my life as a artist
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and the wind cries trevor
Thursday 17th January 2008 10:52 PM
I've just come back from the printers, having made the definitive copy of a freshly-minted poster for my up-coming gig at the Church House in Kirkbymoorside. The gig will feature myself, RORY MOTION, and two chanteuse, Em and B, who go out under the name of 'The Chanterelles'. I'm a bit worried that with my name being in an erect, no-nonsense, bold, firm, manly font and theirs being in a squealing, cissy, fussy, girly one, I'm going to be accused of gender stereotyping. In my heart of hearts, which is somewhere near my liver, I suspect this is true, but if I'm accused of it, I'll deny it.
The last time I played a gig at the Church House in Kirkbymoorside, was in the short, cold summer of '75, as lead ocarina player in 'The Trevor Smailsnaith Experience'. It was the year before punk tilted the music world on its axis, and rock dinosaurs like Trevor still roamed the earth. We had a lead guitarist called Eric, who used to play solos that were so long, that sometimes we had to leave him at the gig, and come back and pick him up the next morning .
Trevor, whose real name was Jet Cougar, was born in Wombleton, just down the road, so we used to play the gig at least once a month. Afterwards, we'd always stay at Mr and Mrs Cougar's house, which was a real treat after the endless nights of lonely hotel rooms. In those days, when a band went back to a hotel room, they'd usually drink and take drugs and smash it up, whereas with Trevor, we'd go back with a small tin of magnolia paint, some polyfilla and sandpaper, then drink and take drugs, and redecorate it. I believe to this day that Eric could have really made it as a plasterer.
In 1968, after the success of Trevor's first release, a psychedelic, sci-fi concept album called 'Aliens played with my willie', Trevor Smailsnaith's name became synonymous with the outpouring of hippy love-energy that was flooding North Yorkshire at the time. Despite trying to seal the doors of perception with the sand-bags of ignorance, this flood of love-energy was so deep and widespread, that many people's carpets were completely ruined.
I joined the band in 1973, by which time, unfortunately, the floodwaters of love-energy had long since receded, and been replaced with occasional damp patches of affection, mere fungal memories of love, causing unsightly stains on the dry cellar walls of indifference. In 1970, the creative harmony of the Experience had begun to suffer, following Trevor's increasing involvement with a Japanese conceptual artist from Oswaldkirk, called Betty. The following year, much against the wishes of the rest of the band, Betty took up the ocarina and became the fifth member of the Trevor Smailsnaith Experience.
During the pitiably brief, damp summer of '72, and after the dismal flop of Trevor's third album, 'Electric Dung', tensions within the band, and between Trevor and Betty, had reached breaking point. In August of that year, after Betty had discovered Trevor blocking up the holes in her ocarina, with pieces of recently invented blue-tack, she walked out on both Trevor and the band, and moved to Harrogate, where, rumour has it, she opened a tea-shop.
Despite the prevailing negative atmosphere of the times, my memories of that last Kirkbymoorside gig are good ones. I like to think that when the daffodils of Farndale are nodding their heads, it's not the wind that moves them, but it's rather that they're in the gentle mosh-pit of a spring gig, quietly digging the insistent rhythms of love-energy that still reverberate from that long, cold, hot August night in Kirkbymoorside, way back in '75.
Soon afterwards, tired of being a fading love-avatar for a generation, Trevor changed his name back to Jet, moved back in with Mr and Mrs Cougar, and got a job at the Malton bacon factory. I'm hoping he might come to the gig, if he's not working shifts.
Comments
Wish I could be for the gig - rock on Rory! (and the validation word is "attend")
Posted by Hippy in the Horn , on Sunday 20th January 2008, 4:38 PM
Hahahaha!
That was a long one Rory - but I suppose all the girls tell you that?
Rather amazingly, the validation word today is 'comedy'!!!!
Posted by Steve , on Saturday 19th January 2008, 9:48 AM
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