bingeing all weekend, working all hours, finding time for band practice ... burning the candle at both ends...
Sunday nights in Buster Brown’s are even busier than Saturdays. You might see Ally McCoist or Graeme Souness at the bar, corralled by minders, Sol-sipping sycophants hanging on their every word. Or local heroes like Mickey Weir, Gary MacKay, or Jimmy Sandison getting loaded with mates they’d been at school with a couple of years back. Gary was at Tynecastle High, two years below me. I remember him running rings around his mates in the playground.
The club is also rammed with hairdressers who get the Monday off. As an office worker on a temporary contract, I’m much further down the singleton food chain. Regardless of whether any of Scotland’s finest professional footballers were present last night, my hazy recollections are hampered by a remorseless headache. I’m trying to remember the name of a gorgeous redhead I was dancing with, although dancing is a generous description of shambolic movements fuelled by double-figure Red Stripes, OVD Rum and Crabbie’s Green Ginger chasers, and spliffs behind the DJ unit. The phone number she scrawled onto my Marlboro packet referred to a hair salon - in Dunfermline? - but it’s long been smudged into hieroglyphics.
Less than six hours after my last drink, my gaze returns to the forms. British Gas is being privatised, the Thatcher government’s latest initiative to eviscerate a public service by offering cash incentives to hundreds of thousands of budding capitalists across the UK. Along with the selling off of council houses and siphoning the profits from North Sea oil into the London Stock Exchange rather than investing it into a fund for the future, her ideology is transforming the face of Britain, smashing its manufacturing industries to rubble with a clinical efficiency Herman Goering could only have dreamt about.
We temporary clerks are but cogs in this relentless erosion of the public sector, having been hired by the Royal Bank of Scotland for several months of grindingly soul-destroying processing of share applications. The task at hand is simple enough for primates to have make a fist of it after basic training. We write out to the customers informing them how much of their requested share application they are being allocated. The names and addresses have to be handwritten, the details transposed from computer printouts. As well as having to cope with a splitting headache and intermittent spells of nausea, I am wrestling with the post-alcoholic quivers that means much of my address writing resembles the squiggles on a cardiograph. Pacing along the desks doing spot checks, Veronica has insisted I print particular addresses again, neatly, on three occasions.
The one favourable aspect of this work is it’s reasonably well remunerated. Because I was a Napier student up until I graduated in the summer I’m on a low tax threshold. This is offset by the boredom and the long hours. Clocking-off time can be anytime between six and nine. This particular evening the senior bank supervisor eventually tells us to down pens at five past nine.
I jog up to the Calder Road and get a 22, jumping off at the Foot of the Walk, the journey lasting long enough to smoke two tabs. Pacing through the deserted Kirkgate, I cast a wary eye on a posse of youths who tear past me on bikes. Heading under the Linksview towerblock I sprint on towards Queen Charlotte Street to the derelict warehouse currently serving as band rehearsal space.
The guys are already involved in an ear-shredding jam and I nod to each of them. Tom, the vocalist, face contorted, blowing into his clarinet like a snake charmer surrounded by cobras. Kenny, the bassist, his fingers slapping then sliding along the fretboard, the Hibs harp badge on his bass jerking in time with the rhythm. Jack forsaking his trademark beaters for the sticks necessary to maintain a pulverising beat.
I go over to my Orange amp and plug in the guitar I left at Tom’s Leith Walk flat the previous weekend, a Fender Strat emblazoned with LEITH BAND AGNES. This is our band’s pseudonym – our actual name is Little Big Dig. But one of our songs was released on a compilation album earlier this year, Wide Open, under that nom-de-plume. The term ‘song’ is also a stretch as it was an improvised piece recorded in one take, entitled ‘Dr. Buck Ruxton,’ its subject a 1930s serial killer, one of the first cases to be solved by forensic evidence. It was also gloriously crooned by Tom’s mother.
The club is also rammed with hairdressers who get the Monday off. As an office worker on a temporary contract, I’m much further down the singleton food chain. Regardless of whether any of Scotland’s finest professional footballers were present last night, my hazy recollections are hampered by a remorseless headache. I’m trying to remember the name of a gorgeous redhead I was dancing with, although dancing is a generous description of shambolic movements fuelled by double-figure Red Stripes, OVD Rum and Crabbie’s Green Ginger chasers, and spliffs behind the DJ unit. The phone number she scrawled onto my Marlboro packet referred to a hair salon - in Dunfermline? - but it’s long been smudged into hieroglyphics.
Less than six hours after my last drink, my gaze returns to the forms. British Gas is being privatised, the Thatcher government’s latest initiative to eviscerate a public service by offering cash incentives to hundreds of thousands of budding capitalists across the UK. Along with the selling off of council houses and siphoning the profits from North Sea oil into the London Stock Exchange rather than investing it into a fund for the future, her ideology is transforming the face of Britain, smashing its manufacturing industries to rubble with a clinical efficiency Herman Goering could only have dreamt about.
We temporary clerks are but cogs in this relentless erosion of the public sector, having been hired by the Royal Bank of Scotland for several months of grindingly soul-destroying processing of share applications. The task at hand is simple enough for primates to have make a fist of it after basic training. We write out to the customers informing them how much of their requested share application they are being allocated. The names and addresses have to be handwritten, the details transposed from computer printouts. As well as having to cope with a splitting headache and intermittent spells of nausea, I am wrestling with the post-alcoholic quivers that means much of my address writing resembles the squiggles on a cardiograph. Pacing along the desks doing spot checks, Veronica has insisted I print particular addresses again, neatly, on three occasions.
The one favourable aspect of this work is it’s reasonably well remunerated. Because I was a Napier student up until I graduated in the summer I’m on a low tax threshold. This is offset by the boredom and the long hours. Clocking-off time can be anytime between six and nine. This particular evening the senior bank supervisor eventually tells us to down pens at five past nine.
I jog up to the Calder Road and get a 22, jumping off at the Foot of the Walk, the journey lasting long enough to smoke two tabs. Pacing through the deserted Kirkgate, I cast a wary eye on a posse of youths who tear past me on bikes. Heading under the Linksview towerblock I sprint on towards Queen Charlotte Street to the derelict warehouse currently serving as band rehearsal space.
The guys are already involved in an ear-shredding jam and I nod to each of them. Tom, the vocalist, face contorted, blowing into his clarinet like a snake charmer surrounded by cobras. Kenny, the bassist, his fingers slapping then sliding along the fretboard, the Hibs harp badge on his bass jerking in time with the rhythm. Jack forsaking his trademark beaters for the sticks necessary to maintain a pulverising beat.
I go over to my Orange amp and plug in the guitar I left at Tom’s Leith Walk flat the previous weekend, a Fender Strat emblazoned with LEITH BAND AGNES. This is our band’s pseudonym – our actual name is Little Big Dig. But one of our songs was released on a compilation album earlier this year, Wide Open, under that nom-de-plume. The term ‘song’ is also a stretch as it was an improvised piece recorded in one take, entitled ‘Dr. Buck Ruxton,’ its subject a 1930s serial killer, one of the first cases to be solved by forensic evidence. It was also gloriously crooned by Tom’s mother.
Also awaiting me are purple tins of Tennent’s Super lager. Flipping one open the first mouthfuls are treacherous, and it’s touch and go whether my stomach will accept this latest assault or forcibly reject it. Thankfully it’s the former, and after several slugs a pleasant numbness pervades. This sense of relaxation translates into a vigorous lead line that I instantly launch into over Kenny’s riff once I’ve sussed his root notes are Bb, E, and A.
I nudge the volume higher still. I might have spent the weekend dancing shambolically to Detroit House imports, but Little Big Dig produce far more visceral post-rock, punk-tinged, with frequent lunges into the aural escapism of Can. Because the room is only booked for three hours we have little time for socialising. We just get on with forging these dense but arresting melodies, our current focus a gig pencilled in for The Jailhouse behind Waverley Station. To get away from work for the soundcheck I’ve already notified Veronica of an imaginary dental appointment.
Finishing what develops into a particularly gruelling 11-minute epic I stumble as I bend down to fiddle with my effects pedals. Easing the ‘overdrive’ down a notch, I play a few chords with a less abrasive setting. Kenny immediately launches into a lugubrious bassline with a quirky, jazzy undertone. I set off on some jagged lead improvisation, not a million miles away from something Bruce Gilbert might’ve done on Wire’s 154 album. Tom adds a plaintive keyboard refrain while Jack kicks into a shuffling rhythm using his beaters.
Pausing on an E minor bar-chord I pace over to the tape recorder, then press record. From its dulcet overture, the jam builds into a powerful, menacing piece. At one point Tom is stabbing at the keyboard while I’m plucking strings way up the fretboard, then pressing my guitar into the amp to submerge any lingering melody beneath a squall of feedback. The bass thunders relentlessly, Kenny frequently playing chords before Jack switches to sticks and begins thrashing the cymbals within an inch of their lives. At synchronised intervals, the sonic wall dips into a gorgeous key change. In my semi-drunken state, it puts me in mind of a chink of sunlight during a storm. This persists for a few bars then the music gradually gains momentum once again, clawing towards awesome new heights. Combined with the alcohol flowing through me, this feels as if we are creating an epic moment destined to take its place in the annals of rock history alongside ‘Stairway to Heaven’ or ‘The Dark Side of the Moon,’ only with the hippyish self-indulgence subverted by a streetwise vibe.
Like a sizeable portion of twentysomething rock musicians devoted to their art, I harbour delusions that what we are doing will eventually lead to my escape from the mundane crap that currently approximates my profession. I remain adamant any serious record producer hearing our music will see pound signs. After all the twee, plaid-shirted, jangly-guitar pop polluting the post-punk scene, like American Christian summer campfire singalongs, our epic mood-pieces will inject long overdue shades of twisted darkness. Eventually, the track winds down until Jack concludes everything with swirling crashes on the cymbals that remind me of storm clouds receding.
‘That was fucking brilliant, guys,’ I remark.
‘Aye. That was a fucking happening all right,’ agrees Tom. ‘I’ll take that tape home and break it down into the chords and that. We’ll get the structure sorted next practice. I think I’ve got some lyrics that would go with the chorus bit.’
‘Sound.’ I glance at my watch. ‘Listen. My last bus is due in a wee while.’ I unplug my guitar. Kenny does likewise. ‘Donna’s backing vocals would be the icing on the cake.’
Tom sparks a roll-up, enough left for a couple of game draws, drops it to the floor, grinds it out. ‘Soon have enough new material for another demo. Make up for the Arran debacle.’ He drains a can, launching it through the window.
Feeling my cheeks tinging with embarrassment, I listen to it clatter onto the pile of empties. Failing to register his tongue-in-cheek tone, I’m on the defensive. ‘That was over a year ago. What d’you mean a debacle?’
‘Debacle. Noun. Booking a recording studio on an island in the Firth of Clyde. Spending a day recording eight songs. Leaving on the ferry the next day with fuckall bar hangovers.’
‘What?’
‘He’s winding you,’ butts in Kenny. ‘I was glad of the excuse to get away early. Made it to Hibs at Tannadice. Anyway, we were all fucking pished that night. I mean. Four of us crammed in that caravan outside the studio. Then the boy that ran the studio… what was his name again, Tom?’
‘Michael.’
‘Michael,’ Kenny goes on. ‘Then Michael tells us the field where the caravan is, is right on top of a Viking burial ground. Why did he have to tell us that? After the day’s recording we were all fucking steamboats. And ripped on grass. We got so para he might as well have told us he’d just heard a news flash from NASA a great big fuck off asteroid was due to strike Earth in an hour’s time.’
‘We were all fucking para, Kenny,’ says Tom, firing a sideways glance at me. ‘But Mark was the only one who decided to creep into Michael’s studio in the middle of the night to crash on the floor instead of the caravan. Mark was the only one who tripped over the cable in the studio, cause he couldn’t find the light switch, which hauled the reel-to-reel recorder over onto the floor, breaking the spindle off it.’
‘I’d thought of asking Michael if we could crash inside,’ mumbles Jack, smiling at me before his self-conscious gaze slips to the tatty carpet.
Tom perches himself on the drum stool, sets about skinning up. ‘It’s just that… the album we were recording would’ve made up for the Maida Vale debacle.’
‘No one can pin that one on me,’ I snap.
‘Nor me,’ adds Kenny. ‘I wasn’t even in the band at the time. Nor Donna.’
‘That was down to all of us, Mark,’ says Tom. ‘Recording a Radio One session at those studios has been the springboard to many a rock n’ roll career. But what do we do? Get fucking hammered, start aggro with the engineer.’
‘Dale Griffin,’ I muse, now colluding with Tom. ‘When we used to watch Mott The Hoople on Top of the Pops, little did we know we were going to noise up their drummer in a BBC recording studio ten years later.’
The four of us laugh. At the time we were such a ‘going places’ band we had a manager, Alex. Alex had played in a group, Family Von Trapp, with Muriel Gray, co-presenter on The Tube. They were all former Glasgow Art College students we got to know when they shared our first practice room in Niddry Street. Muriel was hosting Richard Skinner’s BBC Radio 1 show while he was on holiday and had been given free rein to book a couple of up-and-coming Scottish bands.
Armed with our guitars, keyboards, and bulky carryout bags, we boarded the night bus to London from Waverley Bridge, convinced we were on the first steps of our journey to fame. Unfortunately, the excitement of being on the threshold of something potentially massive got the better of us. After bingeing on Merrydown Cider during the long haul down the M1 and continuing throughout our stay in London, the four tracks were far less polished than we were aiming for.
Griffin’s assistant, an affable guy, told us all the rough edges would get smoothed over in the mix. But whether the ex-Glam Rocker was preoccupied with some other drama in his life or just didn’t take to the type of cropped hair youngsters who typically derided most pre-1976 music – except Bowie, Iggy or Roxy Music – Griffin grew increasingly agitated at the amount of cider and wine we were ploughing through. Finally sick of us bellowing suggestions at him in alcohol-fuelled Scottish accents, the straw that broke his camel’s back was a bottle of red wine somehow decanting over the floor, splattering the bank of equipment responsible for mixing everyone from The Beatles to Led Zeppelin, Bowie to Hendrix, not to mention every John Peel session since 1967.
‘Security!’ Kenny imagines Griffin’s outraged plea into a telephone. ‘Get these talentless clowns the fuck out of my studio. What was it you said to him on the way out, Mark?’
‘Who rolled away your stone, you hippy?’
In the way superlager and wacky backy can transform mildly amusing anecdotes into gut-busting seizures, we relish replaying the scene. The other unknown Scottish band who Muriel booked for a session came from her hometown. Lloyd Cole and the Commotions. I’m sure they performed their four tracks with due professionalism and were impeccably behaved during the mixing. They went on to release an album, Rattlesnakes, which sold over 100,000 copies in Britain, reaching number 13 in the charts. I firmly believed the material we eventually got round to recording over on Arran would have gone towards a debut equally as notable as theirs. But we shot ourselves in the foot yet again. Or at least, I did.
When I gulp from my purple tin the what ifs are superseded by what next. Currently, the fat doob Jack is passing to me.
*
It is ten to one when I creep into the house, ears ringing, eyesight bleary, burping super lager. Mum has left my tea in the microwave. I heat it and gorge it so voraciously I burn my tongue. I decide on a nightcap and some music. So I pour a half-pint of sherry from the drinks cabinet, stick on Scared to Dance, The Skids’ masterful debut album, then shove on my headphones. Next thing I know the tumbler is on its side in a dark stain. The album is clicking against the stylus and the headphone cable is wrapped alarmingly around my neck. Sparrows are chirping in the back green. My body is leaden with fatigue. The thought of breakfast turns my stomach.
I lift the glass, drain the remaining sips. Just before I collapse on my bed for what I accept will be less than 75 minutes of sleep, I notice a note on the bedside cabinet. In Mum’s fastidious writing it announces: 11.45. Tom phoned. ‘Masterpiece lost forever. You left the pause button on. Idiot!’
I nudge the volume higher still. I might have spent the weekend dancing shambolically to Detroit House imports, but Little Big Dig produce far more visceral post-rock, punk-tinged, with frequent lunges into the aural escapism of Can. Because the room is only booked for three hours we have little time for socialising. We just get on with forging these dense but arresting melodies, our current focus a gig pencilled in for The Jailhouse behind Waverley Station. To get away from work for the soundcheck I’ve already notified Veronica of an imaginary dental appointment.
Finishing what develops into a particularly gruelling 11-minute epic I stumble as I bend down to fiddle with my effects pedals. Easing the ‘overdrive’ down a notch, I play a few chords with a less abrasive setting. Kenny immediately launches into a lugubrious bassline with a quirky, jazzy undertone. I set off on some jagged lead improvisation, not a million miles away from something Bruce Gilbert might’ve done on Wire’s 154 album. Tom adds a plaintive keyboard refrain while Jack kicks into a shuffling rhythm using his beaters.
Pausing on an E minor bar-chord I pace over to the tape recorder, then press record. From its dulcet overture, the jam builds into a powerful, menacing piece. At one point Tom is stabbing at the keyboard while I’m plucking strings way up the fretboard, then pressing my guitar into the amp to submerge any lingering melody beneath a squall of feedback. The bass thunders relentlessly, Kenny frequently playing chords before Jack switches to sticks and begins thrashing the cymbals within an inch of their lives. At synchronised intervals, the sonic wall dips into a gorgeous key change. In my semi-drunken state, it puts me in mind of a chink of sunlight during a storm. This persists for a few bars then the music gradually gains momentum once again, clawing towards awesome new heights. Combined with the alcohol flowing through me, this feels as if we are creating an epic moment destined to take its place in the annals of rock history alongside ‘Stairway to Heaven’ or ‘The Dark Side of the Moon,’ only with the hippyish self-indulgence subverted by a streetwise vibe.
Like a sizeable portion of twentysomething rock musicians devoted to their art, I harbour delusions that what we are doing will eventually lead to my escape from the mundane crap that currently approximates my profession. I remain adamant any serious record producer hearing our music will see pound signs. After all the twee, plaid-shirted, jangly-guitar pop polluting the post-punk scene, like American Christian summer campfire singalongs, our epic mood-pieces will inject long overdue shades of twisted darkness. Eventually, the track winds down until Jack concludes everything with swirling crashes on the cymbals that remind me of storm clouds receding.
‘That was fucking brilliant, guys,’ I remark.
‘Aye. That was a fucking happening all right,’ agrees Tom. ‘I’ll take that tape home and break it down into the chords and that. We’ll get the structure sorted next practice. I think I’ve got some lyrics that would go with the chorus bit.’
‘Sound.’ I glance at my watch. ‘Listen. My last bus is due in a wee while.’ I unplug my guitar. Kenny does likewise. ‘Donna’s backing vocals would be the icing on the cake.’
Tom sparks a roll-up, enough left for a couple of game draws, drops it to the floor, grinds it out. ‘Soon have enough new material for another demo. Make up for the Arran debacle.’ He drains a can, launching it through the window.
Feeling my cheeks tinging with embarrassment, I listen to it clatter onto the pile of empties. Failing to register his tongue-in-cheek tone, I’m on the defensive. ‘That was over a year ago. What d’you mean a debacle?’
‘Debacle. Noun. Booking a recording studio on an island in the Firth of Clyde. Spending a day recording eight songs. Leaving on the ferry the next day with fuckall bar hangovers.’
‘What?’
‘He’s winding you,’ butts in Kenny. ‘I was glad of the excuse to get away early. Made it to Hibs at Tannadice. Anyway, we were all fucking pished that night. I mean. Four of us crammed in that caravan outside the studio. Then the boy that ran the studio… what was his name again, Tom?’
‘Michael.’
‘Michael,’ Kenny goes on. ‘Then Michael tells us the field where the caravan is, is right on top of a Viking burial ground. Why did he have to tell us that? After the day’s recording we were all fucking steamboats. And ripped on grass. We got so para he might as well have told us he’d just heard a news flash from NASA a great big fuck off asteroid was due to strike Earth in an hour’s time.’
‘We were all fucking para, Kenny,’ says Tom, firing a sideways glance at me. ‘But Mark was the only one who decided to creep into Michael’s studio in the middle of the night to crash on the floor instead of the caravan. Mark was the only one who tripped over the cable in the studio, cause he couldn’t find the light switch, which hauled the reel-to-reel recorder over onto the floor, breaking the spindle off it.’
‘I’d thought of asking Michael if we could crash inside,’ mumbles Jack, smiling at me before his self-conscious gaze slips to the tatty carpet.
Tom perches himself on the drum stool, sets about skinning up. ‘It’s just that… the album we were recording would’ve made up for the Maida Vale debacle.’
‘No one can pin that one on me,’ I snap.
‘Nor me,’ adds Kenny. ‘I wasn’t even in the band at the time. Nor Donna.’
‘That was down to all of us, Mark,’ says Tom. ‘Recording a Radio One session at those studios has been the springboard to many a rock n’ roll career. But what do we do? Get fucking hammered, start aggro with the engineer.’
‘Dale Griffin,’ I muse, now colluding with Tom. ‘When we used to watch Mott The Hoople on Top of the Pops, little did we know we were going to noise up their drummer in a BBC recording studio ten years later.’
The four of us laugh. At the time we were such a ‘going places’ band we had a manager, Alex. Alex had played in a group, Family Von Trapp, with Muriel Gray, co-presenter on The Tube. They were all former Glasgow Art College students we got to know when they shared our first practice room in Niddry Street. Muriel was hosting Richard Skinner’s BBC Radio 1 show while he was on holiday and had been given free rein to book a couple of up-and-coming Scottish bands.
Armed with our guitars, keyboards, and bulky carryout bags, we boarded the night bus to London from Waverley Bridge, convinced we were on the first steps of our journey to fame. Unfortunately, the excitement of being on the threshold of something potentially massive got the better of us. After bingeing on Merrydown Cider during the long haul down the M1 and continuing throughout our stay in London, the four tracks were far less polished than we were aiming for.
Griffin’s assistant, an affable guy, told us all the rough edges would get smoothed over in the mix. But whether the ex-Glam Rocker was preoccupied with some other drama in his life or just didn’t take to the type of cropped hair youngsters who typically derided most pre-1976 music – except Bowie, Iggy or Roxy Music – Griffin grew increasingly agitated at the amount of cider and wine we were ploughing through. Finally sick of us bellowing suggestions at him in alcohol-fuelled Scottish accents, the straw that broke his camel’s back was a bottle of red wine somehow decanting over the floor, splattering the bank of equipment responsible for mixing everyone from The Beatles to Led Zeppelin, Bowie to Hendrix, not to mention every John Peel session since 1967.
‘Security!’ Kenny imagines Griffin’s outraged plea into a telephone. ‘Get these talentless clowns the fuck out of my studio. What was it you said to him on the way out, Mark?’
‘Who rolled away your stone, you hippy?’
In the way superlager and wacky backy can transform mildly amusing anecdotes into gut-busting seizures, we relish replaying the scene. The other unknown Scottish band who Muriel booked for a session came from her hometown. Lloyd Cole and the Commotions. I’m sure they performed their four tracks with due professionalism and were impeccably behaved during the mixing. They went on to release an album, Rattlesnakes, which sold over 100,000 copies in Britain, reaching number 13 in the charts. I firmly believed the material we eventually got round to recording over on Arran would have gone towards a debut equally as notable as theirs. But we shot ourselves in the foot yet again. Or at least, I did.
When I gulp from my purple tin the what ifs are superseded by what next. Currently, the fat doob Jack is passing to me.
*
It is ten to one when I creep into the house, ears ringing, eyesight bleary, burping super lager. Mum has left my tea in the microwave. I heat it and gorge it so voraciously I burn my tongue. I decide on a nightcap and some music. So I pour a half-pint of sherry from the drinks cabinet, stick on Scared to Dance, The Skids’ masterful debut album, then shove on my headphones. Next thing I know the tumbler is on its side in a dark stain. The album is clicking against the stylus and the headphone cable is wrapped alarmingly around my neck. Sparrows are chirping in the back green. My body is leaden with fatigue. The thought of breakfast turns my stomach.
I lift the glass, drain the remaining sips. Just before I collapse on my bed for what I accept will be less than 75 minutes of sleep, I notice a note on the bedside cabinet. In Mum’s fastidious writing it announces: 11.45. Tom phoned. ‘Masterpiece lost forever. You left the pause button on. Idiot!’