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From
1985 to 1994 I played electric fiddle in manic Brighton folk-punk band Tricks
Upon Travellers (TUT). The lineup varied,
but Graeme Hobbs
was
always the vocalist, and Dick
Langford
the guitarist, and me. Sometimes we were a full seven-piece band (e.g.
with Dulles Foster
on
drums, Martin Sharpe also on guitar, Mike Skinner on bass, and Jules
Lawrence on sax and flute) while
at other times
we gigged with drum and bass machines ("the perfect blend of
sweat and
technology", as Graeme once put it). Our songs (almost all by Graeme
and
Dick), had titles like "Jelly", "Another Zombie Bloodbath", "Invasion
of the Slug Creatures", etc.
Tricks Upon Travellers
was a great name: and we mostly sounded pretty good (one c. 1991 review
in Rock'n'Reel
described TUT as having a "... varied musical
background helping them create a clever mix of sound"). And the band
was a lot
of fun to be in (if
somewhat
argumentative at times).
And we did lots of gigs,
scattered across the
southern half of England. Ones that stand out (in my memory at least)
were:
- those that we did at the Old Vic in Brighton. A
grotty dive, but good for seeing bands on virtually every night of the
week, despite the poor acoustics. I
also worked there for a
while, cleaning. Angie (who also worked there as a barmaid) once found
a
nest of maggots among the "clean"
glasses above the bar, I recall.
- our first gigs in Oxfordshire, one at the Lampet Arms
in
Tadmarton, but especially the one at the Mill Arts Centre in Banbury on
31st
May
1986. (Why that one? Because that was the last time I saw Joanna Davies
- though all we said was "Hello" - before we met again in September
2003. In the early 1980s, we had shared the bill at a couple
of gigs: Jo then being half of an acoustic duo named JoCa with her
friend Cathie Hattam.)
TUT returned to the area in September 1986, and
again in August
1987 when
the floor of part of the bar of the Lampet Arms collapsed while we were
playing. The audience continued to dance after we put a table over the
hole.
- not exactly a gig, but it was very nice to play jigs
on a summer's evening while
dibbling my feet in the water of Graeme's sister's swimming
pool, in Kemptown (part of Brighton).
- the gig in November 1987, my first after breaking my
left wrist (on my birthday, 27th August, when I
fell through the sofa
in the back of the TUT van, on my way to a group practice). It was
quite painful. But I was just
relieved that I could still play the fiddle at all.
- the ones in Gosport, with its strong naval presence,
playing "Rose of England" (see below) which was about the Falklands
War. Was this wise, with all those squaddies about? The Gosport
Festival in July 1994 was one of my last gigs with TUT. At the time, I
was living in Oxford and catching trains to join the rest of the band
at gigs... not very sustainable...
At
the same time as being in TUT, I did many
PA
hires together with friend Angie (as Vamphire: great
name, Ange!). I shall never forget all those evening
treks around 1986-7 in a battered
van from Brighton to the
Black Horse in Camden Town, London, getting back at 3am, ready for work
the next morning... No wonder I took so long to finish my PhD thesis!
TUT
continued
with
a different fiddler after I left the band. And the name
lives still! Dick Langford started TUT2,
and the original name is now used by another band.
Here
are some mp3 files from
recordings made with the full-band version of TUT, with me on fiddle.
- Party
Politics (3.5 MB: Favis-Mortlock/TUT). The tune to this
anti-election diatribe is derived from a Macedonian dance, which I
learned from whistle-playing philosopher Peter
King.
- Rose of
England (4.1 MB: Hobbs/Favis-Mortlock). Graeme
Hobbs and myself wrote this about Margaret Thatcher and the
Falklands War.
- Bring
Me the Head of Cilla Black (3.5 MB: TUT). We often used to
finish the first half of our set with this melange of a stomper.
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