Garage Fuzz Tape Sleeve, May 83

After the abortive Desolation Angels experiment, all went quiet until February of 83, when Wilbur revealed that “we” were playing support to Oasis at the Nicolson St Valentine’s dance. Only problem was that there was no “we” by this time. Evidently Kristina had negotiated the gig in blissful ignorance of this minor detail. (Note. This was the 80s Eagles-fixated Oasis from Parkend, not the 90s Beatles-fixated Oasis from Manchester).

Bod wasn’t interested, so Wilbur and Dead had to put a pick-up band together fast or suffer the wrath of Oasis’ management (maybe). David and Robbie from the Meantime agreed to stand in on Lead Guitar and Drums respectively, and Alex John Kennedy from Swedish TV agreed to come in on Rhythm Guitar.

Wilbur chose yet another beat book band name from his Jack Kerouac library  – The Subterraneans.

There was time for one practice before the gig, so on 12^th February 1983 The Subterraneans gathered at David’s place down in Gress, to thrash out 4 songs quickly; John Lee Hooker's “Crawlin’ King Snake“, Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love”, (both after the Doors’ cover versions!) plus the old standards “ I Was Murdered By the CIA” and “All Along The Watchtower”.

Something clicked at that session in a big way -  it was the first time we’d played with two guitars and big, powerful amps, and the songs rocked like something else.  On the two new songs, Alex John played low-down fuzzy chords with heavy reverb through his 100W HH twin-speaker combo, and David played high over the top, mixing funky rhythm riffs with lead parts. It wasn’t a standard lead/rhythm split but it sure enough worked. The session was recorded but the whereabouts of the legendary Brown EMI Tape are unknown.

Everyone was raring to go for the gig by the end of that session, but Wilbur cautioned that things could still go wrong and that it would be best to adopt pseudonyms just in case. So were born Emil The Shrink (Vocals/Harmonica), Bob Bitchin’ (Rhythm Git-tar), Randy T Pennsylvania (Lead Git-tar), Leroi Z Coondawg (Bass) and Carl Ramone (Drums).

Predictably the sound on the night was atrocious, nobody could hear anyone else, the house lights were turned on throughout the performance and Bob Bitchin’ swears to this day that his guitar was detuned and had the pickups screwed down by someone before he went on (but then conspiracy theories have always surrounded the Kennedys). Luckily most of the audience had gone out for fags, special brew or whatever at half time and so didn’t witness the performance, so Emil the Shrink wrote his own glowing 6th Year Magazine Review which couldn’t really be disputed.

Despite the poor performance on the night, most of the lineup reckoned that the session at Randy T's had shown the makings of something really good, and decided to carry on. Although Carl Ramone and Randy T Pennsylvania had only intended to stand in for the night, Carl stayed with the band, changing his handle to Zink Sputnik for no discernible reason, and moving from drums to rhythm git-tar. Randy left as planned and went back to being David, so Bob Bitchin’ moved on to lead git-tar. This left the drum stool vacant, but luckily Bob’s multi-talented Swedish TV bandmate John "Pluckan" Murray signed up almost straight away, acquiring the handle “Etheridge Lockjaw Jones Ist” for his trouble. If this is confusing you, go and see Lineups.

  The "classic" Subterraneans lineup in Leroi's garage, Sandwick, May 83 (L-R) : Leroi Z Coondawg, Emil The Shrink, Zink Sputnik, Bob Bitchin, Etheridge Lockjaw Jones Ist

Leroi managed to sell a few copies to people in school who felt sorry for him, and decided to invest in a small ad in “Sounds” to see if he could sell to a more cosmopolitan audience. A massive influx of one order arrived several months later, from Gressviken, near Oslo, signed “Tom Trash”. It later became apparent that this was from Norwegian garage record mogul Tom Erik Kristofferson, a key figure in the thriving Scandinavian garage scene and latterly proprietor of the excellent Sneakers Records. Sadly Scandinavia then, as now, appeared to have a surplus of good garage bands and Mr Trash was not compelled to sign up the band on the strength of “Garage Fuzz”.

Good Taste in Scandinavia - The one and only reply to the 1983 Sounds Ad

The band continued to practice on and off through the Summer of 83. Emil was off travelling (Kerouac-style) for a fair bit of the Summer, but the band were keen to keep jamming, so Derek "No Head Jackson" Macleod – Perceval Road’s answer to Lux Interior – would come down to Sandwick and fill in on vocals.

At the end of the Summer, Emil and Leroi headed off to begin college on the mainland. This put a stop to any further activities until they returned for the holidays at Xmas/New Year of 83/84.

Etheridge had booked some time down at Noel Eadie's Tong Studios during the holidays, so the band went along one evening to record some decent quality tracks.

With Mr E at the controls, they managed to record 5 songs, pretty much live, in the course of the evening: “Louie Louie”, “I Was Murdered by the CIA”, “Hi Heel Sneekers”, “Wherewolf” and “Who Do You Love?”. Bob Bitchin’ might have done a few git-tar overdubs and Etheridge went back another night to mix the recording down, but that was pretty much that. 

There was probably a gig in the Royal around and about the same time, but at the moment I can’t recall much more than that. Anybody else remember anything?

Easter and Summer 84 found the band practising some new numbers in the front bedroom of Leroi’s house in Sandwick, and having to cut down the noise levels accordingly. Etheridge was restricted to using Alan Dick’s old hi-hat as an all-purpose percussive instrument. Emil had been honing his harmonica skills down at Stirling University and was going through a Little Walter phase, so the band tried out versions of  “Dead Presidents”, “Up The Line” and “Blues with a Feelin’”.