Guest Author Post: Inside A Musical Mind Across The Pond

Guest author and JLG365 friend Andy Thomas takes us on a trip through his musical mind in this exclusive two-part retrospective. You can read PART ONE here.

[I] had my first taste of industrial in 1983, seeing SPK or “Surgical Penis Klinik” as they were known at some point. [I] saw them at the Brighton Arts College Basement, an experience was had by all I think, especially when the flame thrower was used and you ducked so fast to avoid becoming cinders. One of the best songs SPK did was “Metal Dance” and this can be found on the album Machine Age Voodoo. Two other albums which I used to have on cassette were Auto DaFe and Leichenschrei, both good albums.

1983 also saw me getting into Psychobilly with such bands as The Cramps, Demented Are Go and the Guana Batz. Kev and I saw The Cramps at the London Hammersmith Apollo and as I recall when we were entering we saw another work colleague already flat out before the gig had started. Must have been something in the beer that night, I remember the price going up and up by the hour. The Cramps were good though, class act in my opinion.

1983 also saw the release of the Punk and Disorderly box set comprising of four albums and a double called Burning Ambitions, cost me around £50 if I remember, worth every penny though. This increased the amount of Punk bands I was now loving by a big amount, far too many to list in this write up, I still play the albums to this day and some of the groups and songs that really stick out are: Chron Gen – “Outlaw”, The Wall – “Hobby For A Day”, Business – “Harry May”, Demob – “No Room For You”, GBH – “Race Against Time” and the Violators – “Summer Of 81″.

So five years on and my love a fair with Punk has not faltered in anyway, its increased in tempo. Kev and I fell in love with a German band this year called Xmal Deutschland and I got to see them 9 times over the course of the next 6 years and Kev only missed 4 UK gigs throughout the entire time, seeing them 26 times in all.

Over the course of the next two years I got to see Siouxsie & the Banshees twice, both at the Brighton Centre and both great gigs in there own way as I recall. The Goth and Psychobilly scenes also hotted up over these two years, with seeing The Cramps at The Brighton Top Rank, Gauna Batz at the Klub foot in London as well as supporting Xmal again at the very last Lyceum gig in London.

Another band we both fell in love with was the Skeletal Family from Keithley in Yorkshire, we saw them on March 5th 1985 at The Escape Club in Brighton, where we also got to meet the lead singer Anne Marie at the end. That night we also made friends with a woman called Morticia, super person and still friends to this day. This was also two days before I was due to go in and have an operation, so the night was especially significant and will always remain as a fond memory.

From 1983-1992 we followed another local band called Cry Wolf (Rock) and each gig was like one great family gathering, band and fans alike. Some great memories and to this day I am still good friends with nearly everyone. Cry Wolf organised a gig in North Devon on the Friday and Looe in Cornwall on the Saturday. A whole bunch of us males had a big room to ourselves and the women the same. It was a very cozy gig, not much room to move, but great. One of the guys was drunk as a skunk, which let things down a bit, more so at 3am in the morning when he thought my head was the urinal (I was in a sleeping bag) no wonder I am bald now. You can laugh at it now as being hilarious, but it kind of angered me at the time.

Also the 80’s brought us more independent type music, which as I recall was once described as Cow Punk, some of my favourite groups were the Shillelagh Sisters, Boothill Foot Tappers and The Orson Family. We were also into bands like Alien Sex Fiend, The Sisters Of Mercy, Dead Can Dance, Cocteau Twins and many more.

As you can see the first five years of the 80’s was a roller coaster, with so much good music coming our way and with having already a varied taste my music collection soon rocketed. They were great times and very heart warming to reflect on some of the events that took place, individual songs and groups in general.

1986 saw Kev and I seeing the Pogues at Brighton Top Rank and a band called the Men They Couldn’t Hang, both class acts with a very similar vein. We saw the Men at a pub in Brighton called The Old Vic and a memory that stands out is a whole line of men locked arm in arm swaying to the song “Green Fields Of France“, very emotional it was, great song and one that should be in everyone’s collection. The latter half of the 80’s also saw us seeing Xmal a great number of times until they split in 1990, in our eyes a very sad moment.

In about 1986 through a colleague I started to get into Frank Zappa and in 87 I was very fortunate to see the great man at The Brighton Centre, not every ones cup of tea by any means but the guy was very talented.

The Belle Stars were formed out of The Bodysnatchers and I saw them at The Top Rank in Brighton and got to meet a few of the girls by the stage at the end. I wonder what Miss SJ is doing now?

Kev and I were very much into early Tears For Fears, they were right when they said it was a “Mad World” we saw them The Top Rank in Brighton. Also at The Top Rank in Brighton we saw Reggae bands Misty In Roots and Steel Pulse, love them both. I can recall was being right down the front and taking in the fumes, you didn’t need your own supply that night!!!

Due to circumstances the 1990’s was a very quiet decade where gigs were concerned for me and finding new genre’s to wet my appetite, I did however like early Techno such as 2 Unlimited, Utah Saints, Messiah, Snap! and Culture Beat and a few others. There was quite a lot of Dance music I liked that came out in the early 90’s also, to me after that the music scene went down hill. I concentrated on listening to bands and artists I already new and liked.

[Although] there was a lot of good stuff coming out in the form of Grunge and Metal during the 90’s, I was a very late developer where all these were concerned and its only been in the past few years where I have got into a lot of those 90’s bands and I think enjoying them better. This also includes bands from the 80’s that I did not have time for because I was so busy with everything else that was coming along. I am talking about groups like Nirvana, Alice In Chains Metallica, Iron Maiden, HammerFall, Epica, W.A.S.P and many others. W.A.S.P. are one of my all time favourite Metal bands and there is only one album that I do not have by them.

In the 90’s I went to 3 gigs as far as I can remember and they were Suzi Quatro in 1990, also Sweet in 1990 and Barclay James Harvest in 1992.

The 21st century has also been a very quite time gig wise for me, but over the past few years I have embraced so much music. Some of the groups I have already mentioned, others include Creed, Blackmore’s Night, AC/DC, Slayer, Diamond Head, Rammstein and countless other bands namely with the genre of either Rock or Metal. My roots coming back you see!

I believe that I have only been to 3 gigs this decade also if you exclude the local band called No Way Out who I have been following. I saw Blackmore’s Night in 2007 at The Brighton Dome, it was a wonderful gig, great music and singing. In my opinion Candice Night has one of the best female voices to come out of America in a long time. The support act were a four piece from Belsen in the Czech Republic and they played centuries old songs on original instruments, I really enjoyed them, so much so I met them at their stall after the gig and bought there CD. At the end of this gig my hands were red raw from clapping, but the pain was worth it.

Last July (2008) saw me going to my first ever stadium gig and seeing Iron Maiden, they played at Twickenham Rugby Stadium near London. They were awesome, so professional in every way, definitely one gig I shall never forget as long as I live. The support bands/Artists were Avenged Sevenfold (liked them a lot) Within Temptation and Lauren Harris.

Within Temptation are now one of my favourite bands, I did actually like them before I saw them though. Their album Black Symphony
and Metallica’s Death Magnetic
, which both came out last September, are two of my all time favourite albums and most certainly got the number one spot for best albums of 2008.

At the end of March this year I finally got to see the Gods of Metal in Metallica. We saw them at the O2 Arena which was the Millenium Dome, an absolutely awesome and fantastic gig. If I do not get my daily dose of Metallica then I get the jitters, I am still smiling almost 7 months later.

There are many bands and artists I have not mentioned, I was not asked to write a book, but if I was to mentioned something about all the groups/artists that I have loved and enjoyed in the past say 42 years then a book is what you would be getting and it would probably take me months to write.

Guest Author Bio: Andrew Thomas lives in Sussex, United Kingdom. His hobbies include researching family history, reading and, of course, music.