53. not matching up
The written invitation to our final gig said we'd 'played at the Pembroke and Worcester Balls. Soon to play at New College Commem.' - which was news to us! The New College organisers too, because we never appeared there. The party at Magdalen was our last performance as a band while we were students at Oxford.
I took a cab and dropped Sarah Walker off at her house, then started seeing her properly afterwards. But Les Milkins had run its course.
Sort of.
*
Bernie's girlfriend, the trainee journalist, arranged for us to play at a party near her college in Harlow, one of the New Towns in Essex.
We'd broken up after the end of term, but this wasn't far for any of us, who all lived in the south of England. Bernie in Oxford of course, me in Reading, Harry in Sevenoaks, Pat near Maidenhead, Bill the closest of the lot in Harpenden.
The revenue was a village hall, also known as the Women's Institute hut, in a place called Matching Tye, a name you couldn't invent. I was told a tye is an old word for crossroads (I always imagined it came from the shape of the letter Y) - but you couldn't help thinking about puns on matching tie and handkerchief.
You could try saying we waved a hankie in surrender. Because Matching Tye was our waterloo.
We didn't need reminding we were just a covers band. But that party confirmed we were just a covers band who went down well only among undergraduates who'd had a drink. Outside that bubble, people didn't want to know. Borocourt Hospital, three gigs at a pub, and now here.
Bernie's girlfriend made a poster for the event. Years later, I couldn't help telling her she'd put the apostrophe in the wrong place near the end of the word 'journalists', so it looked like there'd be only one of them. That might've been better for us!
She used wax crayons, in different colours, for a punky look. Because that's what the audience were going to be. L-plate journalists who liked that kind of music. Whether you'd call them real punks didn't matter: the fact that they thought of themselves as such meant they were never going to take to a band playing old-fart numbers. The stage attire that persuaded Oxford students we might be New Wave wasn't going to cut it here. Good of her to get us the gig, but we were the wrong band for that crowd.
The Clash brought out a song named after that year, 1977, full of incendiary lyrics -
Nineteen seventy seven
Guns in West Eleven
Ain't so lucky to be rich
Sten gun in Knightsbridge
- and a killer chorus.
No Elvis, Beatles, or the Rolling Stones
In 1977
Ouch.
We never stood a chance in that hut.
*
For this party on Thursday 30 June 1977, Bernie's girl arranged a small fee. Eleven quid. Very small. Not even enough for petrol. But that was never an issue for us. Our reception, though: that was.
We played our usual set. But this wasn't Worcester Gardens, so every number got just a prickle of applause, if that. No-one danced. Both sides just wanted it over with.
Even so, we insisted on playing an encore! Which showed how thick our skins were. Punk crowds are unlikely to be wowed by a song about a fucking donkey!
But we played it anyway, followed by Johnny B Goode of course. Because this was our gig. They all were. Nobody here likes us, we don't care. How's that for a punk attitude.
*
That night, we ran into a DJ for the first time - a.k.a. a total tosser.
We came across another one a few years later, when we played at a party for some of Harry's family and friends. When we finished, with Johnny B Goode as usual, the DJ played the real version immediately afterwards. What an arsehole.
Music's just a laugh for you, he said. With me it's a living. I've been in showbusiness twenty years. He really said showbusiness. He got thirty quid a night at weddings and piss-ups, and called it showbiz.
Here in Matching Tye, when we finished our set, the DJ took to the mike. Well that was the Les Milkins band. I thought they weren't bad myself. No? Never mind.
You've got to hate them. They're whatever's lower than a covers band. Playing other people's records without playing anything. A branch of showbusiness? Fucking twigs.
Don't get me wrong. A good disco is an important thing. They can make a wedding, including mine thanks to the splendidly bonkers Stephen Diggines. And I've got fond memories from student days. You just don't want them run by rock stars manqués.
*
Mind you, you could say we deserved it that night. Or at least I did. For a really vile act, one of several I keep admitting to in those days.
On one of the walls of the hut, someone had put up a poem.
We all rejoice at the W.I.
Our hall in Matching is at the Tye.
It was written in doggerel verse and didn't always scan.
But it was heartfelt and sweet and said nice things about their president. Along the top and down the left-hand side, a border of flowers and branches, like a medieval illuminated manuscript. The frame was wooden and quite fancy.
Those women put a lot into that poem. It mattered to them. It didn't matter to me. But I stole it anyway.
What a tosser. What a crass ugly thing to do. I took it home and hung it somewhere, never once considering how distressed the ladies in Matching must've been. One day it fell off a shelf, the glass cracked - and I came to my senses.
I replaced the glass, cleaned the frame, wrapped the whole thing in plenty of bubblewrap, then posted it back with an abject letter of apology and a cheque for thirty quid, which was a fair amount in those days. Thankfully they cashed it. I've done a number of embarrassing things in my life, but not too many I'm genuinely ashamed of.
Before I returned that poem, I photocopied it, partly to remind me what an unthinking cunt I could be sometimes - but also, I confess, as a memento. Don't know if there's still a WI in Matching. If it's gone, and they didn't forgive me to the end, I don't blame them.
*
Les Milkins went quite quietly in the end.
We didn't actually shake hands and call it a day, but we assumed it was over. We'd been a band of Oxford students, and now only Bill was still one of those. Couldn't see him and Bernie getting together to form a new supergroup.
Meanwhile American Express also broke up. Whiskas too, without Sarah Nagourney. I presume Nightshift before long. A rock music mag of that name started up in Oxford - though I don't know if it had anything to do with them. If it did, they left a trace. We didn't.
But that was fine. Anything after our first gig was a bonus, the whole year an unforgettable wonder. And our name lived on in a different way, though it was only there to look at
I've mentioned the car pollution in Oxford. Magdalen Tower at one end, Magdalen church across town - and the buildings to the left of the church as you came along St Giles from the Banbury Road. Soot you could peel off like crispbread. An ideal blackboard for a dodgy vocalist with a piece of chalk in his pocket...
I was with Blond Steve - and we had previous in this kind of thing. We'd scrawled the slogan Free Les Milkins on the odd wall. Rick Bowden remembers 'the victim of injustice you invented', and his wife swore she'd seen Les Milkins on some brickwork in London. Can't recall doing that, but I'll happily add it to the charge sheet.
Here near Magdalen Church in 1977, I'm about to deface another old building when a woman cycles past and lets out an anguished 'Oh, don't! Please!' Noble sentiments, and I don't recommend graffiti - but I couldn't have made that wall look any worse.
And I didn't write much. Just the name, Les Milkins, in quite small letters. In the mid-80s, I took a couple of photos of it. Every time I went back there, I expected it to be cleaned off. Took more than twenty years! Dirty old town.
For a while, it felt like it belonged to us.
