On the way we meandered through the pre-grunge-explosion landscape of the late 1980s US alternative scene… taking in the likes of Swans, Black Flag, Dinosaur Jr, Minutemen, Mudhoney, Pavement, REM, SST records et al. and the world of fanzines and mixtapes, obscure 7 inches on tiny labels and word of mouth recommendations.  (Incidentally Godflesh also get a nod via Head of David, Sonic Youth’s label mates on Blast First in the UK).

As he talked, I was transported right back to my pre-internet Uni days where we eagerly gleaned what we could about what was happening on the other side of the pond from a handful of friendly record shop staff, the unholy weekly trinity of The NME/ Melody Maker/ Sounds plus Record Mirror and whatever fanzines we could get our grubby mitts on.

So while rummaging in the vaults I, serendipitously, happened across a copy of ‘Sniffin’ Rock’ fanzine, the cover boasting interviews with Dinosaur Jr., Pussy Galore, and Firehose all of whom had cropped up in Sonic Life. Perfect.

Sniffin Rock was a short-lived music fanzine named, presumably, in homage to Sniffin’ Glue the ‘original punk fanzine’ run by Mark Perry in the late 70’s. Coming out of Brixton the mag was edited by Amel Bendedouche who (according to LinkedIn) worked in music management at ‘Rough Trade and the Fall’ and is now something big in international fundraising… I digress.

Bendedouche put out c.13 issues of Sniffin’ Rock between 1987 and 1990 (exact info is a bit sketchy so this is a best guess from what’s out there).

Issue 8. came out in February 1989, featuring a two-page interview with Robert.

The interviewer (one KRASH KORD of whom the internet has absolutely nothing to say) opens with some indecipherable drivel about Loop being cells under a microscope and sound cells copulating with each other and multiplying according to the holy laws of Mother Music and ends with something about the loop closing on itself in the natural course of existence. Far out, man! Don’t do drugs or go sniffin’ rocks, kids (or if you do, step away from the typewriter).

If you can get past the pseudo-psyche drivel, it’s actually not a bad interview taking in the influence of noise bands (Swans/ Big Black/ Sonic Youth) and the intensity and violence that can come from volume, length, and repetition before moving on to the minimalist influence of Suicide. Have a read…

Anyway, each issue (from issue 3 onwards) of Sniffin’ Rock came with a free single – a flexidisc for the first couple before upgrading to vinyl 7’s for the remainder – featuring among others Alan Vega, African Head Charge, World Domination Enterprises, CrazyHead, Senseless Things, The Fall, The Shamen, Das Damen, Chapterhouse, Sonic Youth and Sp*cemen3. And, of course, Loop.

The free 7” that came with issue 8, featured a ‘previously unreleased’ mix of the Fade Out track ‘Pulse’ backed with tracks from Gaye Bikers on Acid and The Abs.

This mix is different to both the album and Peel sessions versions, featuring a more prominent lead riff that kicks in from the start of the track before the vocals kick in… it also fades out after three and a half minutes, as opposed to the four minutes, 45 seconds of the album version making it distinctly different and definitely worth having for the completists amongst us! It’s probably an alternate mix from the Fade Out sessions.

Also if you pay attention to the label you’ll play it at 33 1/3 RPM, however, the disc is actually cut at 45 RPM, so you get a wonderfully slow, down-tuned sludgy version of the track…

So there you have it… the Sniffin’ Rock/ Pulse 7”.  A hidden gem of a track, well worth hunting down, that sits proudly alongside the noise of Swans, Big Black and Sonic Youth.

I recognised the picture as Ian Astbury in his Southern Death Cult, native American, cultural misappropriation guise (hence the Quantum Leap moment).

But that’s not really important… what is more important is that the chap who had just handed me the magazine was Sam. And Sam was Loop’s merch man.

We’d first met on the Loop/ Godflesh/ World Dom tour and got to know him quite well. He crops up a few times in the archives, always in some dodgy band top, trademark backwards baseball cap and with a huge grin on his face (I have an image of Sam one night in Dublin burned into my retinas… but that’s a story for another day). Sam was, and probably/ hopefully still is, a thoroughly nice bloke. And that’s how I came to be in his house in Hounslow.

Loop had played at the Powerhaus in Islington, London the previous evening as a warm-up for their imminent European Tour. (Supported, trivia fans, by These Immortal Souls, featuring ex-Birthday party guitarist Rowland S. Howard and Epic Soundtracks (Croydon born, late of Swell Maps) on drums.)

The first European date was at the Dunois Theatre in Paris on 28^th so we had a day to kill before heading to Paris and Sam had kindly invited me and my girlfriend to crash with him.

I sat back with a brew and a roll up to peruse the rest of the fanzine, which Sam had gifted me (thanks Sam, saved me a quid!). It was titled Helter Skelter and Sam was the editor… which explained why he had a big box of them in his living room.

I turned back to the front cover which was graced with a black and white Tom Sheehan promotional pic of… Loop… ok, now I’m interested!

Looking back at it today it’s a pretty good interview, (the interviewer Trish Jaega went on to contribute to British music weekly ‘Sounds’ amongst others) covering a lot of ground and going into some quite interesting depth… and concluding with some prescient musings on the future. The mag makes a couple of references to A Gilded Eternity, and the pics are the promo pics used to promote the album, so it’s interesting that the interview doesn’t talk in any detail about the forthcoming release… maybe a timing thing. My guess is that the interview was from the tail end of ’89 before the album was announced and the reference to the album was added in later before going to print…

Sam subsequently sold these off the Loop merch stand on the Gilded Eternity tour, of course, so hopefully there’s still a few out there amongst you Soundheads. Mine survived a quick trip to Europe and back before being squirreled away in the cabinet of curiosities where it’s resided for the past 34 years.

If you’re out there Sam, thanks for your hospitality and generosity, it lives long in the memory (as does that night in Dublin!).

All was bliss until about 2AM when my oldest appeared at the campfire to announce that his brother had just puked all over the tent… too much Haribo and Coke I thought as I trudged across the field to the awaiting catastrophe… sadly I was to be proved wrong as a sickness bug enveloped the camp and by the next day oldest child and I (and multiple friends) were similarly stricken.

I’ll leave it to your imaginations to figure out the next 24 hours… suffice to say it wasn’t pleasant.

So what’s this all got to do with the cabinet of curiosities you may wonder?

Upon returning chez Bolton I came across the programme for the ‘infamous’ Treworgey Tree Festival. This item had come into my possession quite recently (I never had money at the time for such luxuries as programmes back then) from an old friend, tour buddy and all-round damned fine Soundhead.

The Treworgey Tree Festival, near Liskeard Cornwall, had taken place 34 years to the day, previously to our recent ill-fated camping trip and both hadn’t quite worked out as planned, oh, and Mrs. B had also chosen Treworgey to celebrate her birthday… (there it is folks… the tenuous link!).

Back in the late 80’s festivals were still, thankfully, a long way away from the bland corporate sponsored, Insta-friendly affairs we get these days… a culture clash of folk, reggae, acid house, punk, world music and, of course, psyche rock… landing somewhere between the free festivals of the 70’s, the likes of Reading Rocks and the big illegal raves that were popping up around the country. And into that mix came Treworgey…

Flicking through the programme, I was struck by the awful graphics, terrible layout, bizarre writing (check out the Loop and Hypnotics write ups…) but also by the eclectic and mighty line up including The Seers, Thee Hypnotics, and The Darkside alongside festival stalwarts such as Nik Turner, Hawkwind, Ozric Tentacles, the Levellers and Misty In Roots… and – of course – Loop. (I posted some great photos of Loop’s Treworgey performance – taken by my old mate Craig who was drummer for the Darkside – on the Soundheads page a while back)

‘Loop played on the main stage, all I could see was dry ice and heads and guitars…mental trashy psychedelic noise.’ (Bishbosh, Traveller from Coventry)

The hand-designed/ drawn nature of the programme and flyer, the quaint cartoons of ‘the crew’ (all eleven of them) all show what an amateur team were ‘running’ the festival. I couldn’t help but give a wry smile when reading the warnings and advice on a range of subjects… lost kids, sex, drugs (don’t do ‘em folks), alcohol, fires, don’t drop litter etc. and a guide to how to use the toilets to stop them getting blocked.

Unfortunately for the organisers Glastonbury finished three weeks prior and a convoy of travellers descended on the site setting up a free festival… soon followed by up to 40,000 others… the toilets were hopelessly inadequate, and people took to the woods… security were, allegedly, a criminal gang from Bristol that clashed with the travellers… the water supply was infected with a dead sheep, ‘hundreds’ of people were arrested and rumours circulated of at least one death.

It’s been variously described as ‘a shanty town on the edge of some Third World Capital’, ‘like something out of a hellish Hieronymus Bosch painting’, and ‘chaotic, dangerous and anarchic’…

So was it really all that bad?

Well, no, I don’t think so… it was hardly Altamont, it was a ramshackle festival with crap toilets and a bit of ‘edge’. Isn’t that what makes a good festival?

It didn’t rain… and Loop played… so give me Treworgey over Glastonbury any day.

And I wasn’t scraping sick off an inflatable mattress at 2AM so I’ll take that as a win.

I was pondering this state of affairs as I rummaged through the cabinet of curiosities this week and landed on the tickets and set list etc. for the show at Shelly’s Nite Spot on March 3^rd, 1990. This was the Loop, Godflesh, World Dom tour… so a noisy time was had by all. These shows tended to start with Sunburst and end with Be Here Now, which to this day remain two of my favourite Loop tracks, and this was no exception.

I’m guessing not many of us will be familiar with Shelly’s Nite Spot, or Shelly’s Lazerdome as it was also known… it didn’t feature heavily on the ‘guitar band’ touring schedule.  It was however a mainstay of the early 90’s rave scene, being equidistant between Birmingham and Manchester (and benefiting from the drugs-related closure of the Hacienda) and saw the likes of Sasha and Carl Cox DJing there. In fact Sasha was resident DJ there at the time of the Loop gig… it’s other claims to fame (???) include appearing in an episode of the Hitman and Her, and short-lived rave outfit Altern-8 filming a video in the carpark. Anyway I digress.

We were seven or eight dates into the tour (you can tell that it’s some way into the tour as two band members are wearing Godflesh T-Shirts presumably purloined from the merch table) and had acquired a small band of five or six Soundheads plus Jim ‘Foetus’ (not the actual JF obviously)… who was following Godflesh and who we’d met at the previous gig at the Digbeth Irish Centre. Normally we hitched between gigs but with so many of us, hitching was a convoluted affair, so we figured out a (cheap but not very convenient) way of getting to Stoke which involved several local buses. This was one of those ‘seemed like a good idea at the time’ moments but was cold, uncomfortable, and very, very tedious.

Eventually our bus odyssey brought us to the Midland’s city of Stoke-on-Trent and we tracked down the Lazerdome. I’ve looked it up on Google maps and sadly it’s been replaced by Farm Foods. Anyway, we hunkered down in the foyer and after a while Robert appeared and took pity on us with a few cans of Red Stripe which raised the spirits and then put us on the guest list, which raised the spirits further. I managed to swipe a poster (which to this day resides on the wall of my office and still occasionally elicits a wry smile – I love the incongruity of Loop playing a ‘Nite Spot’)… I also swiped the running order and a handful of tickets from the bin!

Those Loop/ Godflesh/ World Dom shows were legendary and epic… what a phenomenal line-up. We really didn’t realise quite how good we’d got it! I’m not sure why it took this long but I think it was at this show that I really got the majestic mutoid mayhem of World Dom… I guess I’d been focused on Loop and Godflesh up till then… but there in the Lazerdome after a day on the buses, WDE got me. Maybe because I’d taken up my position stage-right, just in front of Steve Jameson (RIP) and took his bass pummeling right to the chest… who could resist those dub vibrations?

Anyway… the doors opened at 7:00PM which was at least an hour earlier than usual, with Godflesh taking to the stage at 7:30… World Dom at 8:05 and Loop on at 9:00. B y 10:15 it was all over.

As soon as the band exited stage right and the final notes of Be Here Now were fading, the house lights came on and, ears ringing, blinking like rabbits in the headlights, we were hustled out of the back doors. As we filtered round from the car park, we passed the masses of ravers were queuing to get in. It felt very us and them, ravers and freaks eyeing each other with suspicion. We headed off into the night and left them to it.

What made me smile looking back at this time is seeing all the online posts from the ravers that used to go to Shelly’s talking about the amazing times they had, the friendships they made, the drugs they took and the phenomenal music they got into… so maybe we weren’t so different after all?

Fuck it, course we were – some of my very best and oldest mates are Soundheads I met on the road, and we definitely had the better drugs (when we could get hold of them) and most definitely the better music! (even if it didn’t feature on the Hitman and Her…)