No Night Sweats N o  N i g h t  S w e a t s No Night Sweats
Sydney's Post-Punk Bands
I Like Music
Slapp Happy are Terrific
A List of CDs
Text is What I Write
Crime Fiction is Silly
[ Let's Go To The East Side Where People Are Many ]
 
The afternoon was oppressively hot and sticky - one of those ordinairy early Summer days where waves of heat from the inland bash into a tide of moisture on the coast. We weren't ready for it - we never were. Matters weren't helped by the atmosphere of dread and loathing that pervaded one of the crumbiest house I'd ever been in (it was even worse that my own parental home and that was saying a lot). Tension, a lingering argument or three and weird looks from Mum to daughter. In other words, the usual stuff. This was the first time that I'd been in the place and it wouldn't be my last but I wanted desperately to get on and do what we were all there to do and then get out as quickly as possible. 

So we crowded around the small, scratched laminated table with the various bits and pieces and, actually, had a good laugh about something or other before we started - in those days we laughed quite a lot together. There were about 4 different tasks to get the job done and we rotated them so that we wouldn't get too bored : fold and paste the covers; cut out the pictures; paste the pictures onto the covers, fold the insert and put it and the object of our affection into the covers. It was a truely DIY project and we were doing it ourselves : the first (and only) double A-sided 7" single by the first band that I was ever in : Voigt/465 - "State" b/w "A Secret West". There were about 550 of these to make and we didn't get them all done in this session. I suppose the rest were made at other times, in other homes, at other kitchen tables but none have stuck, even partially, in my memory as much this first occasion. 

As the afternoon wore on and we became stickier and stickier from the humidity and the glue, we started to become as one with the house around us : full of blather and vengeance, projecting the worst onto others and so on. Until, finally, we all raised our hands and said that we'd made enough for one day. I was particularly glad to get out of that house (there were rumours of a fundamentalist Christian dad - but I never saw him) and was also glad to be rid of my friends for the evening. I went home and played the record for about the millionth time because it really did mean a lot to me. 

I loved it and, to a certain extent, still do. But my-oh-my, we loved the whole process of being an underground / psychedelic / punky / arty / proggy / hip / (Kraut) rock band.
 
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