleased to find that the Bull was still going as a venue all these years later. I'd like to think that I started that venue. Early in 1976 I formed a group called Ruby & The Takeaways out of the ashes of the now legendary Addis & The Flip-Tops. We needed somewhere to play, so I mounted an assault on every pub in Beverley Road, starting with the Bull, because it was the nearest one to where I lived, and I'd heard there was an upstairs function room.

We played there every Tuesday night. As we finished my new song "Whole Wide World" on the last ever Tuesday that I played there I heard a man at the bar say to the landlord 'I reckon between them and the ventriloquist we've gorrit sewn up this year.' I never entered the Bass Charrington Inter-Pub Talent Competition. A couple of days later I left for London, and three months later I made my first single for Stiff Records. I never did get a job on a liner.

The Bull used to have a fairly posh saloon bar by Hull standards. It was all red plush upholstery and red velvet curtains hanging halfway up the windows on chunky wooden rods. The public bar was like most public bars in Hull - strip lighting and black and white Marley tiles on the floor. Piss, puke and beer proof. Now the Bull has got two bars like this, the only difference being that the former saloon bar contains a miniature pool table. Upstairs they've got rid of the stage, and with it the home organ, and installed a giant screen TV. Unfortunately they'd moved it to the back of the room for the duration, or I would have had it behind me, draped with the Stars And Stripes and a Union Jack, and tuned to CNN. They've moved the bar and put in a raised seating area, otherwise it's pretty much the same.

Friday night was completely and utterly packed. A lot of the audience were drunk, and several people that I've never met before professed to being either in Addis & The Flip-Tops, or at least in our road crew, which must've been huge. I couldn't tell you what I played but I started both nights with Birthday Blues and Lureland from The Donovan Of Trash. Midway through Friday the audience got a bit rowdy when I told them it was all right by me if they ordered drinks while I was playing, because I felt sorry for the landlord having a full pub and not selling any drinks. He was a nice man. The old landlord was a nice man too, but he's evidently moved on, probably retired.

On Saturday morning Andy and I went to the Aldi Supermarket to get some own brand groceries as prizes in the raffle. We decided that it really wasn't possible to hold an event in an art gallery in Hull on a Saturday afternoon without having a raffle. We chickened out of the classic Meat Raffle and decided on own brand groceries and cleaning products instead. It was a huge success, and we made a profit of three pounds each.