Gig Poster for The Dark Visit (Coll 1981/82)

Before the Subterraneans got going for real in early 1983, there was a couple of years of learning to play, changing lineups, splitting up, pausing, reforming and name changing etc to get through. This page covers that early period, starting with the obscure meeting of a couple of musically inept Doors fans in 1981.

Anyway, the story… By August of 81, things were looking bad on the music scene in Lewis unless you liked the smooth  Southern California sounds of Fleetwood Mac and Dr Hook. The wave of local post-punk bands who had made a bit of a buzz from '78 to '80 had pretty much dried up overnight because so many people from the bands were the same age and were heading away to college (See Early 80s SY Rock n Roll Scene). The next generation of town trendies were too cool to mess up their Robert Smith overcoats carrying amps around. There were a couple of the new-fangled early-80s style "hardcore" punks around (the ones who wore all the gear and liked the Exploited) but not enough to put a band together. So the usual soft rock outfits were back playing all the gigs. In terms of live music, things were reverting to how they’d probably been pre-77.

One night in the Nicolson Institute Assembly Hall, the kids at the “back to school” dance were being entertained with a tepid selection of Eagles covers from one of the many bands peddling that kind of laid back mellow West Coast Adult Oriented stuff. New fifth year brats William “Wilbur” Macleod (yet to become Bill) and Iain “Dead Olac” Livingstone stood about, not getting any blones to dance with them and blaming it, naturally, on the uninspired material and delivery of the medallion men onstage.

As the band limped into a version of “Peaceful Easy Feeling” (or something) even more soporific than the original, Wilbur and Dead became convinced that anybody could do better than this. Despite their lack of any musical ability, they decided to start their own group there and then.

Wilbur was a Dylan freak with dubious leanings towards yippieism and beat poets, whereas Dead suffered from a fixation with rockabilly and 60s garage music, and a miniscule record collection supplemented by Darts and Matchbox cassettes. The points at which they met were blues and, crucially, The Doors.

It's hard to believe these days, but back in 81 the Doors were pretty much forgotten, and Wilbur and Dead thought they were the only people in Lewis to have a copy of “LA Woman”. This set them on a mission to bring doom-laden 60s psychedelic rock ‘n’ roll pretension in wraparound shades to the masses. Which in 1981 was going to be an uphill struggle. What they had in mind didn’t fit any better with the prevailing “alternative” trends of the time than with the smooth sounds of the prevailing Tequila Sunrise-merchants. The potential fan base in Lewis didn’t extend much wider than themselves.

Undeterred, Wilbur soon discovered catatonic guitarist Steven "Steeeeevun" Macdonald, newly arrived in the Nicolson from North Uist. The laid-back Glasgow Uibhisteach turned out to be a third Doors fan, and he had an actual guitar. Steven’s overwhelming musical influence was the Beatles, but Dead and Wilbur reckoned they could keep him from getting too melodic. Thus began “A Horse Latitudes”, with Steven on guitar, Wilbur on vocals and Harmonica and Dead on bass.

Steven’s musical experience was probably extremely limited, despite his laconic assurances that he was a veteran of the North Uist rock ‘n’roll scene; Wilbur and Dead’s was even more so. Wilbur possessed a single harmonica and didn’t realise that you couldn’t use it for playing in every key. Dead’s “bass” was a Polish-made kids’ acoustic guitar (£4 from a Lewmar catalogue in 1975) with the top 2 strings broken.

Nevertheless, practice sessions were held over the next few months at Wilbur’s in Tolsta or Dead’s in Sandwick. The main criterion for choosing songs was that they should be easy, so most of the Doors’ catalogue had to be ruled out straight away. Standards at the early sessions were Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower”, the band composition “Nail Me To The Floor” (which made liberal use of the riff from the Stones’ “Get Off My Cloud”), another original “I Was Murdered by the CIA”, and a miminalist attempt at the Doors’ “Hello I Love You”.

At some point the band decided to change their name from “A Horse Latitudes” to the equally portentous “The Dark Visit”. (Not quite sure when or why, but I think it might have been a random phrase somebody came up with in an attempt to find a rhyme for "what the hell is it?" in a song that never made it past the bin.) 

Towards the end of 81, Wilbur was able to secure a gig for the band, supporting The Meantime at a Saturday night dance in the Coll Centre on 19 December. David Maclennan and Robbie Dawson from the Meantime had been in Back school with Wilbur and he is believed to have had a hand in the composition of the lyrics for their TSB Rock School finalist song - the post-punk masterpiece “World’s End”. Grimsay minister-to-be Kenny Stewart, the Mean Time’s drummer, was a pal of Steven’s and agreed to fill in on drums for the support slot (See Gigs)

The gig couldn’t have been that bad, because this lineup went on practising for the first few months of 1982, supporting the Mean Time again at Coll at another Saturday gig in March. This time Steven’s fellow Uibhisteach and Meantime vocalist Iain Macaskill sat in on drums. A couple more songs were rehearsed during this period: Willie Dixon’s “Back Door Man” (after the Doors’ version) and The Doors’ own “Light My Fire”. Dead and Steven put forward a couple more originals for rehearsal but they were rejected derisively for being crap and never even attempted.

Tapes of the December 81 and March 82 support slots were made, then lost for years until Steven rediscovered them recently. A practice tape was recorded at Dead’s house during this period but is now lost.

All this borrowing of drummers was becoming a bit difficult, so when aspiring Springfield Road boy muso Alan Dick appeared one day volunteering himself as a permanent drummer, with a drum kit and a place to practice, it seemed too good to be true. It was. Thus began a grim period in the band’s development, with rehearsals based in the Sea Cadet hut on Inaclete Road.