Paint It Black

Saturday 13th May 1989 - 17 years ago to the day - was, as you can see from the ticket above, the "Last Night of the Venue". The Venue was the local dive-bar-club, frequented by punks/goths/indie kids/students/psychobillies and so on. The music was great, the atmosphere dark and the carpet notoriously sticky. Benny the DJ formed our musical tastes without us realising it. Great bands played - near the demise of the Venue the Pixies played at the height of their "Doolittle" fame. We mourned the closure, 2 weeks before my finals (guess my mind was maybe not quite on those exams). Nothing was ever the same again.

Lately I've been thinking back to these days, partly because I've re-established contact with friends & aquaintances from those old days, and partly because I'm that kinda age. In addition, at the start of the year we went to see Bauhaus and Nick Cave in the space of a week - goth throwback or what? No regrets. Retro is fine if you're not just living in the past....and as well as rediscovering old friends, it's led me to rediscover music I loved way back then.

I'd forgotten just how great Wire were. Benny played "I Am The Fly" and "Outdoor Miner", but with the recent rerelease of much of their catalogue, I've refreshed my interest. Elastica will never pay off their heavy debt for "Connected", from Wire's "Three Girl Samba". It's good to listen to bands from ye olden days with a different perspective.

So let's celebrate times gone by. Let's do the Time Warp again....