Radio #002: 60ft Dolls in Manchester
One of the greatest - if not *the* greatest - gig I've ever seen.
The demo was so good I drove my mum’s Fiesta into a hedge just outside Rhydymwyn. I lost it on the straight bit into the Hendre bends while Yellow Candles seethed around me.
They were everything I wanted to be: Husker Du, The Jam, Otis Redding, The Clash. But in Welsh accents. Combustible, liquid and feral. An Usk-spawned Dinosaur Jnr with a heart on sleeve ferocity that liquidised their contemporaries at a thousand paces.
That’s what I was thinking as my mum’s bumper kissed the hawthorn. She never did notice the scratches on her spoiler. Sorry mum.
What Newport had that made 60ft Dolls (and Dub War, Novocaine, The Five Darrens) burn was grit and soul. If I bemoan the loss of anything in music over the last 30 years, it’s the lack of access for working class kids. Trust funds have supplanted dole cheques as an enabler for musically inclined souls, judging by (many) festival line-ups, playlists and label signings.
I don’t know whether 60ft Dolls were working class kids, to be honest… Carl’s dad, Ray, was one of the UK’s most revered and successful preachers. He had God on his side and in his bank account, no doubt. Mike and Richard might have come from humbler backgrounds. They certainly sounded like they had beautiful chips on their shoulders. They were authentic to me. The authenticity - an intelligent passion - an intoxicating stew of punk, kitchen sink drama, pavement politics and classic tunes, was irresistible. It still is, even if it was never - to my mind - captured successfully by their studio recordings.*
They sounded like they were trying to escape a beating outside the chippy on a Friday night at kicking out time… relying on wit, elusiveness, charisma, and enough street knowledge to disarm pisshead psychopaths. Kids with well-worn library cards avoiding getting their faces smashed in for being a bit different. I could relate to that.
They had passion and soul and were something worth believing in.
Too much music in 2023 arrives like a job application. That first Dolls demo arrived like a punch from a fist-shaped heart. Whatever other people had been hearing in Nirvana, I heard in them.
60ft Dolls could - and should - have been so much more than a footnote to Britpop. Whereas someone like Menswear were an identikit caricature, stuck together from third-hand tropes and Camden haircuts, 60ft Dolls had a unique alchemy. They were musically feral, transcending the moment and distinguishing themselves from their lesser contemporaries through intensity and molten ability.
They had magma bursting through the fissures in their music and those recordings still sound vital now, even taking into account my small misgiving shared above, that those recordings didn’t touch the sides of their live sets.
In The City was a music seminar based in Manchester that was modelled on something that used to happen annually in New York City**. Tony Wilson doing what Tony Wilson did best, enabling and evangelising, connecting people together.
It also had a punk ethos. I don’t remember any VIP laminates and it hid its business intentions very well. Unlike other similar events that have happened in its wake In The City felt like an event people attended because they were genuinely keen to hear something that might change their world. I didn’t once get the sense that I met get roped into a team building exercise if I stood still for too long and happened to be wearing the right, over-sized laminate.
It might have been the first event of note we visited as a nascent radio programme. My memory tells me that it would have been the autumn / winter of 1993***… and I’ll take the analogue imprecision of my memory over Google-sponsored accuracy.
Sometimes it’s righter to be a bit wrong, right?
My producer - Jane Morris - was great at knowing where we should be. She loved music and also knew how to make friends for us. And she had an ambition for the early years of our show that boggles me now, in retrospect.
I interviewed most artists of note from that period, all because of Jane’s vision and tenacity. I would not have been on radio if it hadn’t been for Jane, wouldn’t have met or spoken to any of the amazing artists I did if it hadn’t been for her.
More on Jane, no doubt, in due course.
“Nice shirt,” said the South Walean De Niro in the toilets of The Flea and Firkin in Manchester.
I say ‘South Walean’ as if it’s a generic accent. The Newport accent is as distinct as the Scouse accent. Must be something to do with ports and pride.
What I liked - and recognised immediately - about Richard Parfitt was that he was obviously singing in his talking accent. I have only realised the value of that latterly. It’s a pre-requisite - surely - for soul? I bet Otis talked like he sang, or Bob Marley, Patti Smith, Joe Strummer. Well, Rich too.
He also had an anxious energy to him. He never seemed comfortable. The few times I saw him in the pub he’d disappear without a goodbye. I don’t think it was just me. On stage he’d sometimes miss a cue for the start of a line because he was cleaning something off the top of his amp. Focus on the small things and the ludicrousness of the theatre of it all mightn’t overwhelm. There was something volcanic in the way Richard played and sang. Perhaps the tics released some of the pressure so he wouldn’t go full Krakatoa.
I’ve never seen a band so on the verge of collapse as The Dolls. Every song had chaos being chased and pinned down at its sonic heart.
My focus has been on Richard so far, but The Dolls’ greatest strength was the ensemble. If a verse, a chorus, a riff was about to escape Richard’s fingertips or larynx, Carl would nail it down with a perfectly executed clatter of Moon-lit power and mischief. Or Mike would charm escaping parts of the song with a grin, lull them into supine surrender, and then clobber insensible with something genius in the lower frequencies.
Every song was like this: something feral being trapped, then let out on just enough leash to thrill us and them, before being yanked back… or lost into the ether.
I remember the highlights even now: opening instrumental ‘Pisfunk’ drew everyone in from its splintered feedback-strewn howls. I recognised ‘Yellow Candles’, ‘Happy Shopper’ and ‘London Breeds’’ fusillade of chords and antipathy towards the industry in front of whom it was being hurled in grenades.
John Harris - NME journalist at the time, now one of the UK’s foremost political commentators - was nodding his head furiously next to me. As things on stage erupted through White Knuckle Ride’s maelstrom of abused strings, shattered drumsticks and febrile noise, we were left breathless with excitement.
I never saw anything quite like that performance in Manchester, even from them. Never saw a band whose tensions were writ so clear: Richard’s Jeff Beck J Mascis fever wrestling with Mike’s indie pop sensibilities, and Carl going full-on Animal in the background.
It was inevitable they couldn’t last. Not so much a case of trying to keep lightning in a bottle as an entire fucking storm.
Whatever Britpop was, they weren’t. They were MC5 to Blur and Oasis’ Dave Clark Five. If that gig had been their debut album their legend would be far better and far more widely known.
I still get goosebumps about that gig. Goosebumps about what could - and should - have been.
* Important to underline that I absolutely love all of their recorded work. But this live set - in particular - was something other and above almost anything I’ve witnessed before or since.
** The New York Music Seminar
*** 1994
corrections courtesy - and courteously offered - by Huw Williams.