Read on Twitter
THREAD to celebrate the publication of the @heavenlyrecs book today...
It's late 1990 and I'm walking down Wardour St to meet the Bull. To go to see (I think) Teenage Fanclub at ULU. I bump into Jeff Barrett and Martin Kelly who ask what I'm up to...
I tell them. 'Fuck that,' they say (all apologies @MrNormanBlake1 ) 'come to Cambridge with us to see Flowered Up.' Alas, having left the Wishing Stones and being back finishing my degree I am pretty broke. Again, this is met with 'fuck that.'
I am bundled into a taxi to King's Cross and we go to Kings X, where Jeff buys me a train ticket to Cambridge. The gig is astonishing. Backstage, after the show, I have never seen so much ecstasy in my life. Giant bags of it. This is when Es were indeed good and...
were twenty shitters a pop. Jeff and Martin (I think flush with either London Records or Sony cash at this point) do not let my poverty get in the way of getting me utterly *cunted*.
After the aftershow we go to a house party somewhere in Cambridge. A fan drives us. I'm in the back of the car with Kelly, Jeff in the passenger seat. To repeat - we are cunted. Jeff says 'Check this out Niv, new band we've signed' and pops a tape in the machine...
Out comes this INSANE racket. It's glorious: the best Give Em' Enough Rope outakes you've never heard. It's a demo of something called 'Motown Junk' This is how I hear The Manics for the first time: pilled out of my gourandas in the back of a motor speeding through Cambridge...
we get to the party and it's a riot. I end up dancing with an absolutely gorgeous girl to Only Love Can Break Your Heart, which - remember kids - had only come out a few months earlier. I stumble off for a bit - pilled - and return to find her trying to fit the entire head of...
Flowered Up's guitar player Little Joe Maher (RIP) into her mouth. We get back to the hotel around dawn and I crash with Kelly for a few hours before being deposited back in London less than 24 hours later, and in much worse shape than if I'd gone to see TFC with The Bull...
Flowered Up, The Manics, St. Etienne -- all in one night, all from the same label. I've had many, many great nights out with these dudes, but I'll treasure that one forever. So, in conclusion...
Buy Believe In Magic by @robinturner -- you'll get a tiny sense of what that night was like.
