 |
| Forgive my awful photoshop skills. Also this was before Facebook and getting real Planet X pictures to use! |
Back when burning CDs was a thing - just under 20 years ago, I think, I was feeling nostalgic. Napster, or something like it, was a thing, and I decided to re-create a night at Planet X for myself.
Aside: Planet X was a Liverpool nightclub that ran from approximately 1983-1993 (give or take) and for a short period my whole life seemed to revolve around it - roughly from the beginning of 1986 to the end of 1988. Aesthetically, it was goth, but in reality it was everyone's that was not part of the mainstream - so whether you were punk, rockabilly or just one of the all-sorted folk that somehow eluded categorisation, the Planet was for you. It was the night-time hub and meeting point for anyone and everyone, or so it seemed. Every band that mattered had passed through at some point or in some format, or so it seemed. It was my world.
So I was feeling wistful. I wanted to collate 5 hours of music (roughly from 9 in the evening to 2 in the morning). I had some of these tracks already but it was an excuse to gather things that I did not have. Looking at the track listing, it was also plainly an excuse to pull together tracks that reminded me more generally of the time and place than simply the Planet. I'd guess, in all honesty, that about one third of the tracks were never played anywhere in the night club at any time.
 |
| Yup - about a third were never played at the Planet... |
No mind... It served its purpose. I haven't popped the CDs recently, but looking at it, I am confident that if I did, I'd not get bored. I'm also confident that while it probably fails to match anyone else's memories of the Planet exactly, it would be close enough to amuse any other nostalgic scouse goth from the 80s.
So here are ten tracks that will, within a bar or two, whisk me back to those dark, sweaty, special nights:
The Sisters of Mercy - Alice/Temple of Love
We might as well get this out of the way right now. Also, I couldn't decide between Alice or Temple of Love (the original version, of course!). Most of the tracks on this list regularly get a play and not merely as some nostalgia trip. I genuinely love these songs. I am aware of the limitations of The Sisters, but damn it do I not love these EPs with all my heart?! (I think that the second side of First and Last and Always is awesome; I like Floodland a fair bit and after that... well, it was nice while it lasted...). I still remember buying Alice and playing it to death. And then, because I was a goth, I played it some more. But for all that I will forever associate it with the dance floor downstairs at Temple Street. The smoky, murky, slight dampness is matched by the smoky, murky, slight dampness of the records.
I was never much of a dancer, but I did, especially in my earlier days, dance at Planet X. I remember dancing in the most offensively pretentious way. I think (my memory is as hazy as these records) I more or less just stood in one place, rocked a little, sucked in my cheekbones and waved my hands around like I was at Hogwarts or something. I am embarrassed thinking about it right now. I extend my sincerest and deepest apologies to anyone unlucky enough to witness such a spectacle. Anyway, that thing I did (I hesitate to call it a dance), I did regularly to Sisters of Mercy records. I think, thanks to muscle memory, I could recreate it all. I won't though.
Fields of the Nephilim - Preacher Man
It's the Sisters of Mercy tribute act nobody called for! I don't really care - I love this tune. It feels like it was made for Planet X. It even has an intro that was perfect for announcing its arrival to all the goths tired of Big Black and Dead Kennedy's songs that were too fast to dance to. Preacher Man had all the components of dance floor gold at Planet X; the false stops, the cues for when you were to throw your hands up into the air, a good tempo and lyrics that sound meaningful until you see them written down. I like that little guitar line too. We don't fear no contamination!
Wire - I Am The Fly
I'm cheating a little. When I hear this song, I am not transported to the Planet. I am, however, transported to X-Stremes, which was a little clothes shop in an underground arcade running from Rainford Gardens to Stanley Street. Like many Planet X regulars, this was a mainstay of goth fashion shopping and part of the typical Saturday tour of Liverpool.
(The tour, in my time at least, orientated around Probe Records on Button Street, but included Backtracks next door, an amusement arcade across the road, X-Stremes, the Lisbon pub, the tea rooms on Rainford Gardens, and there was a burger joint on the corner of Stanley Street I've forgotten the name of. The more adventurous might extend as far as Bold Street or Renshaw Street to take in Penny Lane records or 69A, a three (?) storey shop of curios and vintage fashion. Later, the fantastic bazaar of Quiggins added to the mix.)
Anyway, right at the outset of my baby-goth days I was in X-Stremes and the clanging, motoric, repetition of I Am The Fly was playing out and that one time was enough to etch it once and for all in my memory.
Cabaret Voltaire - Nag, Nag, Nag
Brian Eno famously declared that Donna Summer's I Feel Love was the future. I still agree with him. However, if the future takes a different turn (and in the current political climate, it just might), this record might be a song from an alternative timeline - something a little like the second Planet of the Apes movie, where humans have ruined the environment and technology beyond recognition. The song sounds toxic to my ears; everything about it sounds contaminated. And yet, much like Donna Summer's classic, there's something about it that is perfect for the dance floor.
New Model Army - The Hunt
This song was a dance floor filler every time but it seemed to have one purpose and one purpose only and that was to get everyone to throw their hands in the air in unison. Lots of goth songs had that aspiration but none were as successful as this. Lynx advertisers missed a trick... New Model Army always got a lot of love in the Planet. With this one, it's easy to see why.
Spear of Destiny - Liberator
This is a song, I think, that it's best not to think too much about - just take it as it is and enjoy it. Lyrically, nothing really makes any sense. The only thing I'm really sure about is that Kirk Brandon thinks he's liberating something. And he sure does a lot of it in this song. Musically, I am not sure it's that good either - it begins with a saxophone, which is a curious choice. And there are loads of bits to it with drums and whooping, building up to ... nothing much, really. Just more of Brandon's liberating. But for all this, in my memory, this is a monumental anthem. The chorus, where Brandon sustains the 'I' (of the 'I am a Liberator') is genuinely exciting. I wish I could get back to enjoying it so unquestioningly.
Dead Kennedys - Holiday in Cambodia
Was anybody a purist at Planet X? I don't think anybody was only into one thing; i.e. only goth stuff or punk stuff or whatever. One of the Planet's chief virtues to me is that it was a melting pot. Unlike Conservative political slogans, we genuinely were all in it together. However, there were moments were we did split off into our particular tribes. These moments were often on the dance floor, and there were good reasons for this. A stray goth pretending to dance to a Dead Kennedy's song could get accidentally punched in the face - even this one, which is a little goth (if we're honest). Yup, the stray goth was me and I hazarded a little foray onto the dance floor during this track. Andy Robinson (not the Hellraiser actor) was enjoying the track to its full potential, swinging his arms about enthusiastically. I am not sure he ever realised - I figured that it wasn't deliberate. (That said, it was me dancing, in my typically obnoxious style... so maybe it was!) Anyway, I cannot listen to it without remembering my surprise. I think it was the second chorus - after I had been lulled into a false sense of security.
Patti Smith - Because the Night
I never heard this downstairs at Temple Street, only ever upstairs on the jukebox. In honesty, the song feels incongruous with my memory of Planet X, like it was the vestige of some other nightclub. And yet, when I hear it, even when I am listening to the whole of Easter and I hear it in that context, I am upstairs in the Planet, playing on the Kiss pinball machine, silently watching the wall of TV screens invariably showing Bauhaus videos, navigating the toilets, or just enjoying a modicum of semi-light in contast to the semi-darkness of downstairs. Even when I heard the Bruce Springsteen version of it, finally released in 2011 on The Promise, I am still taken back.
I would love to see the contents of that jukebox again.
Big Black - Kerosene
Much like Preacher Man above, this song announces its arrival with a unique introduction. Unlike Preacher Man (which I do enjoy, by the way) this track is a total monster. Steve Albini is widely recognised as a genius musician and producer, but I would love to have seen what he might have done with a ton of cash and a Max Martin pop song. Kerosene is a killer on the dance floor and is SO exciting to listen to - ironic, really, since the song is all about being bored.
The Pogues - Sally MacLennane
There were a number of songs that I remember closing the various evenings. I suspect that different DJs had their own preferences, but even now when I hear these songs they feel like the end of the night, even when, like this it could still be kicking off the party and not closing it. I was often sad to be on my way. It typically meant trying to find a taxi after two in Liverpool city centre.
Anyway, whenever I hear these ten tracks (and many many more, to be honest) my memory takes me back to those days. As much as I would have enjoyed the songs without the memories, that the songs bring me back to this place makes them more pleasant.
As a coincidence, as I finish writing this post, there has been another huge thread on the Planet X Facebook page. Lots of people have been posting or re-posting photographs of themselves during this period. I love this. I am generally pretty dismissive of my childhood, specifically my teenage years. I hated school, and home life was mostly just boring. There's not that much I look back on wistfully. (Not that it was particularly bad, mind - just 'meh'...) Anyway, there are three things from my childhood that I am wistful about: My childhood Christmasses (they were good), discovering music, and Planet X. Doreen and the endless list of people who I could name but won't made this magical place for me. Again, there's not much from those years I'd like to repeat, but the thrill of being sixteen or thereabouts, and being in a world like Planet X again, that would be special. I am grateful that I was there then.
No comments:
Post a Comment