‘Slowdive’ – Slowdive (1990)

"I hear your voice,

But it can’t bring me back.

I’m chasing all the things,

I ever thought I had."

Have you ever met your doppelgänger? Mine hangs out in Brighton. Well, he did 22 years ago when he was last spotted.

This was back in my college days. A guy I half-knew (I have a terrible memory for names – let’s call him Andrew, as that may be close) came up to me in class one Monday morning and accused me of rudely ignoring him at the weekend. I’d been staying with my grandparents’ and didn’t recall him popping round, but he swore he’d seen me in a bar on Brighton seafront. This was back in my bird’s-nest-hair days, so I said he probably just mistook me for another bedraggled shoegazing student across a crowded, smoky bar (pre-ban days). But he was having none of it and was getting increasingly narked.

Apparently, after my alternate self ignored an initial wave, Andrew then approached me and said ‘hello’ but I claimed not to know him. I tried to explain that it was because it wasn’t me and he'd tried to befriend a stranger. But Andrew was adamant that he looked just like me. And he talked just like me. And, most importantly, he behaved just like me. He had a point there. I absolutely would have ignored Andrew if he’d approached me in a bar in Brighton.

To this day I would imagine Andrew’s still convinced that was actually me - yes, it may well keep him up nights. And I’m still hoping I get to meet my doppelgänger one day. It sounds like we’d get on famously.   

  

 Me, circa 1990. Or is it? 

Spotify linky :

Slowdive – Slowdive

‘Sweetness and Light’– Lush (1990)

“Only to stay, only to breathe, only to see,
That space and light are what I really need.”

Woodstock? Whatever. If there was one event you needed to be at it was the Slough Music Festival (on this very day in 1991). Never before have so many floppy-fringed students gathered in a field to gaze at their shoes all day.

Where’s the BBC4 music documentaries celebrating this seminal event? Slowdive. Curve. Ride. All present and correct. If Betjeman’s friendly bombs had fallen down on Slough that sunny day, Melody Maker and NME may as well have closed their doors for two years.

One band that wasn’t playing (somewhat surprisingly) was Lush. But flame-haired songstress and indie pin-up Miki was there (somewhat unsurprisingly) and I got to shake her hand and say embarrassing things. This isn’t much of a story as I think just about every one who went to a gig in 1990 got to meet Miki. It kinda came with the ticket.

Come 2011, it will be 20 years since we all moshed in a Slough park to Chapterhouse – time to start planning the anniversary festivities methinks.

(This post may seem all very well-timed and cleverly planned, and yes, it is, thank you. In reality though, it’s a complete coincidence as I already had it in mind to write about Slough today and was completely surprised to see it was 19 years to the day when I checked the date in my diary.)

Spotify linky:
Lush – Sweetness And Light