Interchange 2

The Tower had a poetic past. Beat poets Allan Ginsburg and Gregory Corso had read there as well as famed locals such as Tom Pickard and Basil Bunting. The keys seemed to float about and somehow The New Blockaders had got them. They performed there a few times (once with Sir Ashleigh Grove) and organised the Whitehouse/Ramleh/TNB gig there in October 83, scene of the infamous 'riot'. I’ve already given my recollections of that event in As Loud As Possible #1, but you can hear it yourself on the live recording.         Interchange arranged a performance at the Tower for the Threepenny Group, who would later become Metamorphosis. I had come into contact with them via Y magazine, which was produced by group member Matthew Collin. That evening also saw a rare performance by Citipati, a group who were later to become Metgumbnerbone.      I was extremely friendly with A.O.T. and Metgumbnerbone and T.N.B. were often in Newcastle, so we were a pretty tight knit group. I was more socially distant from zoviet*france, but still visited them fairly regularly. They had a lot more to do than us anyway as their exotic record sleeves were all hand-made. For a reason I couldn’t fathom, during the construction of the hardboard (masonite if you live in the US) sleeves for Mohnomishe, the electric saw had been sited at the top of a flight of stairs. The air was full of noise and the sawdust was gently cascading down them like a waterfall. Downstairs in the kitchen were lots of metal bowls containing the newly dyed strings that tied the sleeves together, which were dried in the oven. I believe the piece in Interchange is their first, certainly the only one I am aware of with a prose text by them. I really wanted to do their piece in negative (white text on black) but it never occurred to me to make a photographic negative. Thus I spent a long time with biros and felt tip pens colouring closely around the text. The piece looks strange on this blog because the blacks run edge to edge into my black background.      It must also have been a very early outing for the Coil manifesto. I believe the Interchange item is the first Coil interview, if you can call such a short piece that. I cannot remember when I first came into contact with Geff Rushton (I think I had maybe bought a single issue of his fanzine Stab mental back in the day), but in any case my contact really began in the early days of The Temple Ov Psychick Youth (T.O.P.Y.) as he had probably written to me answering my enquiries about it. I was a short lived member of T.O.P.Y. but never met the London group and it saddened me that it quite rapidly became so much a personality cult, as it seemed to have had so much potential.      After Geff/Sleazy split from P.T.V./T.O.P.Y. we stayed in touch, Coil being infinitely more interesting musically than PTV, but we met only once, at the Chiswick address. Everybody I knew lived in usually rundown, rented flats, so I thought I was in the wrong street as Beverly Road was very nice indeed. I was on time and rang the bell and waited. I rang again. And waited. This process was repeated a number of times. I waited and wondered what was happening. It began to rain. After about an hour a young Temple-ey type of young man opened the door and said that Geff was in, but that his snake had died that day and he was too upset to do an interview and could I come back tomorrow. Somewhat damp around the gills I left. Of course next day Geff was very apologetic and we chatted in what I guess now (I thought nothing of it then) was a spare room, as it was virtually empty and seemed unused. At the end of my visit he kindly gave me various back issues of Stab mental. We corresponded on and off for a few years after that, the ‘off’ eventually becoming permanent.      I have no wonderful story to tell regarding the S.P.K. interview. Leichenshrei was on extremely heavy rotation on all our record players (along with Mohnomishe, and 23 Skidoo’s The Culling Is Coming) so it was natural for me to write and ask about a piece. I sent a list of questions to Graeme who dictated his answers on to cassette. Given that I was less than delicate in my query over Metal Dance it might have been more than I deserved.      The magazine was typed up at a community law centre conveniently located a few minutes walk from my flat. It was open between 10am and 4pm but it was a struggle to get there much before 2pm as I was slowly becoming more nocturnal in my habits. I typed it (with my usually lack of attention to grammar or spelling correction) on A4 and then pasted the cut up sheets onto larger sheets of paper (35 x 25cm) which I then photocopied down to A4 again so I could cram more text in without it being as small as issue 1. It was photocopied in London (on A4) and then side-stapled.      Assiduous readers might notice on page two the Inter 01 compilation tape. At some future point I will post all the paper material from that project, but not the music. In the editorial I say that the next issue “will probably be available Sept/Oct  ’84”, but it was, as usual, late.