A Fish Out Of Water

Cath used to compare me to the seagulls. Seagulls, she’d observed, had this trait of moving their heads to the left and then the right, of looking up and then looking down at the ground. There was something comic or endearing in these jerky motions. I was doing it to avoid making eye contact. (Seagulls also stamp their feet rhythmically on the soil to fool worms into thinking it’s raining, so that they will rise up to the surface and then the gulls can eat them. As far as I know, I’ve never done that.)

Cath liked the gulls, where most people didn’t. Even the grown up babies that were big and an ugly brown colour; they’d follow their mothers around ceaselessly, emitting a shrill peeping noise. In Canada, the seagulls were less aggressive and tended to mind their own business. They were polite, because that was the Canadian way.

I didn’t really care for the gulls, but one day I stumbled upon some newborn chicks (Cath coined the term seaglet to refer to the young) upon the roof of a fish warehouse in Newlyn. The roof was level with the rising pavement if you followed the coastal road out from Newlyn to Mousehole, so as pedestrians you got to look down on it. Each year in spring there would be about five or six pairs of gulls that would build their nests there and lay eggs that would hatch around June.

It was a fragile existence and not all the eggs would survive and some chicks might die or get washed away if there were unseasonal storms. But there was something compelling about watching these little critters as they took their first tentative steps in life. Walking gingerly across the ridged roofing or fighting with their siblings for food when one of the parents collected it for them. After a few weeks they’d begin to learn to use their wings. Sometimes, I’d read, one of the parents might push a chick off from a rooftop to encourage it to learn to fly.

Once they got bigger they lost their charm. It wasn’t their fault that people had this inbuilt ideal of what constituted cute and what was deemed ugly. It just happened that way. I don’t know that hours spent watching those baby gulls represented any better use of time than watching a soap opera on TV, but it was just what I did. Until I left Penzance for a place where seagulls were still present, but much more discrete. Almost like their Canadian brethren.

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Cath also compared me to a fish, but that’s not strictly true. I don’t think I ever exhibited any fish like characteristics, it was probably a term of endearment whose origins were lost in the mists of time.

I remember the first gig I went to shortly after I moved to Bristol in the spring of 1995.  I was seeing Orbital perform at the Trinity Centre which was a converted church building (an imposing grade II listed structure). Orbital were two ordinary looking guys (brothers) who performed with head torches that bobbed and weaved in the darkness as they bent over their electronic equipment, twisting knobs and dials to recreate their fluid techno music. It wasn’t much as far as visual spectacle went, but they were at the peak of their powers that year and the music itself was spectacle enough. It was more club vibe than concert and people were either moving to the grooves in thrall to the beats and the bass or they were sat at the sides, chilling out like ravers taking a fag break.

I don’t dance. It’s not guilty feet (as George Michael put it), I just lack that coordination. I lack all the coordination. I also lack confidence (which is what the predictive text wanted me to say). I was in an awkward no-man’s land at the side of the room. Dancers to the left of me, chill out to the right. Stuck in the middle with me.

It was a brilliant concert. I tried to let myself go with the music. I tried my best to imagine no one else could see me. I didn’t fully succeed, but I came away happy. It was the perfect venue for Orbital. A few years later a bunch of us went to see them when they came back to Bristol; this time they were performing at a theatre venue with seats. It was awful. There was nowhere for people to dance, aside from a few hardy souls in the gap in front of the front row of balcony seating. So people stood and swayed awkwardly, constricted by  their upturned seats. Also Orbital were past their best by then, still a good time, but on the decline.

They’d had their moment and they’d been pioneers and produced some amazing music that still brings me pleasure to this day. And I was drawn to their story, two brothers who were obviously close to each other and who had successfully mapped out their own career within the music business. Not so different from me and my brother, really, if you overlooked the successful part.

Also at the Trinity Centre, some years on from seeing Orbital, I got to see Public Enemy. They too were past their best at this point in time, but it didn’t matter. They were still a name to conjure with. A cultural phenomenon. Of course I had to go and see them. I suppose I should’ve been even more of a fish out of water here than I had been with Orbital. But I think the sheer force of Public Enemy’s performance made everything else feel irrelevant. They were mesmerising and they were relentless. I knew of the power and influence of their music and what it meant culturally, but I wasn’t someone who owned every one of their records or who saw them as a cornerstone of my personal interaction with music.

And the concert didn’t change that. I’m more likely to put on Orbital than I am Public Enemy. But that concert was transformative. It was unlike anything else I ever experienced. And of course it’s pointless trying to transcribe that into words here, nearly 30 years after the fact. What I remember is that they played for ages. They performed long into the night. I am the biggest devotee of the mantra less is more – I want my albums to run for 30-35 minutes and I want a live band to play for no more than an hour maximum. But Public Enemy were an exception to that rule. I wanted them to play forever. Everyone in that venue felt the same.

In the end the promoters had to come out and turn up the house lights. They had to turn off the power to all the amplifiers on the stage. And still Public Enemy continued playing until eventually even they had to concede there was no more they could do. I walked home alone (I’d not found anyone to go with, although afterwards my friend Nick said he would’ve gone but he thought seeing Public Enemy might be dangerous – not the band themselves – but the crowd they attracted, victim to some stereotyping that would now seem a pale shadow to what you’ll find online).

I walked home alone, but I was oblivious to my surroundings. Most of me was still inside that converted church, reliving the most religious experience of my life. And with no fear of having to make any confession afterwards.