55 songs in 55 days - one for every year of
my life...so far.
The dream was to own a record shop with an
attached small label and put out singles by
local bands. I seriously looked into it at
one point, but in reality I was
never going to have the available dosh to
fund such a venture. I promoted a couple of
small local gigs (including the early psyche-pop era Shamen), but the town was simply too
small to truly allow that idea to flourish.
Instead I established contacts at several
East Anglian venues and organised coach trips
to concerts. This was quite popular for a
while at the end of the 1980's and the early
1990's. We ran coaches to The Wedding Present,
Waterboys, Wonderstuff, My Bloody Valentine,
Sugarcubes and The Happy Mondays and more. The Stone Roses at the Norwich Arts
Centre was a particularly memorable evening.
After the gig a bunch of us spent half an
hour chatting with the band, much to the
waiting coach driver's annoyance. I also ran trips
to both of Nirvana's Norwich gigs, a minibus
to the Arts Centre in 1989 and a mid-sized
coach to The Waterfront in 1990. I usually
went to every show I sold tickets for, but
those two were extremely popular even then,
so I let others go in my place - d'oh!Today's musical selection is the brilliant Weatherall & Farley mix of 'Abandon' by That Petrol Emotion. Shoot me down in flames if you like, but give me this over 'Loaded' any day of the week.
7 comments:
It is good, but I have too many great memories attached to Loaded to ever be able to consider this better.
Mr Cool!
I grew up in the middle of nowhere. It would have been really nice to have a shop that sponsored trips like that. How far/long were these bus rides? Were these trips pretty raucous? Were these your regular customers on these trips?
A human chameleon! How is it that one person can transform so much from one picture to the next? Kinda spooky, Mr. S! ;-) It was really good of you to give up your space on the bus to other fans - though you must have been conflicted.
One of my favourite of your years so far. The coach trips sound fun. I got some from liverpool (uni) to he Hacienda in roughly the same period. Having left Manchester i kept going back. I'm with Drew on the music... good but not Loaded
Swiss Adam
Drew. I knew it'd prove a controversial remark!
C. Ha! In his dodgy 'Momentary Lapse of Reason' promotional shirt!
Brian. The trips were generally between 40 and 60 miles each way, carrying a revolving cast of characters. The most raucous I remember was for The Waterboys, which was a slightly older age group and therefore significantly more drunk on the way home!
Marie. Do I really look that different? You just wait....
Swiss Adam. The coach trips were fun for a few years until the ticket booking system became automated and I lost my phone contacts. A maximum of 4 tickets per person was no good to me.
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