'Tower Of Strength' - The Mission (1987)

“And you’re true to me,
And still I need more”

If you were looking for me on a Saturday night in 1987/88, the best place to start would have been The Astoria. Formerly on Charing Cross Road. Now dust on the wind. (Oh, how very poetic. Wayne Hussey would surely approve.) And much missed.

Not my pic. Happy to remove if anyone wants to claim it.

Snake-dancing to All About Eve. Moshing to The Wonder Stuff. Choking on dry ice to The Nephilim. So very many formative gig experiences happened for me within its dark-to-the eye and tacky-to-the-touch walls. Most always in the company of my cousins or my friend Chris. We’d go back to school the following Monday laden with tales of taking an elbow to the face from a zealous stage-diver during ‘Too Many Castles In The Sky’ by Rose of Avalanche, while our classmates talked about a great pair of Hi-Tecs they’d bought in Farnborough. Could never understand why others didn’t want to share our world. “Hey, I got elbowed in the face. You don’t see the great joy of life in that? No?” 

Let’s avoid making a list. But if we were making a list, and it was called ‘Bands I Saw Most Often At The Astoria’, then straddling the misty peak like a gothic colossus would be (you guessed it) The Mission. They seemed to be the house band in those years. Even when they weren’t actually on the bill, various band members would pop up on stage for other people’s shows. And every time I saw them was a petal-strewn delight.       

My final visit to The Astoria was for Kate Nash, Soko and Noah & The Whale. In 2008. There had been almost a twenty-year gap. But nothing had seemingly changed. Those walls were as dark and tacky as ever. Except, I noticed for the first time there was a balcony. It must have always been there, but us teenage goths had no time for balconies. Now none of it remains. Pushed aside to become an underground station entrance when they finally finish rebuilding Tottenham Court Road. Unlike all the ‘80s bands I saw there that have since come back together, this is one icon that unfortunately we won’t get to see reform.   

Oh, yes - those beloved multi-formats.
Here's the limited 12-inch Bombay Mix.

With insert and sticker.

‘Let’s Go Round There’ – The Darling Buds (1989)

“We don’t have to talk,
We don’t have to smile,
‘Cos we’ve only just met,
But please stay for a while”

(“What’s this?” Etched vinyl, kids. Yep, it made a whole side of your expensive record completely unplayable. Buy, hey, look at the pretty flower pattern.)

My Dad wins competitions that he doesn’t even enter. A crate of champagne will turn up at the door. Or tickets will arrive for a weekend away. Once he won a car (which he wanted to sell, but my mum nabbed it).

My winnings total a 12-inch by the La’s (whom I never liked, so that went to my friend Laura G) and a Darling Buds T-shirt. Impressive, eh? I snagged them both in the same competition. A Sunday night phone-in on Radio 210 – the local Reading station. The presenter, Sarah Jane, phoned me after the show to take my details and we got chatting about indie stuff.

The next week I got a name check and the new Buds single dedicated to me. And so began a weekly correspondence where I’d send in requests (The Wonder Stuff for my mum and some Pixies for my sister) and get my letters read out. This continued for about a year and I was mighty chuffed to get a shout out in the final show. The radio just hasn’t meant the same to me since – you never hear a good Darling Buds giveaway any more.

Spotify linky:

The Darling Buds – Let's Go Round There

'Unbearable' - The Wonder Stuff (1989)

“I didn’t like you very much when I met you …
And now I like you even less.”

The mosh pit. A beer-soaked, heaving scrum of flailing limbs and tortured groans. Basically a playfight set to music. My 39-year-old self wonders just what the touch sensitive, 8-stone, 16-year-old-me was thinking. A knee in the groin. An elbow in the face. (To quote the Mancunian Bard.) Good times.

As a teenager, moshing was about the only form of exercise I got. They should have put it in P.E. lessons. Far more useful to me than climbing a rope or doing some star jumps.

Diving into any mosh pit at London’s Astoria with my cousins felt like coming home. (Kind of. A mosh pit would be a weird sort of home. But you know what I mean.) And the Stuffies remind me most of those times. A strange, painful bonding process. But every bruise was a sign of affection.

These days it’s all acoustic, alt-country shows at the Queen Elizabeth Hall for me. Not so much moshing at those. Probably just as well. But there’s still a part of me that wants to try that other gig-going rite of passage: the stage dive. Maybe it's time for me to book tickets for the Stuffies reunion tour.

Spotify linky:
The Wonder Stuff – Unbearable

(Regular readers won’t be in the least bit surprised to hear that my Dad hated this song – I’m not picking these deliberately, he just hated a lot of my music.)