Yellow. The song, the park, the bellies.

In light of Glastonbury perhaps I should tell my Coldplay story.  Chris Martin still seems a nice chap even now as, indeed, he certainly was back then just starting out with ‘Coalplay’ as I managed to misspell them on the listings …  Pitching up early, the game-for-laugh Yellow bellower was persuaded by staff to pretend to be the new boy at Fibbers and proceeded to make cups of tea and pull pints for one and all.  He then sat cross-legged on the dance floor and drew caricatures of the local headlining band (Surge) on the poster, something which they still possess and refuse to part with especially now.

And whilst on the subject of talent being inversely proportional to ego, I met a musician last night who I have now dubbed The Nicest Man In Rock.  Scotsman Mr Norman Blake of Teenage Fanclub has been touring his side project, Jonny, with the equally affable Euros Childs, a genius who is witty and engaging on and off stage in a kind of distracted, throwaway anti-Bernard Manning style.  And Welsh, to boot ...  They thoroughly deserved their near full house and it’s always a warm feeling to deal with bands who arrive with a smile and, guess what, they always end up getting extra on the rider …  Some bands, thankfully a minority, could learn from a seasoned and successful touring musician like Norman.  Whilst they're driving home singing along to Definitely Maybe, the very same staff who’ve stayed off-the-clock to peel stickers off the wall, pour away pints of piss left in the dressing room and clear up after the backstage party held instead of packing up, will be nursing a drink afterwards and telling the promoter not to book you again or nobody will be coming to work that day.

 

And so, it’s time to move on from 1992, those four months from the opening in August being filled with a scattershot approach to booking and finances, some acts being paid the equivalent of a small mortgage to play to hardly anybody on what was then a triangular stage eighteen inches high diagonally facing a mirrored wall but not the audience.  Trad jazz rubbed shoulders with thalidomide comedian Gary Skyner, the wonderful Foreheads In A Fish Tank (Southend anti-establishment pranksters, vaguely industrial, with vulgar and perverse song titles like Buttocks, British Telecom Suck and the predictably banned Happy Shopper), the mercurial and brandy-fuelled Stan Webb’s Chicken Shack (on one occasion loaded in, drank the rider, sound-checked and then straight away loaded out – er, come back what about the gig?!!), Dumpy’s Rusty Nuts (bikers, beards and Newcastle Brown, a more natural combination than even apple and cinnamon), boogie-rockers Engine from ‘Pool and a seemingly endless line of hair metal with Strongheart from Sheffield (guilty pleasure, I blush), Chainsaw (complete with jobsworth roadie Tank whose attitude and mullet thoroughly earned him a rhyming slang nom-de-plume with an added ER), Krakatoa (no eruption), Naughty Naughty (forgotten forgotten), and the gloomy goth of Sins Of the Flesh (strategic placement of gaffa tape) and The Marionettes (first tour t-shirt with Fibbers on it, desperately exciting at the time). 

A period, also, in which everything was back to front … the PA desk was BEHIND the band, the house engineer was a bloke - called Rachel, there were more trip hazards than a dealer at Woodstock, the kitchen doubled as dressing room, guitar garage, PA repair workshop and sometimes a paddling pool when the storm drain underneath would become overloaded and, in Yellowstone Park ‘Old Faithful’ style,  the manhole in the corner would blow off and be momentarily suspended in mid-air.  Thankfully, the biggest back to front bit was that despite bars and clubs all around spending thousands on polished brass, flock wallpaper and Malibu theme nights the good folk of York and beyond took to Fibbers in some style and considerable quantity just going to prove that businesses are useless without people and ideas.  Thank you thank you thank you :o)

As a postscript, I’ve been asked who appeared in that first Battle Of The Bands final nineteen years ago … it was Shed Seven, Rites Of Man, Bed Bugs (with Paul Banks!) and eventual funk/metal/rap winners Cockroach whose confrontational frontman Jock Bray still plays and resides in Scarborough, and in a twist guaranteed to make me feel very old the son of then bass player Charlie Cutforth recently played Fibbers in his own right.

Coming up: The story of The Silver Fox, the greatest doorman since Paddy Delaney;  the tax inspector (since dismissed) who said we owed him so much money we may as well shut;  watching with horror as the PA amps were washed in the sink; and yes, mate I can see you’re completely off your face but the venue is this way please and it’s full and waiting for YOU ...