From boats to bogs to B-wing, journo and music writer Phil Ascough has witnessed bands in very odd spots. Here, he recalls just a few.
It’s festival time, with Humber Street Sesh again hitting the high notes last weekend and Freedom Festival soon to follow – between them bringing an array of belting live entertainment to some of the more unlikely venues in and around Hull city centre.
Sesh takes over car parks and crams stages into the quieter corners of the Fruit Market. Freedom will take performances into the galleries and theatres as well as spilling into the streets, playing to the potential of our fantastic public squares and gardens.
I recall spending a large chunk of a Freedom Festival Saturday afternoon in 2013 watching two plays in a garden shed in Queen Victoria Square. The memory set me thinking about the most unusual places I’ve seen a band and, in Hull alone, there are quite a few.
On a church, as it was at the time, on the deck of a ship, in a public loo, and even in Hull Prison. Somewhere there’ll be a clever creative who can add to that list.
The gigs which turned city centre landmarks into makeshift stages were the work of HullBID as part of the build-up to Hull Trinity Festival in 2014.
The centrepiece for the festival was Hull Minster, back in the days when it was Holy Trinity Church. Friday night featured performers including Jody McKenna and Emma Fee inside the building. Saturday’s line-up included Life and Black Delta Movement in Trinity Square, and on Sunday the same stage hosted headliners Toploader, The Talks and Pearl’s Cab Ride among others.
But it was the programme of promotional gigs a week or so before the festival that caught the imagination. Grimsby band Young Jack did a short set on the deck of the Spurn Lightship at its berth in Hull marina. Bud Sugar climbed to the top of the church and a played a few songs on the roof.
Somehow all the members of the Hillbilly Troupe and their sizeable entourage managed to squeeze into the public loos under King Billy’s statue for their show, but they suffered no ill effects from getting up close with the cubicles and urinals.
But my favourite venue off the beaten track remains Hull Prison, for the story behind it and the incredible impact it had on the audience. It was back in 1990 and I was working in Bermuda and had returned to Hull for Christmas eager to catch up on that year’s rising stars of the Adelphi.
Paul Jackson, who knew a great band when he heard one and was never given to hype, had sent me a demo cassette by Tombstone Graffiti. I’ve still got it. Six songs, a bit fuzzy on the old Sony Walkman but, to borrow from the opening track on their Eat Yourself Whole album, a revelation.
By the time I saw them at the Adelphi they’d changed their name to Kingmaker and were working towards that debut album. But they only played four songs, I asked where I could see them again and they said the only gig before I was due to fly off would be in Hull Prison.
I “broke in” by volunteering as a roadie for Looking for Adam, the support band which featured Curiosity supremo Dave Lee on drums. I also submitted a review to the Yorkshire Post where, in a spell of more than six years before heading to Bermuda, my journalistic duties had included writing rock and pop columns, with a strong focus on the Adelphi and its wealth of wonderful local and touring bands.
The paper duly published the piece on its reviews page, the 10 paragraphs appearing under the “Hull Prison” heading alongside reports from highbrow theatres in Leeds and York.
The gig took place in the young offenders unit with the bands being met by an audience which was simultaneously sullen, stroppy and lairy. Having served their apprenticeships at the Adelphi and far less illustrious establishments, both bands knew the ropes.
The details have faded into the dim and distant past but, according to the review, Looking for Adam won the crowd over by giving away copies of their new single, Sal Paradise. Kingmaker chatted easily with the young inmates and accompanied one of their number through an impromptu rap. It was said there would be a booking waiting for him at the Adelphi on release.
The review concluded: “More bands are being lined up but there are no plans to bring comedians to a place which has enough of its own. Asked by Looking for Adam if they had any questions, one prisoner replied: ‘Can you smuggle me out in that big speaker?’”
Phil Ascough