Dreaming
in Public:
some
thoughts on my favourite venue
(Maverick. Benign. Smelly. These words and more could describe the Adelphi.
Dark. Neglected. Loved. Taking the piss. )
I arrived in Hull in 2001 a young fanzine writer, used to the support of my home county’s music network and to regular London gigs. I was worried what this city out on one of England’s more vestigial limbs might have to offer in the way of live music. Why, I’d heard previous students phone Steve Lamacq’s Evening Session in consternation at the local lack of band action! Was there nothing to tempt those tours to stop here? Was there nothing here for me but to study and drink? I had already come across Hull’s finest Fonda 500 and they’d encouraged me to visit the place, but since their interview was as full of nonsense as their sets I wasn’t sure I could trust them…
In one of Hull’s offbeat musical corners (Offbeat Records, actually) my eye was caught by grainy posters. Up-and-coming and underground names were announced modestly on these photocopies. And the next gig in the diary? Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine!
This was a band who’d split about five years before, but came back presumably because they liked the place, not because they could now play nowhere bigger. So one night I left other freshers to their pre-club party, going in search of this off-the-map ‘Music Capital of Hull’: past all the dead houses on Beverley Road, past a pub that looked like a train, past a pineapple shop or somesuch, down a very dark street and feeling strange… and there was a shining ‘A’ on the front of a house. ‘So it really is a house!’ I thought as I wandered in, and paid my money to an aptly unkempt youth on the door. He asked me if I’d heard much about the local bands; one he mentioned, I’d read of in an old fanzine from Driffield. The Edible 5 Ft Smiths sounded “interesting,” I thought… they were Matt’s own band of course.
Hardly an auspicious start to city gig-going: a reunion tour for sometime smash hits, and hardly anyone there. “Has everyone moved away from Hull?” asked Fruitbat, inviting the meagre audience to join his buddies at the front of the stage. On obliging, one pointed at me, “he’s from Hull!”
The Adelphi never seemed as well-attended as it should’ve been… it never seemed right when I got there early and there was no music on, or when I might get there late and the place was packed. I would, in fact, always walk in at roughly the same time, but attendance of others would vary greatly. The audience tended to float, and was often reluctant to dance, save a few drunken arses in front of the stage. Each kind of night would bring its own fans, to be spotted bobbing at a sweaty rock gig, or illuminated by candlelight on a still acoustic evening. There’d also be a diehard few who’d almost always be there. In fact, many of them worked in the venue…
Over three years I guess I become one of those regulars, though the Adelphi never became less stranger (in a strange land...). I’d go there to meet friends and hear its long-standing history, and always ask what was playing while we talked. After a few weeks I realised it was pointless to stand in the corridor trying to sell my fanzine to my fellow badge-wearing indie ‘kids’, since every potential customer had seen it already (at least in London there’s a choice of venues to stand outside in vain). I later had some zines stocked behind the bar: none seemed to sell, but last time I was in, the poster was still there. At least there was plenty to write about.
I would miss not seeing a random support every gig, but would be happy to see local bands both modest enough to play reliable warm-up and able to headline superbly in their own right; roll on a Rock Family Tree for the likes of Harvey Half Devoured and the rest of this incestuous scene. Isolation might breed individuality, but creativity thrives on a place like the Adelphi; a new band needs such encouragement. Youth plays guitar. Stops to blow nose. Asks the promoter how long he has left on stage, and the answer is “as long as you like!”
Was there ever another venue that had such scope, and only in the space of a week? Hull’s potential crowd was maybe split between choice of touring acts and local talent, both of a type I’d never have seen somewhere else. Even on the one bill would be startling combinations: the shy songstress put between two punk bands and managing perfectly, or the cutting-edge magazine ed shouting “I want to fuck Vincent Gallo!” before a trad-jazz band. Where else might you see couples waltz in time to space-rock epics; or have laid on a teatime buffet when a psychedelic touring band double-booked one night and had to play in the afternoon; and who would give a slot on what would be an average acoustic night to a band playing half-instrumental comedy-metal, their leather keks and bad-taste jokes affronting an audience and its parents?
Whether I was nodding my head to the shiny guitars of the latest little experimental indie band, being pleasantly confused by phonic art more used to art galleries, or doing my best to rave while a man advertised “Balkan genius” by one of those handwritten flyers sent beats and pieces zapping out of his laptop, the quality of the Adelphi’s “anything goes” approach would always leave me slightly dazed; the lights flash for last orders and bewilder the visitors, while ‘Jacko’ spins a Fonda CD and stands above the bar, as if surveying with pride the metaphorical wreckage of the night. It was all good, and necessary.
What fools said there was nothing on in Hull? Three years later and old Steve Lamacq, on his Saturday afternoon Radio 6 show, asks Age of Jets about the Adelphi. A shame he never interviewed Kid Samson, or the Edibles. They could, as Fonda 500 did me, have told him and his listeners where to go.
Al Maceachern,
August 04
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