Saturday 4 September 2021

Rip Rig and Panic - 18 mins of Commonwealth Institute gig (1983?)

 
Oh man I have never seen this footage before. 
Taking me back to London in the early-mid eighties when I caught this band SO many times live. 
From their first gig billed as The Ex Pop Group at The Planetarium in Kings X to the last one wherever it was. I honestly can't remember. Hardly surprising but I did record a LOT of their shows on my Walkman. Every London gig they played plus others outside the city including an amazing improvisation by Springer on the organ at York Cathedral when they were strolling around town before playing at The Territorial Army Hall, where they had been double booked with Wall of Voodoo. WoV got a wee bit stroppy so RRP played first and then fucked off. 
I hope the person who nicked all those tapes knew exactly what they were getting tho I suspect not 
*Sigh 
+ 
Neneh's dad joins them in Tokyo in 83

(Play full album) Fuck The Shit That Was It to paraphrase their first poster. 
They really were just the most amazing band and so many good times was had though I did nearly get arrested while working for them in Manchester. 
Neneh had been driving the tour van around a car park in the city centre and as Neneh couldn't drive the van basically bunny-hopped around it. Driving off to the venue at some student place I seem to remember they went upstairs and I started to get their instruments together to take into the venue too, when suddenly there was quite an angry knock on the back door and there was one of James Anderton's finest wanting to have a word. 
Now while there was really only one member of the band who smoked grass boy did he smoke a fuck of a lot and I knew that the van stank of grass. Really strongly stank. Anyway I opened the door and watched this  cop's face as he probably got very high just from the waft. 
Yes it was all about Neneh's er 'erratic' driving and was put down as just giving her a driving lesson. 
I have to say I'm surprised they didn't have me arrested for being the world's worst roadie to be honest!
And I still fugn miss Sean
Not that long ago Tessa from The Slits posted that her and Sean's daughter having her own kid meant that Sean would have been a Grandad and that is happening to me in November despite my protestations that I am far too young
Thinking of Sean quite often leads to thinking about this night when Gareth and him invaded the stage at a Birthday Party gig at North London Poly. Photographic evidence turned up in the last year or so...
 
Now why this happened I think was because Mr Cave had expressed his admiration for The Pop Group when first arriving in London but I do seem to remember he didn't think much of How Much Longer...when that album was released. 
Probably and I'm being honest here, it was all a bit agit-prop and at the time I think Cave had other things on his mind than enjoying the underlying heavy funk rhythms of the Pop Group live.  
Anyway that may be where the animosity, and it was very mutual, came from. 
So after this two man invasion (and it was a very polite one, just jumping onto the stage and then sitting on the drum riser and having a wee chat amongst themselves) it got even funnier (tho perhaps Cave remembers this differently)
After the gig it suddenly came to me that I had never seen him so flustered and impotent onstage before. 
Now as fate transpired we all found ourselves in the same underground carriage heading to wherever we were all going on the last train of the night. 
At this point in the story you have to understand that there was a reason why Steve Beresford (anonymously) described Gareth to the NME as someone you sometimes just wanted to put across your knee and give a good slapping to
So being the last train on a Friday night the carriage is jam packed and lo and behold Cave is spotted behind a newspaper trying to ignore the Rip Rig contingent when Gareth creeps up and sets fire to the bottom of the broadsheet newspaper in Cave's hands. 
Oh man I actually still think it was absolutely hilarious but that is probably my inner twenty two year old self smiling. 
My sixty one year old self wonders why didn't Tracy Pew intervene that night onstage or was this during the time of his incarceration back in Australia dating this gig to between February and August 1982?
From the fevered imagination of exilestreet at 20:10

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