A Chandelier In Hebden Bridge

We were in Hebden Bridge the other weekend, about to play in the Trades Club.

I first played there in 1986 with the Len Bright Combo - we played there twice that year in fact - once, I remember, in high summer - we camped afterwards in a Hebden Bridge adjacent field.

The concert was extremely loud. I remember the night sky twinkling with a thousand silver stars, and a silence so deafening I can still hear it thirty-nine years later. I crawled into my tent feeling utterly bewildered. Was this the coolest thing ever? Or just a new low in my ever plummeting career?

I wrapped myself up in a blanket and read a book about PG Wodehouse by the light of a torch until I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and woke up at dawn with an aching back.

The gig had been a great success - the place was packed and everybody loved us, but when it came time to settle up the organisers said they couldn’t pay, they hadn’t got any money. We could sympathise with that because neither had we. The Hebden Bridge Trades Club was a socialist collective run by disgruntled ex-miners, scary women and men with facial tattoos so there wasn’t much arguing with them.

A week later our agent had a call from them - they wanted to book us again. The agent told them they could have us back once they’d paid our fee. They sent a cheque and a month or two later off we went back to the Trades Club. It was another great night, a carbon copy of the first one - the place was packed, we played a great show, everyone loved us, and at the end they pleaded poverty and we left without our fee.

So we took a large bass cabinet hostage. We discreetly manoeuvred it out onto the fire escape, and once  our equipment was out and the place was locked up we hiked it down the fire escape and into the van.

Our agent negotiated with them and it was agreed that one of their people would come down to the Medway Towns and an exchange would be made, bass cabinet for cheque. I drew the short straw so, on a balmy Saturday evening I met up with a brick-faced lady outside the Nags Head in Rochester. I took the cheque from her and helped load the cabinet into the back seat of an old Morris Minor.

I was charming about it - I couldn’t understand how the cabinet had ended up in our van. My charm offensive worked so well that she suggested we have a drink together. I felt quite intimidated. The situation was made worse by there being people I knew in the pub who obviously thought I was two-timing my partner with this brick-faced lady. I excused myself, headed for the gents and never came back.

I felt bad about that. I felt like a cad.

I didn’t play at the Trades Club again until maybe 2010 when Amy and I played there for about thirty people. The place had changed - it was no longer a desperate social collective - there was a large, well-appointed stage, a lighting rig, state of the art PA system, a young and enthusiastic sound engineer - the place had had a huge makeover that spoke of expert management and arts funding.

I tried for years to get another gig there but no one answered my emails. And then along came a booking at the Rebellion Festival with an agent attached to it, an incompetent and haphazard agent as it turns out, but an agent nonetheless. Venues answer emails from agents so here I was on another Saturday night, lounging on a sofa in a luxury flat next door to the venue. The flat belonged, so I understand, to someone who used to manage the Happy Mondays, and was used by the Trades Club as a green room for the kind of acts that headline there on a Saturday night.

I gazed up at a chandelier in some sort of pre-show trance. I took a photo of it - I felt obliged to take a photo of something. I’ve taken lots of photos in the past - old buildings, iron bridges, crazy people, cars, trees, steam trains, helicopters, magnificent panoramas - you name it and I’ve probably taken a photo of it. I don’t often feel the need to do this anymore, just the obligation to post something on Instagram or Facebook to boost the lamentable seventy-one advance ticket sales that results from failing to create a Facebook event page.

I can’t see the point of Facebook event pages. I imagine someone in Andover, Swansea or Aberdeen saying ‘Ooh look - that Erectile Eddie, the one that did Do The Big Wide World - he’s playing in Hebden Bridge! We could go to that if only it wasn’t so far…’

I don’t feel good about posting flyers for my shows on social platforms where other people are imploring governments to stop obliterating homes, lives and countries. It feels inappropriate: Hey guys! I know the worlds gone to shit and military powers are perpetrating unspeakable acts of mass-murder even as I write this, but look at this cool and groovy thing I’m doing here…

I struggle with it, even though I’ve finally come to understand that the creative arts have an important part to play in a functioning society.

I just don’t feel the old compulsion to take photos and put them on Instagram. The charm faded when it changed from the somewhat non-aesthetic square to the more sensible vertical format. I don’t want to sound like an old person who can’t keep up, but I’ve never got the hang of reels - I just liked taking photos and treating them slightly with contrast, brightness and filters. I liked to write a little piece to go with them, and I've loved seeing photos taken by friends and people who became friends because I looked at their Instagram photos and the things they had to say about them.

But the humanity has been overtaken by inhumanity and crassness. I don’t want a revolutionary new woodworking tool, or a gadget that will allow me to plug in six synthesisers at the same time, or even a brand new gloopy liquid that guarantees radiant beauty, doubtlessly via an unstated attack of violent diarrhoea… And I can do without yet another chair workout for elderly men.

Here’s my photo of a chandelier in Hebden Bridge:

August
30 SUFFIELD, NORFOLK Suffield Summer Fiesta (SOLD OUT)

September
11-14 KUFSTEIN, AUSTRIA Sprachslaz Literary Festival

October
04 NORWICH house concert: grapevinesteve@gmail.com for details
19 CHELMSFORD Hot Box

November
21 LONDON The Lexington (details to be announced)
23 CHICHESTER The Havana

more dates being added - new album November 21st - details to follow