Sussed

I bought the Phases club compilation (“State of Siege”—what a title!) The track by Eat People is “Sussed”—post-punk thrash with Grant’s vocals to good effect. “I read all the right books/you’ve got me sussed” etc. Dad found it amusing.

Grant himself rang, just back from Gloucester. He has a “crap” room with an Asian family who “don’t want him rolling in drunk after midnight” . . .

Nameless voices crying for kindness

I signed on in Farnshaw at twelve and phoned Grant to ask him if he wanted to go for a drink.

While waiting in the dole office I noticed my old English teacher Mr. Giles sitting there—Jeremy told me later that he’s been made redundant after taking secondment for a year. I didn’t get a chance to speak to him.

I met Grant by St. Anne’s and we went for a drink at the Albert Hotel down Moxthorpe Road and had four pints there listening to “Pyjamara,” “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Suffer Little Children” repeatedly on the jukebox—this last song has been banned by some shops because of its Moors Murders subject matter. We went on to the Builder’s Arms (PIL, Hendrix) before walking home to listen to more music - Beefheart and The Fugs second album this time. The latter is an excellent record.

Grant mentioned as an aside that John Peel played a track by the (now defunct) Eat People on his show last night. Grant and the band recorded the track for inclusion on a compilation LP of bands from Phases back in February—he came up from Gloucester to a studio in Whincliffe especially. The LP is out now and John Peel played Eat People’s sole contribution at 11.30 p.m. last night, much to Grant’s surprise, who was listening in bed at the time.

He said it was an odd and slightly embarrassing experience hearing himself singing on national radio; he now thinks the band’s stuff is fairly undistinguished and he agreed with me when I said it sounded very much like the Birthday Party. He even conceded that such was his admiration at one stage he’d made a conscious attempt to sound like Nick Cave. . . .
He left about five. Mum and Dad came back and Dad later told me of his amusement at the way Grant had asked him for a light, with exaggerated politeness and awkward words. Nanna P. was brought across in the evening, and although she was quieter than usual, she was OK. Andrew rang later too. He’s back in the UK after his Denmark trip and is talking about America now.

Human, all too human

Paul Reé: “Having arrived at the insight that the world was ‘meaningless,’ his mind seems to have been paralysed by the idea: it was the end as well as the beginning, of his philosophy. For Reé, the senselessness of existence was a source of despair – for Nietszche it became the ground of freedom.”

The manic scrawl of Friday reveals that I don't have the courage of my convictions, or rather I don't fully appreciate them enough to class them as ‘convictions,’ because I don't live and act in a manner which corresponds with what I say. I “contrive to think and act as if nothing has changed.” But what else can I do? I don't act as though I accept the things I write; these ideas are so many intellectual abstractions.

Nanna B. and Nanna P. are here together today. The latter excels herself, monologuing endlessly to N.B., who staggered into the back room saying breathlessly, “By, can’t she talk!” And talk she did, in a loud strenuous voice that echoed out across the garden and the privets making Mum flinch with embarrassment.

She put Dad in a fix by innocently telling Nanna B. about a trip to Saxton that Nanna P. had made: Dad hadn't told Nanna B. this, afraid as he was that she would spread tales about the untidiness and uncleanliness of Rob and Carol’s house to others. I don’t know why he’s bothered; the fact that he is bothered seems more of an insult to Rob and Carol than anything else. Why should he care what our fuck-up of a family thinks? He's scared stiff of trouble.

In the afternoon, Mum, Dad and the two N.’s went out for a run, getting back about four. Grant rang in the evening and invited me over: I got a lift on to Lodgehill from Uncle Harold who had arrived to ferry Nanna B. home.

Grant was in a better mood. It still hasn’t really sunk in that at long last he’s actually getting away from Easterby. We went for a drink up at the Albion in Ashburn but were driven away by the deadly clientele, so we walked on to Lockley.

The streets were packed with children running, shouting, and riding bicycles, and the doors of the houses were open, people out enjoying the night air, repairing cars, talking . . . No doubting that human beings lived here, the sights and sounds of joyful activities everywhere, unlike the great grey dead cemetery back at Egley. Somehow the sight of all this life made my spirits soar and I felt that something was actually happening.

We reached West Lane and turned down towards the main road, stopping for a drink at the Woodhead Hotel at the top of Gardner Place. We enjoyed sitting outside at the back on a terrace overlooking a small garden and optimistically discussed Grant’s hopeful plans for Gloucester and all the possibilities that might unfold.

He’s not happy with the way his band Eat People is going and the “tameness” he's mentioned before still irritates him. He’s at odds with the bass player (“he wants everything to sound like a cross between Killing Joke and The Birthday Party”) and the “thick” drummer. Grant says he wants to be plunging into other, more diverse things, “real lunatic stuff.” I told him of the cynicism afoot at Watermouth. Art Colleges may be pretentious, but I think I’d prefer that to the stagnant cynicism of Uni. At least things would get done.

We sat gazing out at the now dark garden and trees and I felt wrapped in good spirits & optimism.

We rounded the evening off at the Nirmal curry house up West Lane before wandering back the way we’d come, voices and movement still punctuating the darkness. We passed a church with a towering steeple, a grim crouching chapel and the mirror-flat reservoir above Woodhead Park.

A sickly yellow moon rose behind us.

Eat people

We got up early and struggled to the bus stop with our bags for a cramped ride into Cambridge with a busload of kids and workers. Barry and I hung about near the bus-station until 10.15 when the coach left. Barry slept for most of the journey and we got to Ecclesley shortly after three; there I said goodbye to him and I was back in Easterby by 4.30.

I felt nothing particularly on getting back, none of that “thrill of recognition” I remembered after only six weeks of the first term. Nothing at all. Perhaps I even felt regret, wishing now I’d stayed down in Watermouth for the summer.

I waited for Dad in the station car-park in bright sunshine, conscious of the slightly more hostile nature of the atmosphere ‘up north.’ Soon Dad rolled up; he was just the same. The house was just the same, Mum the same, everything in fact just the same, as if I’d never been away. In one way it was terrible—total stagnation. I don’t think Mum or Dad could understand why I was so quiet. I passed it off as tiredness.

I rang Grant and he was out, but shortly afterwards he rang breathlessly back and said his band Eat People were playing tonight at the Phases club on Canal Parade. I set off at nine, a little to Mum and Dad’s surprise I think. But truth is, I had to find something to do to smother my disappointment and regret.

Phases was fairly small inside, with a bar to the left as I walked in, a smallish stage in front, and a lot of tables and seats round the corner to the right, where Grant and his entourage were camped. He came up to me shortly after I’d paid and talked enthusiastically, his hand over his mouth.

I was introduced to the band: Tim on guitar, drummer Jon, and tall, trendy blond bassist Jimmy. Grant is the vocalist. Nik Gordon was there too, plus assorted girls and silent blokes. The first band on were clones of The Jam—virtually identical songs and style—and they were quite skillful.

Eat People came on next. The long-haired compére in tux and bow-tie introduced them: “I’ve been looking forward to hearing this band for a long time.” And they began.

Grant screamed at the top of his voice, a scream that echoed endlessly instead of dying, and throughout their set his voice had tons of delay on it, so each word echoed at the end; it was quite a good effect. The drummer laid down a heavy rhythm, the bass laid another over this and the grinding guitar added to the Birthday Party-esque roar. Grant dominated the stage with his shrieks and doom-ridden moans (“What are the songs about?” I’d asked him earlier—“About people getting fucked up,” he’d answered).

On stage he stared and squinted manically, occasionally erupting into a jerky thrash. They played for about half-an-hour and got quite a good reception, especially at the end (irony not intended) when there were demands for an encore, and they launched into “Pretty Vacant,” their “token cover-version” as Grant put it, and got cheers and applause from the sparse audience.

The club emptied pretty quickly, but not before I’d spoken with some of Grant’s entourage. One of them, Jenny, was very drunk, and she held Grant’s hand while telling me about her dress-making business which she and another friend have started up on their own. Once we’d been kicked out, she announced that she “hated university students” to which I said “thanks a lot.”

After this I was conscious of my separateness from what Andrew would call the “Easterby alternative set”—I felt like an anachronism with my southern twang and American Literature. We walked back through Lockley, Grant and I in front and Nik and his friend Jackie bringing up the rear. Nik was quite drunk, Grant very tired and pissed off. We ended up at Jackie’s flat in Bavaria Crescent, a huge roomy place compared to our flat in Watermouth, for which she’s only paying £12 a week.

Jackie is 25 and is waiting for the results of ‘A’ levels she’s taken at Easterby College, which is where Grant met her. She often hung her head low, occasionally glancing up at me with dark eyes through her long black hair. She wasn’t very open and seemed to hang on Nik’s every word, curled up at his feet like a cat. We had a bottle of wine and some lethal mixture of spirits and cider and Grant sprawled on the floor gloomily.

I walked the five miles home.