Timepiece
was the place to go once upon a time, on Thursday nights.
It was
a fascinating place. Pub area downstairs full of signs and gadgets
and geegaws, and a club area upstairs to blast your ears off and
strobe burn your retinas. Thursday night was the “Indie Night”,
the “Alternative” alternative to the cheese elsewhere in the city
for the sporty types to dance to. By now starting to manifest the
illness that would blight me over the next few years, I would always
take any chance for distraction, get drunk, go, and get drunker.
I could
in those days.
The
interesting thing about Timepiece on Thursday was that it wasn't a
University dominated scene, the art college folk and non students
would go, revelling in the fact that loud and gobshitey Rugby boors
were not present. The weekends offered “Angel Dust – Harsh Lights
and 20th Century Alienation” but I only went once. I was
alienated by the fact that there was only three people there. No,
Thursday was my Timepiece night.
I
didn't fit in. Not at all. I was a shoegazier kid, with hair on the
relatively short - if Eraserheady – side. This was an Industrial
slash Metal night, with people to match. The boys I don't remember,
apart from lots of dyed black hair, but the girls were 11 hole Docs,
stripey tights (purple and green, or black and green) and leather
skirts. Diaphanous black blouses. I wanted to call them goths, but
never did, goth was an un-word in the early 90s, the scene had died
the moment Tony James had joined the Sisters of Mercy.
No,
this was the Industrial Age, the Molten Metal future, a future of
piercings and heavyweight jewellery and paraboots, rank dreads and
Mad Dog 20 20. The music told us that, it made your fillings fall out
and liquified your kidney stones while your irises leaked their
colour onto the sticky floor. Butthole Surfers, Revolting Cocks,
Ministry...later on Les Claypool and his Primus bassoodlings would
emerge.
Only it
wasn't. The Industrial music beloved of the Timepiece crowd was
“Cotton Eye Joe” in leather waistcoats, Rednex with skeleton
draped microphones. The obsession of the music was a lavatorial one
with one horse town America, hot rods, race cars, and outwardly het
as anything men getting all Tom of Finland with each other. It was a
primitive racket, leading not to a world covered in steel and
glittering towers of industry, but of dustbowl primitives skinning
lizards in an unforgiving heat.
Powerful?
Yes, as hell! Fantastic music. But it was taking us backwards, not
forwards. Thank god for Trent Reznor.
Copyright Bloody Mulberry 15.01.14
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