The weekend held the catch up with a number of friends & acquaintances that I have not seen in some instances for the 20 years since leaving school. The topics discussed started with where people lived (a number surprisingly still in the locale) and whether people had kids (it seems second generations of kids have been playing together without anyone knowing) and finding out what people do for a living, a surprising amount in IT and surprising people to have gone into the teaching profession.
When a few more beers had been quoffed, to top up the one for dutch courage before going out the discussions got into good old fashioned reminiscing.... about all manner of things, a particular favourite being how in assembly people would borrow hymn books and then launch them over the balcony at the back of the hall, making life difficult for the Jehovah's witnesses (not allowed to sit with us) who had to dodge them and random shoes. Plus the fact that at every assembly the same gag was played on the unsuspecting individual sitting at the end of the row, by sliding the seats along one place (they were linked together) during the hymn when standing, sitting down resulted in a member of class falling flat on his backside - this happened so many times and we never got into any grief about it - probably because the teachers found the site funny too. This reminiscing really brought me out in fits of giggles - I had been transported back 20 years.
We did get to the topic of music once however, a really good friend of mine reminded me of our trip to see Transvision Vamp, and the legendary Wendy James. This was at the Aston Villa leisure centre - a real hole of a venue, better suited to basket ball than seeing the years heart throb belting out hits such as Revolution Baby, I want your love and the only one.
The video for the only one nicely summed up the feel of the concerts if not the level of sweat
A couple of things stand out from this concert (the middle of 3 visits to the Villa leisure centre to see Wendy and the Gang, the third being in support of the 3rd album never released in the UK 'Little Magnets versus the Bubble of Babble' and a concert that I could not entice anyone to come with me - oh how times changed in that 2 year career).
The first was I drove, in my beat up mini, that overheated all the time, with my newly installed cassette tape player that I had spent all weekend installing and was very proud of, but found that it played tapes slowly which was not too flash.
The second was that this was my first gig when I was thrust into the mosh pit from the start of the gig to the end, I have never been in a hotter place. Jeff, Fitz and I were soaking and on returning to the car steamed it up in shocking fashion, but I did encounter a catastrophe which haunted me for quite some time. I invested at the beginning of the gig in some over priced merchandise, a cracking tour programme, which I now realise was a single sheet folded.
Now the issue I had was I purchased this (piece of paper that cost as much as an album!) before Wendy came on stage, and I went in Jeans and T Shirt, so naturally when I went moshing, to hold onto it I shoved it up my T Shirt and ended up with a wonderful purple paper mache blob, with one small salvagable image (bottom left tiny pic flicking hair - I can still remember after 21 years!).
This didn't stop my enthusiasm for the band but spurred me on to buy every 12' they ever produced, in fact everything they ever released on Vinyl, and this was the era of great 12' mixes.
So the first 12' I bought from Wendy and still cherish was I Want your love, with
and B sides
Evolution Evie and
These were the start of a lot of 12 inches and lots of memories to return to in time.....
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