THE DAINTEES Froebel College, Roehampton 23rd March 1985

Palpable malice at a DAINTEES gig?  Surely not… Well yes… More later…

It is fair to say the gig the previous night at the University of London was the best THE DAINTEES had been in ages.. I propose mainly due to the fact that man mountain, bad joke collector & part time punk, TOY DOLL, Marty Yule was back on tub-thumping duties.. Ricardo in his book “The Song Of THe Soul” (available in all good bookshops & certainly by now some shite ones as well..) reproduced part of letter I wrote to him about the ULU gig.. But he didn’t really mention the gig the following night… He did mention it but I cocked him up as I think I stuck the wrong date on the ULU tape I sent him… The ULU gig was the Friday 22nd March 1985, (not February).  The Froebel College gig was the following night..

At the ULU gig Keith Armstrong all round good egg & KITCHENWARE CEO offered to put me & my learned friend on the list for the Froebel College gig the following night.. The conversation with my learned friend went thus.. Armstrong ”I have no idea where its is.. Have you got an A to Z or something?” My Learned Friend “No but SMITHS will..” Armstrong ”Huh?..” My Learned Friend “SMITHS… WH”  Armstrong ”Oh right.. I thought you meant THE SMITHS….”    I like to think that MORRISSEY & MARR in there spare time would happily give directions to forlorn pop kids trying to find little known Colleges in the capitals suburbs, rather than thinking “Armstrong you pissed cock…”

So the next day we found Froebel College in Roehampton which was somewhere between Richmond Park & Wimbledon Common.. When we did get there, we were greeted by Armstrong who (with great enthusiasm I might add) advised that THE DAINTEES were due on at half past eleven / quarter to twelve.. The exact time that we had calculated that we would have to leave to get the trains home.. But we thought bollocks to it, & managed to negotiate with Marty that we if we couldn’t crash with the band they would at least give as a lift back to the station.. More later…

Now the gig was some kind of Wankers Ball or something, with the lasses in smart party dresses & the lads in Tux… Me & My Learned Friend after the previous nights frolics stood out like sore thumbs as we looked at best Big Issue Sales Operatives or at worst (or best) the guys who knew where the good drugs where at… I felt we both had the air of Keith Moon’s Uncle Ernie from Tommy… But we where on the list.. Ha!  Fiddle about, fiddle about!!!

So the band came on… The late start allowed them to get through their entire rider before they went on… Or as I like to think, just topping themselves up from the night before.  Now, I didn’t find out until half way through the gig that this part of the college was the theological part.. Martin slightly inebriated (OK.. Pissed) just has he came on stage made reference to the “New Messiahs..” a reference to a PREFAB SPROUT interview.. So as THE DAINTEES came on they were met with sporadic behind the grassy knoll “fuck off” heckles, which Martin continued with “God Bless You!. The Messiah will come again…”  Thus started a gig of pure attrition.. Where we found; that the time to tune a guitar vs alcohol intake is exponential… By song two nothing was really in tune (punk rock), PTI’s for illegally parked cars, a ten minute version of “Hypocrite” just to appease the chap who kept shouting “put a record on..” but the thing I will remember more than anything else is the version of “Louie’s”.. Not a spectacular version by any means but as the gig was in a old sports hall, John & Anth had managed to find a couple of mini trimpets & proceeded to play most of the song bouncing up & down on them (“This one is for the Bouncers..”)  You can’t tell from the recording but I assure you they where bouncing up down (not necessarily in time) most of the song.. I think that the announcement at the end that “the keys to a certain member of staff’s van have been stolen….”  kinda put the gig into prospective…

Now we carried on drinking & chatting only to find that the band had disappeared so our agreement with Marty or as he was known for the rest of the evening ‘That lying Geordie bollock..’ had been a waste of time.. So we where desperately looking for somewhere to kip the night.. We found what looked like a commune area.. We might get away with it.. We didn’t.. We were found out by a rather delightful young lady who explained that we had managed to ‘wander’ into an all girls dorm.. We explained our predicament, I may have offered to drag up if would help.. It wasn’t necessary.  She agreed to not let on but we had to get out at sparrow fart.. We did.  The other funny thing was on walking through the woods (I think it was part of Wimbledon Common) in the early hours of Sunday morning… We came up against a windmill… I had a Don Quixote moment.. “Charrrrrrggge!!!!”  As I speed towards the windmill I was confronted by a little old lady picking up her milk at the base of the windmill, who had an expression of some concern.. I made a Wile E Coyote skidding stop.. Nodding profusely as I slowly back tracked “Sorry… Sorry..” this was combined with my Learned Friend bellowing in the distance “Davey, it’s half past six.. You twat!!” (Correct on both points..)   We did get back sometime in the afternoon… & rest…