I then borrowed the videos from a well known (in Plymouth) alternative DJ and never really looked back...
ooh, Mark Williams? Tony? I look back on the Plymouth alternative clubs with a lot of fondness - heard a load of great stuff for the first time there (and now have a Club Zoo Classics playlist on iTunes)
what's that? New Model who? Oh them, yeah.
What to say? I'm a 37 year old bloke, but end up sounding like an excitable schoolgirl when I talk about this band. No one else has ever come close to having the same impact on me (although Nobody Else were quite good, as I recall
). The only artist I've listened to for as long is Springsteen, but even he hasn't influenced the way I live my life and the way I look at things in the same fashion NMA have.
My first real memory is buying T&C on cassette from Rival Records in Plymouth in 1989 with some Christmas money, inspired by the hit singles off the album. I remember listening to it endlessly on my walkman on the school bus through Devonport. Impurity was the first one I bought on release day, and I've done the same with every one since.
My first gig was Chippenham Goldiggers in Dec 1991. I remember driving back to Plymouth at a snail's pace through thick fog, still amazed at what I'd just seen. Did a few gigs on the Hopeless Causes tour (Leicester, Cambridge off the top of my head). The years after that were kind of wilderness years for the band, I suppose, but in a funny way it's that period between LOHC and SB that really sealed my love for them, and made me reaiise that I was in this for life. It was the excitement of odd one off gigs in out of the way places and the need to get to them that stands out from this time. I remember going to Buckley Tivoli, the SBE Newbury gig a few people have mentioned, somewhere in Hatfield, the Josephs Well gig that was Michael's first, and the Cooperage show (sorry, fatcat)...listening to the songs that'd come out on SB as they made their earliest appearances, knowing even years before the album was finally released that No Pain was one of the best things the band had ever done, hearing Rainy Night 65 for the first time in Buckley, still being amazed to this day that Brother wasn't on the album (but then one of the standout tracks from that first Chippenham show was Knife, so I shouldn't have been surprised).
I was around for a few more gigs on the Eight tour, including a memorable night in Manchester where Justin missed his cue for a verse of Stranger, so Nelson took over. The song finished, and a clearly pissed off Justin announced they were going to play it again - that next rendition had
teeth, ladies and gentlemen. Real life took over for a bit after that as I moved to Dublin for a couple of years, coinciding exactly with the time that NMA didn't play in Ireland, although I did see a cracking Justin & Friends gig in Whelans. Not long after that I went properly overseas, to Japan, with just one show on the Carnival tour under my belt. I think this may be why High is not one of my favourite records - I didn't see any gigs around release, and there weren't a lot of people in my circle out there i could get excited about it with. I kept listening though.
I came back to the UK early last year, and have settled in Bristol for the time being, where I saw the Justin solo show at The Thunderbolt this summer, and made it down to Frome for Tommystock. I'd say the fire has been rekindled, especially off the back of TIAGD being such a good album, but you know what?
It never went out.
