A little insight into my world as an slightly confused Canterbury enthusiast…
Just before Christmas, I was contacted by Canterbury scene biographer Aymeric Leroy, who amongst all his other contributions to the genre, regularly provides material from Phil Miller’s archives for posting on the Phil Miller Legacy website. The latest post was another slice of audio from the mid Nineties of Short Wave, the Canterbury ‘supergroup’ of the early Nineties who consisted of Miller, Hugh Hopper, Pip Pyle and Didier Malherbe, performing a blend of largely original compositions for the band.
Aymeric attached three black and white photographs taken by Herm Mew, Phil’s widow and champion of his considerable legacy. All of them are clearly of the band, but the top one, of somewhat lesser quality, contained a mysterious (and almost invisible) fifth figure, silhouetted between Mssrs Miller and Malherbe. Could it be me, he wondered?
The first thing to say is that, if it was, I had no recollection of attending any such gig, never mind posing with several of my heroes, which one would like to think I might have kept in my subconscious. Although I had met Hugh previously when interviewing him at the Going Going/Gong gig at Brixton Fridge in 1990, and was in touch with post with Pip Pyle, I don’t think I’d ever met the latter, and later chats with Phil Miller would not have happened until I helped promote a duo gig with Fred Baker in October 1993. My first interview with Didier Malherbe would have to wait until 1998.
Perhaps, I thought, the photographs were snapshots from Gong 25, in October 1994 which I definitely DID attend, and at which the band performed on both days. I remember writing in my review of the events in Facelift 14 about finding myself at front of stage, alongside other Facelift scribes yawping at this collection of talents, and regarding their performance as being, in many ways, the highlight of the 2 days’ events.
But looking back at a treasured picture of myself at Gong 25 alongside various Canterbury-related luminaries (including Hugh, elder brother Brian, Voiceprint Records head honcho Rob Ayling, guitarist Mark Hewins (later of course, to join Gong), Wyatt biographer Mike King, GAS co-ordinator Jonny Greene and more), the pictures didn’t entirely match up. For Gong 25, Hugh was wearing a unbuttoned lumberjackish shirt which looked similar, but not conclusively the same as the one on the 3 photographs, although as the event lasted for 2 days it could have been taken on a different day there.
On the set of 3 black and white photos, Hugh is holding a copy of Facelift 11 (complete with cover picture of Pip Pyle) – this would have been somewhat out of date by Gong 25, as it was published in September 93 and Gong 25 took place a year later, when the current Facelift issue was no.13. Facelift 11 had also included my review of the Short Wave album (below)
And what about the mysterious silhouetted figure in the black and white photograph – he has short hair (as I did for a brief moment in time in the early Nineties), prominent ears and is of medium height, but appears to have a slightly curlier barnet than the one on the Gong 25 pic. One might question my sanity in not being able to recognize a picture of myself, but a certain amount of faceblindness also tends to blur the issue…
Herm then told me that, although these were certainly her photographs, she hadn’t attended Gong 25, so the 3 photos couldn’t be from that event, but that the band had previously undertaken a short British tour in 1993. Could I maybe have attended a gig then? If so, I certainly couldn’t remember it… Ignoring the most basic of research essentials, i.e. the information in front of oneself, I checked back at Aymeric’s Calyx timeline and looked at the section on Short Wave gigs on 1993. There were British gigs, certainly, but the ones listed: Canterbury, Whitstable, Brentwood and London were ones for sure I had not attended.
A quick cross-check to Hugh Hopper’s own timeline, published in various places when Hugh was alive (and very much the spine for my research for his biography), and a further date popped up: The Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham on 27 November 1993. Could I have attended this and could this be the source of the pictures?
I have to admit to starting to detect a few stirrings of memory here – perhaps I did have a very vague recollection of a Short Wave gig, but I think I had always conflated this with another ‘supergroup’ gig I’d seen around the same time, in this case in Chester for Richard Sinclair’s band RSVP, where he was accompanied by Didier, Pip and guitarist Patrice Meyer in June 1994. That gig has recently popped up online at https://richardsinclairsongs.bandcamp.com/album/telfords-warehouse
If I had attended the Midlands Arts Centre, it would certainly have been with my old gigging partner ‘Long Dave’, as I was without a vehicle between early 1993-99 – but Dave is unfortunately no longer with us to confirm or otherwise. Another cross-check to old issues of Facelift reveals that there is a review of Short Wave in Facelift 12, but it is not written by myself, and it is of the gig in London. Then, looking back on the Gong 25 review in Facelift 14, it mentions that I’d seen the band at the Midlands Arts Centre the previous year. Conclusive proof of my attendance at least? And, of course, if I’d looked a little more closely at Aymeric’s latest Short Wave post, I would see that the gig from which the audio was taken was in fact the one and the same Birmingham gig, where I was in attendance, Hugh would have had his copy of Facelift 11, and I may have been grabbed for (or solicited) a rare photo op.
All of which appears to point towards the picture being me. But will probably only be conclusively confirmed by someone who recognises the bar the band are posing in front of. But this still doesn’t entirely explain why I can remember practically nothing about it! One thing’s for sure – for future interviews for the Hugh Hopper biography and other projects, when I try to forensically extract information from musicians about events that happened up to 60 years ago, I’ll try to be a little more forgiving – memories are a fickle thing…
The Canterbury scene(zine) continued.... 