I went to see Miles Hunt last Friday in Bridgend.  It was in a place called Hobbos – which I think used to be a snooker hall above a chip shop called the Ranch (which served horrible chips – but it did have an arcade machine in it – I seem to remember playing the WW2 fighter plane classic 1942 there).  Miles Hunt used to front the Wonder Stuff and back in the day they had their fair share of hits (Including a song he sung on the night “Dont let me Down” which was the song that got me into them) – I even went to see them in their Walsall Football Stadium gig.  This was a long way from that experience.  I went with Mark Morelli and one of his friends Nick – who seemed like a nice chap (we are now friends on Facebook)!

I’ve never really been one for support acts – they’re normally shit – the one exception that springs to mind was Ned’s Atomic Dustbin who supported the Wonder Stuff at Newport Centre during their Circle Square Tour – I think it’s fair to say that they blew the Wonder Stuff off the stage – this was one of my first gigs so Ned’s set the bar too high for subsequent support acts.  Tonight was no exception I found myself saying “It’s too loud in here let’s go to the bar in the next room.”  There appeared to be some self-proclaimed ushers between the doors.  They were like the cast from “This is England” – straight out of the National Front back catalogue.  I thought they were rent a crowd brought by one of the bands – but it transpired that they were just some random nutters from Pencoed. 

I think it would be fair to say they brought an air of menace to the night that was not welcomed.  Miles – normally a gobby feller was surprisingly quiet.  Later on, when speaking to Pete (one of the old-school crowd) he mentioned that Miles said this was one of the most intimidating gigs he’d ever done.  Despite this, not being fearful for my safety, I have to say I enjoyed it – he sung a couple of the old songs and we all joined in albeit in an out-of-tune couldn’t sing for toffee kind of way.

It was quite nice to see some old faces that I hadn’t seen for many years and in some ways it was like I’d never moved away from Bridgend.  To complete the evening I was hoping to bump in to Mark’s Mum & Auntie in the Railway – I didn’t but oddly enough I did bump into them at the train station the following day.  They were going shopping in Cardiff – off to Primark!

I stayed over at Mark’s flat and he showed me an old walkman that I instantly recognised.  It was mine – not that I have any tapes to play on it now.  I was one of those old auto-reverse ones – this was state of the art in those days – before that you had to take the tape out and turn it over to listen to the other side.  I was always making tapes.  Looking back one of my favourite things was listening to music.  I used to walk everywhere and so a walkman was essential.  One of the shortest journeys was to my friend Ali’s house which I could do in just about do in one song – the Sisters of Mercy “This Corrosion”.  Most journeys took about 15-20 minutes which.  Because I used to walk a lot my thirst for new songs was large. 

This was before the time of the internet so there were different ways to get hold of music.  One was to tape it off the radio – this was not preferable as the radio would always cut out the beginning or end of a song, either that or you’d get the arsehole DJ talking over it.

Another was to buy it yourself.  Bridgend did not have many places to buy music – it was Boots or Woolworths (Smiths did records but they were normally rubbish – although I did buy my first Album there – the Bangles “Different Light”).  For a brief moment there was a shop run by my old Welsh teacher, Mr Fielding it was called Yestertrax – he even had an advert at the cinema – a man dressed in a toga “Friends, Romans, Countrymen … lend me your ears!”  I bought a few Break dance records from him (The Sugar Hill Gang – I think it was called “You Can’t Stop”) but the shop didn’t last for long.  Apart from that there was a shop – I think it was called Roxy Records – which was better but still not great (although I did buy a bucket load of Cult 12” records from it).  If you wanted anything that was remotely independent you had to travel to Cardiff to get it.

The final way – and the one preferred by most was to copy music off somebody else.  You would start with your initial circle of friends and branch out - relatives of friends and then friends of friends.  The C90 tape was the weapon on choice as most albums were less than 45 minutes long.  Although there must be plenty of albums where I know most of the songs apart from the last one or two.  This was the cheap option and when your only income is pocket money it is definitely the best. 

The problem with tapes, especially originals was that they used to warp if you played them too much which meant they became unlistenable – the songs would slow down and sound ridiculous.  I don’t know why but copies were much more durable.  Another downside to tapes was you couldn’t skip songs like you can now – you would have to fast forward though the tape to find the song you wanted – there was an art to this – but it was mostly guess work.  It also ran down the batteries.  Also, your tape could get chewed up in the machine – you would then have to try and untangle it and wind the tape back into its case.  You could do this by spinning the case around your finger or a pen – either way took ages and was a pain in the ass.  It did mean you were much more thoughtful about what you put on your compilation tapes – of which I made many.               

Anyway … there was a tape in it and Mark played it – I remembered the songs, but to my embarrassment I couldn’t remember the names of all the Artists.  It was almost all from 7” singles so I still have them boxed up in the attic somewhere – I’d love an old Jukebox to put them all in.  I really do need to engineer a ‘space’ where I can listen to music more.