This story is really special! Today, Martin Swinny leads us to the "other side", the place filled with the spontaneity and joy of the moment, just before the lights start to fall onto people. There, music is still a road full of dreams! Some of them sometimes come true..
The Hungry Socks
Once upon a time in a boozer, on a soaking night in Rochdale , the student union entertainments officer for the art college I was at then , mentioned across a table that he had a big student party night coming up and needed a band for it ," did I know of any " ? For some reason (beer) I said " yeah I'll do it with my band " , a stupid thing to say really , because I didn't have a band ,but even more stupid were the words I heard come out of my mouth when he said " great what's your band called " ... " Errrr the hungry socks mate, and we're brilliant "
A few weeks later he reminded me of this and said "your booked.. here's all the flyers ". This , I realised ,may now be a small problem but took the flyers anyway saying " nice one ,no probs " Later that week I mentioned this to some mates on the way down to the Hacienda, and one of them, Clint Boon said" I've got a keyboard and I know a top drummer called Chris Goodwin" . I knew a guitarist (Demo) a sax player (Carl ) and there was a geezer called Andy Mcvittie who played bass in a wild goth band at college who was mad
enough to say "yes" .
So there was now a band, now what? The gig was the week after . We met up in down in Carl's cellar, worked out we knew almost four songs between us and decided to just " blag the rest of the set ...make it up as we went along , the words I didnt know were replaced with noises that sounded a bit like the words might have done "
Maybe it was the rawness and "in ya face... have some of this " of what happened , but we didn't just "get away with it " , we took the roof off that night , yeah we were going to have some more of that .
Working bits out in the cellar we started gigging for a while until Andy had to leave and that looked like the end of that , Chris said " my mate Mani plays bass" (both of them had played in The Waterfront an early version of The Stone roses ). Mani came down to the cellar and that was it, the Socks were back, big time .
Much madness ensued at Socks gigs from then on (both on and off the pitch ) word spread , the live sets were recorded but we never made it into a studio , but that was never really the idea .
Andy Housley replaced Demo on guitar but it always stayed open for us each to do anything else we liked as well. From the Socks, Mani went on to play with The Stone Roses ( making probably the best album of all time ) and is now with Primal Scream. Chris formed The High with Andy Couzens (the Roses guitarist before John Squire) then played with Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr in Electronic and also The Buzzcocks. Clint joined (and had huge tunes) with The Inspiral Carpets and now DJ's at XFM radio . Andy did a record with Craig Gannon (The Smiths second guitarist).Carl went off to toot his sax in San Francisco .
Im solo ( for now) under the name Periscope with a debut album coming out this year but when I think back to that night in that boozer in Rochdale, Im glad I was mashed enough to say "I'll do it " , I don't even mind the stupid band name that came out of my mouth now , loved every moment of that band and every fella in
it .
Sock power and spread the love people x
http://www.myspace.com/periscope2010
http://periscopeuk.webs.com
The Hungry Socks
Once upon a time in a boozer, on a soaking night in Rochdale , the student union entertainments officer for the art college I was at then , mentioned across a table that he had a big student party night coming up and needed a band for it ," did I know of any " ? For some reason (beer) I said " yeah I'll do it with my band " , a stupid thing to say really , because I didn't have a band ,but even more stupid were the words I heard come out of my mouth when he said " great what's your band called " ... " Errrr the hungry socks mate, and we're brilliant "
A few weeks later he reminded me of this and said "your booked.. here's all the flyers ". This , I realised ,may now be a small problem but took the flyers anyway saying " nice one ,no probs " Later that week I mentioned this to some mates on the way down to the Hacienda, and one of them, Clint Boon said" I've got a keyboard and I know a top drummer called Chris Goodwin" . I knew a guitarist (Demo) a sax player (Carl ) and there was a geezer called Andy Mcvittie who played bass in a wild goth band at college who was madenough to say "yes" .
So there was now a band, now what? The gig was the week after . We met up in down in Carl's cellar, worked out we knew almost four songs between us and decided to just " blag the rest of the set ...make it up as we went along , the words I didnt know were replaced with noises that sounded a bit like the words might have done "
Maybe it was the rawness and "in ya face... have some of this " of what happened , but we didn't just "get away with it " , we took the roof off that night , yeah we were going to have some more of that .
Working bits out in the cellar we started gigging for a while until Andy had to leave and that looked like the end of that , Chris said " my mate Mani plays bass" (both of them had played in The Waterfront an early version of The Stone roses ). Mani came down to the cellar and that was it, the Socks were back, big time .Much madness ensued at Socks gigs from then on (both on and off the pitch ) word spread , the live sets were recorded but we never made it into a studio , but that was never really the idea .
Andy Housley replaced Demo on guitar but it always stayed open for us each to do anything else we liked as well. From the Socks, Mani went on to play with The Stone Roses ( making probably the best album of all time ) and is now with Primal Scream. Chris formed The High with Andy Couzens (the Roses guitarist before John Squire) then played with Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr in Electronic and also The Buzzcocks. Clint joined (and had huge tunes) with The Inspiral Carpets and now DJ's at XFM radio . Andy did a record with Craig Gannon (The Smiths second guitarist).Carl went off to toot his sax in San Francisco .
Im solo ( for now) under the name Periscope with a debut album coming out this year but when I think back to that night in that boozer in Rochdale, Im glad I was mashed enough to say "I'll do it " , I don't even mind the stupid band name that came out of my mouth now , loved every moment of that band and every fella in
it .
Sock power and spread the love people x
http://www.myspace.com/periscope2010
http://periscopeuk.webs.com
Relevant article