Hello Tiger, Wherever You Are

I'm still digging through my archives (Read: unsorted piles of papers stuffed into cupboards, blanket trunks, suitcases under the bed and any shelf space not already fully occupied by comics and books.) in search of the zines I produced during the eighties and nineties. So far I've found... some of them.

How many there were and how many remain to be found is an open question. I can't remember when I joined BAPA although since I first met many of the people who later went on to be mainstays of the cult project while I was still at university and I graduated in 1981 or 1982 (You'd think I'd remember but I don't.) and I didn't quit the apa until pretty close to the millennium, I guess I must have been in it for more than a decade, possibly quite a lot more.

The mailing frequency was mainly, if not entirely, bi-monthly and I doubt I missed many mailings. I also frequently submitted more than one zine at a time so that suggests I must have produced somewhere between sixty and a hundred zines. So far I've found less than half the low end of that estimate. 

Given that I'm certain I'd never have knowingly disposed of any of them, they almost have to be somewhere in the house. My fear is that they're in the loft. I put a lot of stuff up there when we moved in, thirty years ago and I had trouble getting up there even then. Access is through a very small trap door in the ceiling of the bathroom and I haven't attempted it for about ten years. I'm not keen to try it now but I suppose at some point I'll have to.

But not today. Today I managed to find all nine issues of the other long-form fiction piece I was working on back in the nineties, which goes by the provisional title An Outside View. I also found a separate zine in which I go on at some length about how it's finished and the next stage is to submit it to publishers. 

All the covers. Not as well-preserved as the Final Line ones.

I don't sound at all keen and my estimate of my chances of attracting any kind of interest is highly pessimistic. In the end, I never did send it anywhere.

But... I do still have the revised, completed text on floppy disc and by some miracle the other day I managed to get Windows 10 to read that disc and copy it onto hard drive. That means I now have both of them digitized in a modern, useable format. One is 45,000 words and incomplete, the other 55,000 and done.

I've re-read the unfinished one and I love it. I thought it was great at the time and I'm very pleased to say that it completely stands up to both my memory of it and my original estimation. That said, the main reason I love it is because it's exactly the sort of prose I loved to read then and love to read now and judging by the careers of the authors I know who write that way, it is a niche market to say the least. 

The next step is to re-read the other one. The finished one. That one I was not all that happy with back when I wrote it so it'll be interesting to see if I like it any better now. I suspect I might.

Either way, I have no intention of reviving my plan to send it to anyone for consideration. That seems like very pre-millennial thinking. If I do anything, I'll either get it converted into an e-book or just host it online somewhere. No rush. It's waited three decades, it can wait a bit longer.

More interesting for the blog, today I found an old zine from the late '90s where I go on a bit about the prospects of doing exactly what I just mentioned, namely putting the work up online. That appears to have been a possibility I was considering even in 1998. 

I also speculate about the entire apa moving online and suggest I would prefer it if it did. Given my recent comments about what we've missed by moving away from the scissors and paste, that does seem like some heavy-handed ironic foreshadowing. 

I also came across some reviews of gigs I'd been to that I rather like. Four separate evenings out get the treatment and three of them I remember fairly clearly. One, though, I had absolutely no memory of whatsoever (Although it has come back to me a bit since reading the review.)

If you'd asked me if I'd ever seen Prolapse or Urusei Yatsura I'd have said I'd never even heard of either of them, far less seen them perform. Shows how much I know.

Hello Tiger - Urusei Yatsura

That's them. And that's the single of theirs I'd bought that made me think they were worth going to see live. It's pretty good, isn't it?

I guess we should take a look at Prolapse, too. Especially since - spoiler! - it seems I liked them better on the night. Hmm. And quite possibly still do.

And here's the proof. (Well, down there's the proof. Blogger didn't want to center it properly, so I had to move it. Never had that problem with Spray Mount.)

If the image is too small to read, never fear. It's embedded in the full text as transcribed the truly excellent Image To Text Converter. 

 
Prolapse/Urusei Yatsura - Bristol

I meant to see UY last year but didn't get round to it. I bought the sharp recent single, Hello Tiger, and thought I'd better make more of an effort. It was only a day or two before the gig that I realised Prolapse were supporting. I remember Andy Roberts talking them up and taking me to task for calling them "ordinary". By now I couldn't even remember what they sounded like.

There was a third band on the bill, Magoo, who I'd never heard of, so I reckoned I'd be safe getting there about nine. When I arrived the place was packed and there was a band on stage, nondescript, no singer. I guessed it would be Magoo and put them down as Mogwai wannabes. They finished the number (can't call an instrumental a song, can you?) and two singers walked on.

One, male, was tall, had out-of-control curly dark hair, looked raddled, old and maybe a little touched. He prowled and stalked and fiddled with the mike stand. The other, female, was small, blonde and picture-perfect. They began a fast, staccatto attack and didn't let up for half an hour. 

I liked them, then I liked them a lot. It was obvious who they were like. They were like the Fall, like the Beatnik Filmstars are like the Fall - a friendly Fall, one that doesn't take itself so very seriously. They were also not unlike the Gang of Four. The musicians were apparently from the same institute of higher education as the Replicants, while the male singer could have been the Replicants' singer's edgier, dissolute brother. Neither he nor the girl could sing, or, if they could, chose not to: Mostly, one would talk while the other shouted. It worked. The girl looked surrealistically pristine centre-stage, while her co-singer messed with her hair, put her in a headlock, tried to wind the microphone cord round her head. She looked pissed off, but didn't try to stop him.

Thirty minutes and they were gone. They were better than the Fall, last time I saw them. I wished they could have played longer.

A fast change-over and Urusei Yatsura push past me in the middle of the hall as they come to the stage from the back of the crowd. (Bands do this occasionally at the Fleece, but since most of them don't, I assume it's an affectation). They look like an indie band - there's a curly haired one, a lanky, limp-haired one, a dark-haired girl, a drummer. I'm looking forward to this...

After four numbers I'm seriously considering going home. They are pedestrian, unoriginal, dull. The limp-haired guitarist sings lead and he isn't very good. The songs plod. Even the band don't look interested. I decide to wait for the single, at least. Then the curly-haired guitarist takes lead vocals, and it's as if a different band has come on. Suddenly the air crackles with energy, the lyrics are clear and the guitars are electric. At the front, the crowd begins to move, to surge and leap. The lanky guitarist moves to backing vocals for the rest of the set and every song is fun again. The curly haired singer has a knack of sounding as though he's singing through a distortion pedal even though he's not.

People are stage diving and crowd-surfing which, in the Fleece, is near-suicidal. "We should be paying to watch you!" the lanky guitarist comments.

They end with a number where the curly guitarist jams a drumstick behind the strings and beats it with another until the strings snap. Then they exit swiftly through the audience, pushing past me again while the crowd goes wild.

No-one plays encores anymore, it seems.

And since I'm in a bit of a rush this evening, I'll leave it there for now. There may well be more from the archive, especially if I run short of ideas.