Brothers and Sisters get down upon your knees and worship the majestic lord Craven as he delivers the gospel in his first sermon straight from the horses mouth! It helps if you are mad, yeah, in a fkn mad world it does! Otherwise known as week 16 of The Riverside Sessions and what a week that was in 1985. Unfortunately part of it and both tapes from week 15 were lost by Johnny Tasker and Dave Stead in a rather careless manner and I've not forgiven or forgotten Mr Stead, poor Johnny died a sad and tragically young death. Going through these tapes has been like skiiing up the Alps but week 16 makes the task lighter. It all finally came together and all the work we had put in paid off. We changed our position in the room that we played in, didn't use the P.A. system and set up the mics differently for recording. This meant that Ian Craven had to bend over double to vocalise as they were at waist-height. I can still see him in my minds-eye giving it rock, we couldn't hear what he was saying until tape playback time and then - Wow! I had met him thru Terry and he was nearly 20 years older than me. He was going thru a bad time, had no job, was getting divorced after splitting up with his wife and leaving his two sons. He had never done anything like this before and never did after. We invited him to rehearsals and one night he started to join in, gradually gaining confidence until this stuff just started pouring out of him in a stream-of-consciousness, all totally improvised on the spot like the music. A while after the group fell apart he moved somewhere down south and became an R.E. teacher. A few years later I heard that he had died, of a brain-haemorrhage I think. The sound is not so good at first due to the age and condition of the cassette but it gets there in the end. I am very proud to present this for your edification. It's the high-point for me so far but I am sure there will be more.
http://archive.org/details/ItHelpsIfYouAreMadPart1
Un Petit D'une Petite, as in 'sat on the wall' and 'had a great fall', but not quite a large French humpty dump 'n that with dirty underwear. This is a compilation of some of the stuff that was recorded for release by Turdy Ming-Hole the turd, on Genesis P-Orridge's Temple records before it turned out that Turdy was a bag full of shit. He got his years later when I heard he'd gone mad and alcoholic, raving about being the inventor of Acid House and that Gen had ripped off all his ideas, he had played in Coum many years before. I should have checked with Gen first cos I knew him from being an old TG fan but never mind, this wouldn't exist if I had. We hired a P.A., a rehearsal room, Gary Burroughs' 4-track and I paid. It was recorded on 9-11 of February 1987 and some of it was mixed a couple of months later. It features some of the first things I wrote when I started writing songs again. All together now - "I'm a honky-tonk pheasant and I'm ready to cough a-ha". Death of MF came to me late one evening when I was feeling shit and only had enough cash for a miniature bottle of whisky, I downed it and as the effects came on so did the words. Samuel Beckett wrote a poem called 'Mort de AD' about a friend who had died and as this seemed to be about Mark Fell that's where the title translated from. The words for The Nipple came from a book of bawdy old ballads I found in Hull music library, vocal by Mr. and Mrs. Rudeforth. Three Gobs Spew The Mares View has all three of us reading from my notebooks. The line-up for these recordings is...
Paul Moller - Guitar, Vocal, Sax.
Mr Rudeforth - Radio, Vocal, Violin.
Jonathan/Cess - Electronics, Radio, Vocal.
The tracks are :-
This compilation is from weeks 11, 12 and 13 of The Riverside Sessions 1985. Week 11 was the last of the 3 tape sessions, as we got stuff condensed down and perfected we did less of it. Ian, Gary, Terry and I took some LSD and were tripping for week 11. These 3 sessions were a turning point in many ways, Ian Craven got more interested and more confident with the Katy method. The way we approached the sound and the recording of it changed for the better shortly after this as it all started to gel. There's not much of week 12 here because it wasn't particularly good in my opinion.
1991/92
Grant Ardis left in March and Gary Burroughs re-joined in May. Gary borrowed some money off his Mum and bought a 16 track recording studio which we ran commercially and also used for our own stuff which became more electronic to take advantage of the equipment at our disposal. We put out some more tapes which generated some interest and did a few gigs. We videoed one at the Adelphi where the room was very dark, we wore white suits and projected a film over us, it was very effective and atmospheric. We released a few copies as Clam-Film 1. Keith Le Blanc (Sugarhill Gang/Maffia/Tackhead) had a lable which was interested in us but they went bankrupt before anything happened. During the second part of 1992 it became obvious that things were not working out with Gary due to the usual problem. He was only involved in anything for what he could get out of it and could never see further than the end of his dick. We got rid of him for good towards the end of the year.
Hail Satan! I didn't want to mention it but it just crept up on me, it just crept. The Katy vocalisation extravaganza continues with full compliment of accompaniment. Being a compilation from week 7 of The Riverside Sessions 1985. The guts of the piano survived another onslaught and the usual protagonists were joined for the first time by the majestic Ian Cravan. A friend called Noddy was also present but Noddy didn't do much.
1990
After all the excitement and activity that had happened in the last 6 months of 1989, the turn into 1990 brought with it the same old crap. In 1989 we had done about 4 times as many gigs as we had in the rest of our years put together but what I saw of the 'music business' stank rankly, we tried to get journalists to come and see us but didn't get one single review or owt. We got a few gigs off the back of the tours but then - nothing. In February Nicky Hogg left to carry on with his club group, I was very angry but it proved a good move. With a quartet of Paul Moller - guitar, vocals, Mr. Rudeforth - tapes, Trevor Simpson - bass, and Grant Ardis - drums we played some of the best stuff in the history of WKDN. We carried on rehearsing in Trevs' back room and did more gigs.
1989
Gary decided he was at the end of his tether and had enough and wanted to leave, which he did in April. A week or so later we got offered the support slot on the first Beautiful South tour in June. We got slaughtered on Rebel Yell bourbon and said yeeeesssss. Mark had met Paul Heaton on a film course in 1983 or '84. We were at a loose end after the pub one night and he suggested going round to see these people that he'd met who were interesting. We were sat around a big table talking and I wanted a spliff, so being polite I asked did they mind if I rolled one. There was some female present and the reaction from the four residents of the house was as if I had asked if she would suck my todger! Paul played trombone for a few minutes at the Wellington Club Mato Chup extravaganza in 1984 and then The Housemartins took off and I didn't see him for a few years. He had spotted our cassette tape in a shop window and realised we were still at it so when he bumped into Mr. Rudeforth at The Silhouette Club he offered us the gig. Gary came running back asking where 'we' were going, when 'we' were doing it etc. I told him to fuck-right-off. We started playing with Dave Smelt on bass (he was a guitarist really) but wouldn't be ready for the tour so he took a rain-check. About this time I asked Grant Ardis if he would like to join us, he nearly had in 1984. I had played with Grant in the first real group I was in - Section 60 which arose from the ashes of a band called Mental Block - and rated him as one of the best drummers I had ever heard. The deal with Grant turned out to be that his buddy Nicky Hogg wanted to play bass and I thought ok what-the-hell let's give it a go but the upcoming tour was most important. We had a meeting in the pub with The B.S. and I cheekily said that we would help them out on this tour if we could do the next one with the full electric band, amazingly enough they agreed. So we (Trev, Mr. Rudeforth and Myself) went on tour in June as the Beautiful South support band and someone wrote a letter in to the music press calling us 'the worst group in the world', yes indeed! After we got back there was a sessionette with Trev, Nicky, Grant and myself, we started with Mystery Train, the old Junior Parker number and from the first note there was something there. Dave Smelt switched to guitar and vocals for a couple of weeks but it didn't work out. What Katy Did Next consisting of Myself - guitar, vocals, Trevor Simpson - slide guitar, Mr. Rudeforth - tapes, Nicky Hogg - bass, vocal, and Grant Ardis - drums, vocal, began rehearsing and did a few warm-up gigs for the next tour. The gigs were engagements that Nicky had booked for his club group but we honoured them instead. On one gig at the Beer, Beef and Buggery boozer on Hessle Road during the first number the landlord came running up, pointed at Mr. R. (who was playing a tape of an old preacher giving it rock) and shouted "Either he stops or you all get off, now!" He paid us off during the interval. At another pub we completely cleared the room but still got paid as it was the landlords' night off. We went on tour with The B. S. again in Oct/Nov, with a couple of rescheduled dates in Ireland in December.
Abandon Ship, We're Sinking! As the weeks of The Riverside Sessions went on the changes can be observed. The music was starting to coalesce on both the rhythmic and free-form bits and a group 'sound' was starting to emerge from out of the mayhem. Tentatively poking it's head up above the ground to have a look around and try to work out what was going on. This is a compilation of moments from week 6 dated 10.5.85 and the line-up is the same as the previous weeks - Moller, Rudeforth, Parkinson, Burroughs.
http://www.archive.org/details/AbandonShip
