Bingo finishes at twenty-five past nine...

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

What it was like to be in a gigging band in 1976

 

 

[casapete]

Am sure I’m not the only one on here who was in a band like this?
Great find, thanks for posting!

[police squad]

that was great. I remember playing clubs like those in the late 80s

[Leonard Smalls]

9 hours ago, casapete said:

who was in a band like this?

My band of 1987-1993 weren't at all like this, but we had the same van!

Though ours was hand-painted matt black and owned by a hippy with a dog called Merlin... And there were no seats in the back, we'd just lie on top of the cabs.

 

[NikNik]

3 hours ago, police squad said:

that was great. I remember playing clubs like those in the late 80s

Same here.

 

1983, and I was in a 7-piece funk outfit. But, to finance recording, etc, The core of that unit used to play the workingmens' clubs from time to time. One place, we did 45 minutes of quick-steps. bossas, etc, then stopped, as the punters had a chicken in a basket followed by a bingo session. Then an hour of standards/oldies, and a DJ rounded off the night. The Miners' Welfare clubs were full of rabble and raucous behaviour. We used to slip in an original to test them out and sometimes beer mats with 'F*** Off!' scrawled in Biro came flying onto the stage. Fending off the advances of drunk women whose equally-drunk husbands smouldered in their seats was another joy. 'Gie's a kiss, sonny! Come an' sweep ma auld lum oot!' 😵 

 

An agent got us a weekend of gigs in Easington, Durham and another place I can't remember. Absolutely grim. Unreceptive audiences, and on the Durham gig, the Convener disappeared and we never got paid. We got back to Edinburgh, finding that we had only made £100, after taking off fuel. I refused to do any more of these gigs after that

 

Below is the most miserable place I have ever, ever played!

Edited August 7, 2023 by NikNik

[Waddo Soqable]

Great bit of footage👍

The transit van looks in very good nick compared to the battered scrappers we ended up in, windows in the back and proper seats too! 

I remember that world of course, but the gigs I did then were punk and subsequently "post punk" so a very different type of audience. 

I bet with a name like Punch they had a few plssed up "hard men" taking issue with that 😁

 

[Rich]

(bear with me, there is bingo content)

Many years ago when I lived in Swindon, my blues-rock trio (Hendrix, Gary Moore, ZZ Top etc, and though I say so myself we were really good) had a booking at the Plessey Social Club... when we walked through the door, we lowered the average age in the room by about 40 years. As we set up, I could feel the glares from the light-&-bitter brigade burning holes in the back of my head. We had backline and a vocal PA only, nothing DI'd or miked up -- Steve the drummer was first to get set up, he sat down and picked up a stick and hit his snare drum ONCE... and I heard a croaky old voice from out in the shadows say, "ooh, it's a bit loud...". 

Predictably the first set was horrendous, every song met with almost total silence apart from a few “turn it down!”s from some of the oldies and some muted applause. One of them even walked up mid-song, stood right in front of me and stuck his fingers in his ears and bellowed “It's TOO LOUD”. It really wasn't. Our amps were barely ticking over.

The end of the first set couldn’t have come soon enough for me. During the interval, the club MC asked if he could borrow one of our mics to do the bingo. (see, I told you!)

Eventually we couldn’t put the second set off any longer and trudged dejectedly to the stage. I was just putting my bass on when a woman approached me. I thought, if she tells me to turn it down I’m just going to pack up and sod off home, and to hell with the fee. But she said cheerfully, “OK lads, all the miserable old farts have bugggered off home, they only come for the bingo... you can turn it up now”. So we did... needless to say, the second set was a lot better and we never set foot in there again.  

[NikNik]

3 minutes ago, Rich said:

(bear with me, there is bingo content)

Many years ago when I lived in Swindon, my blues-rock trio (Hendrix, Gary Moore, ZZ Top etc, and though I say so myself we were really good) had a booking at the Plessey Social Club... when we walked through the door, we lowered the average age in the room by about 40 years. As we set up, I could feel the glares from the light-&-bitter brigade burning holes in the back of my head. We had backline and a vocal PA only, nothing DI'd or miked up -- Steve the drummer was first to get set up, he sat down and picked up a stick and hit his snare drum ONCE... and I heard a croaky old voice from out in the shadows say, "ooh, it's a bit loud...". 

Predictably the first set was horrendous, every song met with almost total silence apart from a few “turn it down!”s from some of the oldies and some muted applause. One of them even walked up mid-song, stood right in front of me and stuck his fingers in his ears and bellowed “It's TOO LOUD”. It really wasn't. Our amps were barely ticking over.

The end of the first set couldn’t have come soon enough for me. During the interval, the club MC asked if he could borrow one of our mics to do the bingo. (see, I told you!)

Eventually we couldn’t put the second set off any longer and trudged dejectedly to the stage. I was just putting my bass on when a woman approached me. I thought, if she tells me to turn it down I’m just going to pack up and sod off home, and to hell with the fee. But she said cheerfully, “OK lads, all the miserable old farts have bugggered off home, they only come for the bingo... you can turn it up now”. So we did... needless to say, the second set was a lot better and we never set foot in there again.  

At that Easington gig I mentioned above, we had some of that. 'Too loud' 'Play something we know! The heckling was constant, and I turned to the guys and said, 'F*** it, I've had enough!' and unplugged my bass. Then one of the officials came up to us and said if we didn't finish the set, then we wouldn't get paid. We played another half hour. losing interest as the baying crowd sensed defeat. We loaded out to cat-calls and boos.

[casapete]

I spent a lot of time in WMC land in my first few bands. So many memories of doing gigs in 

these places, and the programme mentioned above ( as well as a bit of ‘Phoenix Nights’)

brought a lot of it back. Despite often being frustrating, it did prove a great training ground

for me in many ways, musically and socially. I was the youngest player in those bands, and

still living at home. Never told my parents what went on - my first ever paid gig was playing

for a stripper! My drummer mate got offered the dep gig but was scared to go on his own,

so I joined him and we split the fee. Medium sized club full of drunk blokes, it was certainly a

massive eye opener for me - we made a pact not to tell anyone in case it got back to our folks.
 

A band I was in during the late 70’s had a Transit, although ours was an ex Lincolnshire Health

Authority ambulance! Bought from an auction, it came straight from NHS service, and had

various medical items concealed in cubby holes all over the rear section, much to our

amusement. Main problem with it was fuel consumption though - engine was a Ford 3 litre

V6 job, and you could almost see the fuel gauge going down as we drove. Went like stink

but unfortunately often attracted attention from the police as it looked like a standard ambulance

but contained 4 scruffy blokes and often girlfriends too. (Unfortunately the ‘blues and twos’ had

been removed prior to us buying it, probably for the best.)

[snorkie635]

We had a Sherpa at one time called Van the Man. Painted matt black and having an MOT by the skin of its teeth, The Mystery Machine it was not.

 

Across the top of the main interior section, was a kind of cross-bar - known as The Trophy Bar, and as time progressed, it became festooned with, shall we say, 'women's dainties'. Now our drummer had a live-in girlfriend of whom he was very proud. He bought her some fancy lingerie and went on and on about it. One night we picked him and her up in the van and headed for a gig. Unbeknownst to either, while I had engaged them in conversation in their kitchen, our guitarist had galloped upstairs, into their bedroom, found her underwear drawer and purloined aforementioned lingerie. After the gig, they were proudly flying from the crossbar, much to the amusement of guitarist, keyboard player and me - a couple of others were around scrounging a lift home. The drummer saw these and went ballistic. I'm laughing as I type this. God know how they reconciled after that event. Great days. 😎

[NikNik]

36 minutes ago, snorkie635 said:

We had a Sherpa at one time called Van the Man. Painted matt black and having an MOT by the skin of its teeth, The Mystery Machine it was not.

 

Across the top of the main interior section, was a kind of cross-bar - known as The Trophy Bar, and as time progressed, it became festooned with, shall we say, 'women's dainties'. Now our drummer had a live-in girlfriend of whom he was very proud. He bought her some fancy lingerie and went on and on about it. One night we picked him and her up in the van and headed for a gig. Unbeknownst to either, while I had engaged them in conversation in their kitchen, our guitarist had galloped upstairs, into their bedroom, found her underwear drawer and purloined aforementioned lingerie. After the gig, they were proudly flying from the crossbar, much to the amusement of guitarist, keyboard player and me - a couple of others were around scrounging a lift home. The drummer saw these and went ballistic. I'm laughing as I type this. God know how they reconciled after that event. Great days. 😎

Rifling a woman's knicker drawer??

[Waddo Soqable]

11 minutes ago, NikNik said:

Rifling a woman's knicker drawer??

I bet we've all done that.. 😂

[Franticsmurf]

4 hours ago, police squad said:

that was great. I remember playing clubs like those in the late 80s

Mid 90s for me, but the clubs were similar to the ones in the film. We used to play as a three piece or me and the singer as a duo in the South Wales valleys. The club buildings were lovely old places architecturally, often unchanged from when they were first built. Some of the audiences were similarly ancient. 😄 We were always on after the first bingo session of the night. Many of the clubs had a rule that members must not dance in the first half and we were often told not to play any upbeat dance music before the second session of bingo during our short break between sets. The second half would be the real test of how we were doing as we would find out how many people had endured the bingo to watch us. 

 

The bingo callers were characters, with each one having his (or very occasionally her) own style. They were as much performers as the acts were. There was one at a regular club gig who would start off quite clear and in the 30 minutes of so of the first session, degenerate into mumbled incoherence, at which point his assistant would repeat the calls. In the second session, the assistant would take over straight away with the original caller barely audible (and barely conscious) to one side.   

 

I remember one gig we played as a duo where we had to sit through the bingo in the audience because there was no changing room. For some reason we both got the giggles and stopped the bingo caller, who told us off with a stern 'we take our bingo seriously in this club'. Which, of course, made the giggles 10 times worse. At the end of the session, the whole audience got up and left as we went up on the stage. We were expecting to be paid off as the compare arrived but he had a quiet word, telling us to wait 5 minutes and sure enough, a whole new (and younger) audience turned up and we had a good night.

 

I recently depped in an act the singer mentioned above was doing and went to a couple of the old venues. They were completely renovated and devoid of the character they had 30 years ago, and probably had half the membership. 

 

 

[Oomo]

Any idea what happened to Punch after the documentary? I'm curious what happened next... (probably not a lot given how little I've been able to find through searching...)

[NikNik]

21 hours ago, Jean-Luc Pickguard said:

What it was like to be in a gigging band in 1976

 

 

'Hello, Cleveland!'

Edited August 7, 2023 by NikNik

[meterman]

I started out on the working men’s club / social club circuit in late 1983, early ‘84 around Durham and Teesside and it was still a bit like that video. Bingo. Pie ‘n’ pea suppers. Meat raffles. Backing the strippers. Supporting Roy Chubby Brown and all that. I hated the music (chart covers and standards, sometimes C&W) plus I was underage, so I only really did the gigs so I could drink beer on a school night.

 

Eventually got blacklisted / barred from a lot of the mining town venues after a particularly grim two-set gig at some utter hole in Cleveland, maybe 1987 or 88. The first set we got barely any response from the punters. Slow handclaps, grumbling, etc. We weren’t very good but we usually got away with it, but this time even for us it was a tough crowd.
 

So in the pie supper interval we nipped out to a late opening newsagents / mini supermarket and bought a couple of põrñø mags (possibly Razzle) and made paper planes out of them. During our second set a few punters were already p***ed and had actually started dancing to us so we chucked the pôrñø paper planes into the audience to try and liven things up. There was a brief exciting moment when a couple of women saw stuff being thrown into the audience and they picked up a plane, and then their faces dropped when they saw what the planes were made of and the audience scarpered after that. We got rushed out of the venue, didn’t finish the gig and didn’t get paid. Looking back, we were lucky not to have had our heads kicked in as well. Never played a working men’s club again, anywhere after that. Silver linings and all that 😂

 

Oh, and our band was absolutely, diabolically terrible. I’m surprised we got any gigs in the first place, we were that bad. There can’t have been any worse bands than us on that circuit at the time.

 

(By the way, I don’t condone the pòrñø planes behaviour, I only ever did it that one time and I certainly wouldn’t do it again. It was a flipping stupid idea. If anyone reading this is thinking “that sounds like a laugh, let’s do it at a gig” - don’t!)

[snorkie635]

4 hours ago, NikNik said:

Rifling a woman's knicker drawer??

Not guilty - I was discussing the weather or something in the kitchen. Good skill for your CV though.

[Waddo Soqable]

1 hour ago, snorkie635 said:

Good skill for your CV though.

Especially if you're applying to join MI5/6

[BlueMoon]

Brings back memories of the “Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club” and the guy with his flat cap, roll-up ciggie and the circular bell device that he could never get to work to shut people up! Fond memories!

 

I remember playing some of those clubs. Just remember the smokey atmosphere though.

[casapete]

1 hour ago, BlueMoon said:

Brings back memories of the “Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club” and the guy with his flat cap, roll-up ciggie and the circular bell device that he could never get to work to shut people up! Fond memories!

Colin Crompton, IIRC?!

Most northern clubs had a Concert Secretary, who’s job was to source the bands and performers

appearing ( usually via one or maybe two agents ) and then ensure the evening went well. Any problems

(bands being late / too loud / not up to standard etc.) were dealt with by him. Most of them had little

or no idea of music / entertainment in general but did it for the kudos and probably free ale. They in turn

usually had to answer to ‘the committee’ , a group of similar blokes, so you can imagine why club bands

were tolerated rather than respected. Bingo was the main draw in clubs, and 3x30 or 40 minute sets

were fitted in around the games, throughout which dead silence was expected. In Hull they had a thing

called Link or Allied bingo, where most of the city’s clubs combined to play for large sums via a telephone

link. This was deadly serious stuff - when I was in a resident club house band we played most weeks,

and actually won it twice! Prize on a Saturday night was around £1100, which was quite a lot in the 

1980’s. 

[snorkie635]

3 hours ago, Waddo Soqable said:

Especially if you're applying to join MI5/6

Shhhhhplendid.

[Cliff Edge]

In the 70’s I was playing pub gigs in and around London 4-5 nights a week. Back then the pubs were rammed with people every night and thick with cigarette smoke. My old natural finish Jazz is naturally tobacco yellow ish. Much of that time we had a van and a driver/roady who stored all the gear and loaded in and set it all up. Those were good times, I drove to the gigs in my car, arrived 10 minutes before the off with my bass, got a drink, tuned up, plugged in and off we went for 2 and half hours. 
80’s we’re a mix of pubs and working men’s clubs where the bingo always played centre stage and the function room was often upstairs, with no bloody lift. 
It all calmed down in the 90’s and beyond, but I have some great memories. 

[Woodinblack]

I think the most notable thing from the video apart is actually what it said about job availability. Back in those days you could quit your job, it didn't work out with your band, you get another job.

People same age now couldn't do that. 

 

That and the changing for the group

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

9 hours ago, Oomo said:

Any idea what happened to Punch after the documentary? I'm curious what happened next... (probably not a lot given how little I've been able to find through searching...)

 

This lot might be them: https://thebandpunch.com/ 😉

 

If so it looks like they've had a few lineup changes and none of the original members are left — as discussed in the Bands of Theseus aka Trigger's band thread

Edited August 7, 2023 by Jean-Luc Pickguard

[Woodinblack]

32 minutes ago, Jean-Luc Pickguard said:

 

This lot might be them: https://thebandpunch.com/ 😉

 

If so it looks like they've had a few lineup changes and none of the original members are left — as discussed in the Bands of Theseus aka Trigger's band thread

 

They got fed up with the north east and moved to the states?