Photo - Nick Havas & Justin Jones
We worked on new songs in Justin’s bedroom and spent many hours renovating ‘the dairy’ - replacing the old floor boards, bricking up the windows and fireplace and doing our best to soundproof it - we even made a new heavy duty door.
The gig at the village hall passed without much to note: no skinhead gangs or Hells angels, just our friends who came along and gave encouragement. Our home made PA was designed for vocals only so the sound must have been pretty inadequate. We didn’t care, we just wanted to play and none of the places we’d approached that put on live music wanted us.
I went to a lot of jumble sales (charity events, usually in church halls or community centres heavily populated by surprisingly aggressive elderly women) and found suits and coats from the 50’s and 60’s and earlier amongst the chaotic piles of dusty clothes, bed linen and curtain material.
I also saw three of my favourite bands that year which my 1980 pocket diary notes as follows: The Cure (good gig). Joy division (OK). The Slits (OK). I clearly wasn’t given to exaggerated praise at that point in my life.
In September we went into a recording studio for the first time. It was in a house in Malvern and was a somewhat sobering experience as the engineer was clearly unimpressed by our musicianship and uninterested in our music. But we came away with recordings of songs called ‘And also the trees’, ‘Methuselah complex’, ‘Dreamt’ and the Huxley inspired ‘There were no bounds’. We were pleased and excited with how our demo sounded, it didn’t sound like anyone else - and that was most important to us. Personally, I was surprised to hear I had a West Midlands accent and wasn’t sure it suited the music.
We designed a cover for the cassettes, printed them in a darkroom I’d made in a cupboard at home and started sending them out to people… I’m not sure who we sent them to or what we thought would happen - but what did happen was quite unexpected and changed our lives.