Wreckless Eric News Archive October 2002

Chapter Four:
A Rainy Night In Hull

Thursday in Scarborough was lovely. It was brilliant sunshine all the way and we even managed to have a walk on the front and gorp at what we guessed to be Jimmy Saville’s flat – he lives in Scarborough and apparently it isn’t uncommon to see him jogging around the town centre or whatever it is he does boys and gals - or should that be buoys and gulls as we’re at the seaside?

We drove back to Hull after the gig and terrified ourselves at three o’clock in the morning by sighting a ghoul on the side of the road in Hessle. It was probably just some drunken teenager wending its weary way home, but after I’d finished relating the story of two ghouls, a child ghoul and an adult ghoul, wearing mackintoshes buttoned to the neck, who tried to stop my van on the road between Dieppe and Rouen in the middle of a dark October night by forming an unexpected human roadblock and making faces at me, and how later I was stalked by an old goat on a moped who woke me up in a layby in the blackness to enquire how far it was to Rouen, we were thoroughly frightened.

That is Andy was, and I had to give him a lift back to his mother’s house after we’d raided the fridge at the Jenkins/Storch household where I was staying, even though it was only five minutes walk away. He made me promise not to drive away until he’d let himself in and shut the door behind him, with not a thought for me having to drive back round the corner in the car alone and unarmed. There could have been a ghoul hiding behind a tree or lurking in the shrubbery beside the front door. Fortunately there wasn’t, but there could’ve been – not that I was afraid or anything.

In the morning it was raining. It was still raining in the afternoon and when we arrived at the Adelphi after a day of looking at the world through steamed up windows the car park looked like a scene from the Great War. They had to put duckboards down between the club entrance and the mud. The place was beginning to look as though it had a moat. On the bright side it occurred to me that this wasn’t really body-dumping weather – a couple of bodies have recently been found dumped in the vicinity of the Adelphi Club. It doesn’t inspire customer confidence. Things have escalated in the area between local thugs and a large influx of asylum seekers. As higher education will soon be a thing of the past in Hull if the cutbacks and closures carry on at the present rate, there’s a lot of empty student accommodation. There are six thousand less students in the city. A private deal has apparently been done between Southampton and Hull whereby Hull gets asylum seekers to fill its student accommodation and keep its landlords happy, and Southampton attempts to become a nice place to live.

A vigilante group has been advertising for volunteers, preferably with a military background to help police the streets late at night. I heard tales of organised gangs who seek out lone students and asylum seekers, of knife wielding Kosovans and mega-violence in filling stations. Twenty-five years ago you could walk round the streets of Hull at any time of day or night in perfect safety. You can’t now. John Prescott comes from Hull, he’s the MP for East Hull. I wouldn’t like to suggest that John Prescott is a thug and an ignorant bully because that would be libellous. I’ve discussed his behaviour elsewhere on this site about a year and a half ago but just to refresh your memory:

There were riot police everywhere - shields, visors, batons, padded boiler-suits - and that was just the horses. We got down Great Portland Street and almost onto Oxford Street before we were driven back by police on horseback. They come galloping up, big animals on big animals, and you have no choice - you either run or get trampled. Most people were very cool, there was little provocation that I saw. The police seemed to be making all the running, closing off the side streets and funnelling everyone into the main streets leading away from Oxford Circus. Those mounted police have really worked on their image - it's designed to instil fear, and I think it's modelled on the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. They're large, silent and brutal. The on-foot riot police, on the other hand are anything but silent, as we found out when we got involved in a baton charge. They screamed as they ran whacking at us with their batons as we tried to get out of their way - again you have no choice. This is grossly intimidating behaviour on the part of the forces of law and order, and it's only going to get worse. Perhaps next year we should all make a date to meet up at the anti-capitalist demonstrations, I think it's the least we can do. In case anyone isn't sure who the forces of law and order are in our country here's a picture of our deputy prime minister, John Prescott:

Prescott is the one on the left. Perhaps the diminished state of higher education in Hull is a good thing – it really wouldn’t do for the constituents to be better educated than the boss.

This is all getting a bit cheerless isn’t it. The rain stopped eventually, the water was swept away and the Adelphi PA system was successfully augmented and we even covered the wall at the back of the stage with black cloth and some very seventies flowery stuff. It all began to look most unlike Hull. The Universal Magnetic DJs turned up and so did the people. And we’d got our own sound man for the night, a chap called Hugh who knew what he was doing and was right into it.

I had a special guest on stage too –a violin player from East Hull called Jim Eldon. Jim is known for his strange cover versions. He does a stark version of Bruce Springstein’s Dancing In The Dark, which put into a Hull context takes on a very different meaning. He also does Semaphore Signals. Tonight he joined me for my version. He also played on Kilburn Lane and Sweet Jane which we did at the end, backing track and all. The only thing that was missing was a mirror ball.

I think that’s all I can tell you about Hull for the moment. I’m going to bed now because it’s two o’clock in the morning. Here’s a picture of me in pyjamas that Karen too earlier today with her new digital camera. She took the one at the top of the page too – I’d just come back from my handsome class. I like these pictures because I don’t look like Chris Difford – I’ve just seen him on Jools Holland and now my worst nightmare would be looking, sounding or dressing like Chris Difford. Given the choice I think I’d prefer to be Glen Tilbrook – and that’s a horrible idea. Aren’t I a bitch? Here’s the bitch in pyjamas:

Goodnight.

Radio Humberside & Onwards To Scarborough

Nothing ever goes according to plan. I loaded up the car in the pissing rain ready to set off for Hull, got in it, turned the ignition and it wouldn’t start. It didn’t even start when I rolled it down the hill. It just came to rest next to a yellow plastic gritting bin where it stayed lonely and forlorn until I came back on Sunday night and started it first time. The car had been serviced the day before so there was really no excuse. There never is.

So out of the kindness of her heart Karen lent me her car and I went in that and arrived at the country’s most desperate radio station an hour or two late. It was all right – they tried to kid us on that they had a schedule but there wasn’t anybody in charge so I doubt if there really was. They’d booked a couple of DJs for the show as well and forgotten to supply any decks.

There was an older gentleman from a community project videoing the show. He wore thick glasses and sported a greasy comb over. He turned out to be a retired motor mechanic and regaled me with stories of car engines that work on such high voltages that you could sustain a fatal electric shock from the HT leads. He described a rotary engine of great complexity that was so highly charged that it carried a notice that warned of the danger of death – apparently you could die just by touching the casing, especially if you were having a relaxing Radox footbath in a washing-up bowl at the time. Actually he didn’t say that last bit, I just put it in as local colour to give you more of an insight into Planet Gordon. I haven’t yet mentioned that he turned out to be called Gordon. He filmed the interview by pointing the camera at me. He looked a bit perplexed.

The people in Scarborough were very nice but the sound engineer was a shithead. It turned out that he wasn’t a sound engineer at all, just some local has-been musician. My guitar was too loud for him because he wanted to do a singer-songwriter mix. I don’t go for that whimsical stuff – I need the guitar pulsating – my voice will cut through anything and I know how to make room for it. Unfortunately the non-soundman was judging me by his own piss-poor standards. All I could hear was vocal and what came through my amp. When I got quiet on the vocal he turned the gain up so that when I hit a loud bit it was deafening and I had to back off the microphone by about a foot. You probably don’t want to hear all this but I’m telling you so that you’ll know what I have to cope with. I was very polite and thanked him after the soundcheck even though I had reservations. He said:‘There’s one thing you have to do for me – I’m going to give you a CD of my daughter’s band, they’re shit hot and they’re hungry for a deal…’Well, aren’t we all. I wanted to say something chatty like ‘I bet they’re as tight as a duck’s arse too’ but I couldn’t formulate the words.

The set was a bit difficult. Unfortunately they’d had Glen Tilbrook the week before and that was their first show. It had taken them by surprise and sold out so they thought they’d do better with me than they did. I think they should have done more promotion. But there were some diehard fans there so that was good for me. Maybe there were a few people who thought I’d be like Glen Tilbrook but I’m not thank God. A few people walked out and the soundman wasn’t speaking to me afterwards. I’d gone into a rap on the end of Whole Wide World about what we really meant before some cunt coined the dreadful term ‘power pop’ – how it was Roland Kirk and Bubblegum meets Bo Diddley and not some straightforward thing that you could go home and discuss in an adult fashion in your ghastly through lounge. Perhaps the soundman had a through lounge but I think it’s more likely that he thought his daughter’s band was much more talented than I was and he was from suffering righteous indignation. He walked out of the door without saying a word, then he came back in and said ‘CD of my daughter’s band’ as he handed me the item. He turned and walked out into the night without another word. Rude fucker. I would have said thank you even though he was crap.

For the anoraks of which there was definitely one there the set list was something like: Joe Meek, Lureland, Reconnez Cherie, The Final Taxi, School, The Laurel Tree/Denim ‘n’ Lace, Walking On The Surface Of The Moon, Continuity Girl, Same, Thirty-Threes & Forty-Fives, Local, Whole Wide World. I didn’t do an encore just finalized things and fucked off. Afterwards I had a good laugh with a fan from Hull who reckons he’s my stalker. I can’t remember his name or I’d say hello. Hello anyway and thanks to everybody – but possibly not the soundman.

The next day I played the CD of the daughter’s band to a friend in Hull. He said it sounded exactly like he thought it would, which about sums it up. For my part I think it’s marvellous that these young people have been exposed in a high degree to their fathers excellent and tasteful record collections. I’ve got a daughter – she’s called Luci. I love her and I’m very proud of her but I’ve never tried to live my life through her. I know dads are supposed to be embarrassing but I’ve always worked on not being. She used to play the bass but she doesn’t do that anymore. If she got a band together I’d do my best to keep out of it – I really would!