It’s 1993, and hard to believe that Fibbers was, and remained for sixteen years, the only small venue dedicated, seven nights a week, to regularly bringing signed acts to the city. Nowadays, there are four or five venues catering, and catering well, for live music. And all pissing gaily in to a trough which, with varying degrees and according to your age and vulnerability to bullshit, they would have you believe that if they hadn’t actually carved it from the granite themselves, then at least they’d dragged it to the field in their own Massey Ferguson.
So, off we go in to 1993, a year that promises much in the way of Mr Blobby, Beavis & Butthead and Mulder & Scully. Not that we saw any telly, what with getting three girls to school, pitching up to the venue at 9am to clean the damn place, prep for a full day’s food service as well as pulling pints and booking bands. And the rest.
We were so short of money at that time, everything was hand to mouth. It’s actually a very sound business principle to make a pile of your money each morning and see just what you can afford to spend it on that day, but we were often making small piles of money on a hourly basis. “Four bacon sandwiches, sir? No problem!” And then one of us would run to the butcher with the money, purchase said porky comestible, fry it up and serve in thick, squidgy (we used to call it) fresh bread that morning from Sainsburys. With Heinz sauces of course …
For a week or two, incongruous as it may seem in a dim and smoky music venue haphazardly plastered with posters, we had ice cream on the menu. Fortunately there was a Baskins & Robbins a quarter of a mile away in the town centre and every order was met with an inward groan knowing that I would have to sprint there and back to get the requested flavour in one of their little cardboard tubs. “Have a nice day and thank you for your custom”, the smiley girl behind the counter would say. “**** off”, I would think, and hoof it back to The Stonebow. On one occasion, for the wife of a lovely couple, I legged it for a double portion which looked so nice replated with wafers and sauce (hey, hundreds and thousands as well – classy) the husband said, “Wow, that looks great. I’ll have one as well”. Back I went. And all the time, the phone rang and the customers sat at the bar and drank and ate during the soundchecks and amidst this madness we cleaned, cooked, pulled pints, distributed flyers and posters, answered the phone, juggled non-existent money, collected children from school and worked every day until after the midnight that God sent. And prayed earnestly for another one.
Sunday lunchtimes in those days were restricted to just the two licensing hours (seems unbelievable now), 12 noon to 2pm, but gathered enormous momentum with local, and some not so local, blues/rock covers bands having heard of Fibbers’ growing reputation. Little Criminals, Dr Browns, Hectic, the magnificently named Bessie & The Zinc Buckets, One Stoned Snowman (who went on to become Mostly Autumn) and, of course, the wonderful Blueflies with Miles, Gav and ‘Fatha’ and their mix of improv, musicianship, blues and funk filling the venue to bursting. There will be people reading this who still recall silently trying to successfully count along with sixty-four final staccato chords. I guess you had to be there.
Chris Helme (later of Seahorses fame and a successful solo performer in his own right) had started to make noises with a jumbled-up band called Chutzpah, his day times were restricted by cooking for Fibbers customers, though.
Looking through the 1993 calendar I’ve been amazed to see some old names still on the go. Bert Jansch (York where were you, twenty people in attendance …), Xentrix (would NOT play Ghostbusters), Zodiac Mindwarp (Emmerdale cast all on the guest list), Shed Seven (perma-worried whether people would turn up), Dr & The Medics (bloody expensive), Man (picky picky picky), Chumbawamba (Coronation Street fans), John Otway (I’m still booking him even now), Energy Orchard (with Bap Kennedy – genius), Midway Still (very humble, very grateful for the gig and also very good), Wolfsbane (complete ARSE of a day and night, and will get an entry all of their own), The Coal Porters (Sid Griffin is a brilliant writer and performer but has an Olympic gold in sarcasm), Arthur Brown (“Yes yes, I’m going on in a minute, I just need to set my head on fire first"), Kangaroo Moon (children in tow, full hippy invasion, maaaaaan), Diesel Park West (the reason I’m deaf), Mike Heron (a genuinely nice man), Jon Strong (a genuinely Leeds man), Blodwyn Pig (I vaguely recall Mick Abrahams lecturing me about something), Hank Wangford (country singer and chiropodist), Terrorvision (cue toilet floods), Sensational Alex Harvey Band (NEVER book your heroes), Snake Davis (the king of soulful sax would pogo post-show to the Pistols, pint in hand), Stan Webb (rider withheld until closing time), Hamsters (some of my favourite people and sadly finishing this year), Mick ‘Wild Man’ Pini (once again, York where were you) and the wonderful Jayne/Wayne County ('The more liquor that reaches the stage, the more vile and disgusting I will become”) whose lullaby "If You Don’t Want To **** Me Baby **** Off" remains on permanent rotation at Mr H Towers.
If you’re reading this and wondering when I’m going to get to the gossip on Killers, Coldplay, Stereophonics and the like do yourself a favour in the meantime and check out a lot of these acts on YouTube, wobbly cameras and all.
Others that should have, but haven’t, survived were Erics Trip, Acrobats Of Sa (dreadlock indie on stilts), New Cranes, Little Chief (dub with a mighty mighty groove), Dead Poppies, Molly Halfhead, Marionettes, Bobby Charltons, Wishplant, Delicious Monster and Fuse. And legends on that Fibbers stage that have sadly passed on include Isaac Guillory, Mick Green (Pirates) and Clive Jones (Man).
The year finished with a rash of Xmas parties for Shed Seven, The Goosehorns, The Buttermountain Boys, Hectic and on New Year’s Eve, the party band Huge. But not before a plain van pulled up and parked ominously on the pavement on the afternoon of Thursday the 30th …
Local band Citrus were busy assembling a wall of hired screens for their innovative show that evening when two bailiffs walked in to collect what York City Council had, mistakenly, informed them were unpaid rates. Of course, on the day before New Year’s Eve nobody in any official power was still at work to correct our friends with the clipboards, and they eyed up the stock, the contents of the safe, the PA, the furniture, my old Jag outside, the bands equipment and hired tellies, the bloody lot. It was to be the first of many times the boys from the collection companies were charmed, though, and they eventually settled for every scrap of money in the place, leaving us with an empty till, no floats and empty pockets. Even though we had paid the bill …
That year, 1993, Freddie Mercury came back from the dead with a remix of Living On My Own and the chaotic ever-improvised Fibbers seemed poised, also, to topple in to a waiting and freshly-dug grave every month or so only to startle mourners, some rubbing their hands, by defying the fiscal hangman’s noose and the gravity of common sense. When you truly truly believe in something, nothing can stop you.
No comments:
Post a Comment