Oct
Thanks so much to Dave Fennessy for the interview! I wrote about the band Soundhouse a few months ago not knowing at all who were behind the one song I had heard by them. Luckily Dave got in touch and it turned out it was the same Dave that run the legendary indiepop club The Fountain in the early 90s! So I had to ask questions about that too! So this is a 2×1 interview, with lots of great anecdotes, one no indiepop fan should miss!
++ Hi Dave! Thanks so much for being up for this interview! How are you? Are you still involved with music?
Rather alarmingly I’m 60 next year, but you know, the spears of age keep going in but I’m still moving and can remember what I had for breakfast so I can’t be doing too badly. I still dabble with noise from time to time, my PC can double as a recording studio and I’ve amassed quite a lot of virtual equipment over the years that I could never afford when I was young and pert, it’s just something to do when I’ve got nothing to do, and I’ve got a very short attention span.
++ Let’s go back in time. What are your first music memories? Do you remember what your first instrument was? How did you learn to play it? What sort of music did you listen to at home while growing up?
My Mum played records a lot of the time, mostly crooners and artists like Gene Pitney and Dorothy Squires. A lot of Rodgers & Hammerstein film soundtracks too. Not sure if they directly influenced me, but I went down the route of glam rock then listening to the John Peel show and sort of side stepping anything that was popular or presented to you by daytime BBC playlists. The top 40 chart used to be a big thing, full of various genres of music. It’s only when you find out it was rigged and it was just the tip of the iceberg as to what music was out there, that was annoying.
I can’t play any instrument, I just meddle and prod at things until something nice comes out the other end. I couldn’t bare the idea of knowing what the notes were called, that would somehow have taken the fun out of it. It’s like people who put ‘musician’ on their passports as an occupation. I’d knock their fucking heads together.
My first ‘instrument’ was a Stylophone. Me and my brother got one each for Christmas, and after the limited play value was up I took both of them apart and joined them up in different ways with wires and crocodile clips. It made some weird sounds, great sounds. I always lent to being a bass player because I loved the sound of Colin Mouldings from XTC, to name but one. But I became sort of hooked on anything electronic and a bit broken, that’s the direction I would mostly follow. Once I’d discovered groups like Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire and early Human League, I was off.
++ Had you been in other bands before Soundhouse? If so, how did all of these bands sound? Are there any recordings?
First group was Adventures in Colour, a sort of synth pop band but with lyrics more suited to the anarcho punk scene or a suffragettes meeting. Drum machine, two synthesisers, bass and two female vocals. There is a track on the Dennis GPC compilation cassette, recorded just after our live line up dissolved. Gail and Lisa were ‘punks’ in dress and lifestyle, me and George were two straight looking blokes who didn’t get bottled off because of the two women when we played at out and out punk gigs. We did that on purpose rather amusingly, mostly to see how far we could push things and challenge barriers of inclusion, exclusion and all the other social areas we were exploring as we were growing as people. I remember reading that The Rezillos used to be supported by the Human League and no one got seriously hurt.
++ What about the other members?
Gail Thibert was our first vocalist, she joined the Lost Cherrees after she sang with us, again not an indie pop band, more Crass type of thing. George had a pedigree in that his previous band was called Illustration from Stockport. They were on the Some Bizarre compilation LP. We were lucky to get him for a time as he helped us arrange songs better and said daft things like, we should compose and play songs in the comfort range of the vocalist. How we scoffed at such professionalism, but he was probably right.
++ Where were you from originally?
Originally from London, born in Stepney then brought up in Silvertown, which was right next to the Royal Docks in east London. I lived in various places in south London including Hither Green, Deptford, New Cross, then moved down to the Kent coast in 2000. And I’m not moving again as I’ve spent a lot of money on this house and garden.
++ How was your area in London at the time of Soundhouse? Were there any bands that you liked? Were there any good record stores? Or what about the pubs or venues to go check out up and coming bands?
My area of east London wasn’t exactly a hub for indie music, although the exception was a small record shop in Walthamstow called Small Wonder Records. Not only did Pete stock all the hard to find singles that John Peel played, he also ran a record label and brought out the first Cure single. Gig wise we had the Bridgehouse where I caught young unknown bands like Dolly Mixture and Dépêche Mode over the years. Over Woolwich we had the Thames Poly who put on some great groups like The Passage, Farmers Boys, Shop Assistants, The Bodines and some hopeless drugged up twerps called Primal Scream.
++ How did you all meet? How was the recruiting process?
Lisa and myself met through the small ads in Sounds, as penpals. You don’t hear that word anymore. We were both lonely isolated teenagers but with similar musical interests. First time we met we went to see the Gang of Four at the Lyceum. They were absolutely terrifying, in a great way. She only lived three miles from me, separated by the Woolwich ferry. We became such good friends and found that together we could do all the creative things we wanted to do, but couldn’t do alone, not just being in a group but writing a fanzine, experimenting with photography and actually making new relevant friends. Other passing group members were from the music press small ads. No auditions, if we liked them as people then that was what mattered. Anything else you can work on.
++ How was the creative process for you? Where did you usually practice?
Come up with ten ideas, throw nine of them out as being a bit lame, and after a while we would probably get one good song out of all the bits scattered all over the floor. We practised in my bedroom with a rare outing to a proper rehearsal studio, we used one underneath the railway arches in Leyton. It was popular with anarcho punk bands so we made some interesting contacts along the way. We ended up meeting groups like Rubella Ballet, Poison Girls and Crass, all of whom we shared political and social ideologies with but obviously not the style of music. As we grew into a four piece we rehearsed in Georges flat in Ladbroke Grove, such an exciting multi-cultural area. We didn’t mind travelling across London to do things, we always bunked the tube fare so it didn’t cost anything. You can’t do that now, too many barriers and CCTV cameras. I used an old ladies shopping trolley to transport the gear in, such as it was.
++ What’s the story behind the band’s name?
Soundhouse just looked really good on paper, a very balanced word if you look at it. Unfortunately there was a musical instrument shop in London called the same thing so we would have been challenged on it had we become known in any way. I think there was a heavy metal roadshow called the same thing. Curious bedfellows.
++ Who would you say were influences in the sound of the band?
Wouldn’t be able to put my finger on it, just the way we grew and developed as people, and probably most of the things we rejected along the way as things we knew we didn’t like or align with. Musically I was probably still obsessing over groups like the Cocteau Twins, Pink Industry, Crash Course in Science, Young Marble Giants, The Liggers…. lots of contrasting things, really. Themes for Dreams is quite a dark haunting song with some very troubling lyrics which I didn’t fully interpret at the time. I think Lisa was going through some heavy shit that none of us around her were fully aware of until much later.
++ I really liked the song “Themes for Dreams” so I was wondering if you could tell me what inspired it?
It was very much Lisa’s song that she put together on one of those cheap Casiotones, the MT40 if memory serves. I had very little input in it at the recording, she came with it fully formed in her head and I just overdubbed the bit she kept getting wrong. I dragged a friend from the GPC along, Gary Parker, to add some guitar to gently jangle it up a bit and not for it to be exclusively electronic.
++ This song was recorded in a small studio in East Ham you said. Do you remember what it was called? Did it take much time to put the song together?
Grandly named Empire Studios but it was just a normal terraced house with one bedroom turned into a main studio, and I think Lisa sang her parts in the bathroom or on the stairs. Gary played his guitar sat on the bed. I found the studio out of the Melody Maker I think, because it was local and easy to get to. And cheap of course, about £40 for the whole thing, which lasted about 4-5 hours, certainly no more.
++ One thing that I thought was cool is that you used a drum track from a percussion LP for it. What other anecdotes can you share of that recording session? Was there a producer by the way?
Producer was the engineer was the tea maker, a one man outfit with his own gear. Think it was an 8 track but it could have been 16. It was a small set up but he knew what he was doing. We only had a Soundmaster ST305 drum machine which was fairly basic, although they seem to go for good money these days like a lot of old analogue gear. He just said do you want to try one of these instead, and he had a rack of vinyl LPs that were just professionally recorded rhythm backing tracks. I didn’t even know those things existed. It made a massive difference to the finished article and most people didn’t quite know how we’d done it when they heard it.
++ This song appeared on a tape called “Here’s the Shit!” that was released by the Greenwich Performance Collective. Who was behind this collective? Were you part of this collective? If so, what did entail being part of it?
The GPC were a motley collection of drop outs, the unemployed, and the unemployable to be honest, set up by some ex-student friends to provide a focus for Woolwich area based music. There was a lot of it about at that time but nowhere for things to become focused. They put on gigs once every three or four weeks, just turn up, say you wanted to play songs or read a poem or juggle some milk bottles with your knob painted bright yellow as some sort of statement; it was that kind of thing. If you still had a pulse by the time you was due to go on, out on stage you went, and whatever happened, happened. They had a grant from Greenwich council so there was no pressure to be financially successful. There were others too, there was a London Musicians Collective, one in Bromley and New Cross. The most famous was probably the one in Manchester. Adventures in Colour were already a band at this point and we joined the GPC to play in our ‘home town’ kind of thing. Then we got involved with writing the newsletter and helping out where we could. The weekly meetings were always a good laugh, so many characters.
++ What about the bands on this tape? Were you familiar with them? Perhaps friends? Which were your favourite?
We got to know most of the groups as they were at the meetings, a handful of the bands on the tapes were more or less the same people to be honest, just doing contrasting things under different names. I thought The Climbing Frames track on ‘Dennis’ was excellent, very indie pop for the time, and I never had a clue who they were or where they came from. I still don’t. If I did I would have nicked the vocalist for a start. All of these groups didn’t go on to super stardom of course, but two thirds of the Instant Automatons were in there, and if you know your obscure UK DIY music history, they were big hitters and we looked up to them.
++ And there aren’t other recordings by the band, right? Unreleased tracks?
Lisa probably had a few more songs in some form, and I distinctly remember one of them, a really good one, as she did it on our 4 track in Lewisham. Our opportunities to properly record any more would always be thwarted by money and equipment issues. We never had any, we were dole kids during the Thatcher years. We had been inseparable friends and creative partners for five/six years, we drifted apart over various things that were going on in our private lives and that was that. We caught up again on Facebook many years later, and Iike to think that she still remembers me with as much fondness as I do for her.
++ So tell me, why was this just a one-off? Why didn’t you make more songs with the Soundhouse name? Or maybe more songs of this style?
We recorded it specifically for the Here’s The Shit compilation, if it hadn’t of been coming out we wouldn’t have recorded a song for it. I think it was just an in between project with no clear plans for the future, but I can see with hindsight that we should have concentrated on this direction and done more. There was definitely something in the air at that time that slowly became what was later described as ‘Shoegaze’ or ‘Dreampop’. Projecting forwards I can imagine that we would have been very similar and aligned to what Candy Claws and Sound of Ceres eventually produced.
++ I suppose you didn’t play any gigs either?
That was never going to be a thing, not with one song and no backing tape LOL
++ One thing that has to do with gigs is that you used to promote indiepop nights at The Fountain in Deptford. How did that happen? What bands do you remember booking?
I got fed up going to the trendy NME hangout that was The Falcon in Camden to see any groups I liked. Why not put them on in my local pub, seemed like a good idea so I went with it. The Fountain was at the time 50% mixed between working class council estate and gay. At times it was quite lairy, fights breaking out between the pool playing lesbians because someone had been sleeping with someone behind someones back. And there was me putting on bands upstairs with names like the Red Alarm Clocks and Dalek Beach Party. I love diversity, I love plonking opposite things next to each other and seeing them get on. I remember when I put a poster up of Heavenly downstairs and all the gay women were going nuts over Amelias photo. They certainly filled the crowd out that night. The landlord had a gigantic Rottweiller called Zeus, he sorted out any trouble.
I’m a colossal nerd so usually I’d do this in alphabetical order, but I’ll just see what my memory can do. Strawberry Story, Fat Tulips, Another Sunny Day, Screeming Custard, The Haywains, Thrilled Skinny, Groove Farm, Sea Urchins, Heavenly, St.Christopher, Brighter, Phil Wilson (June Brides) instantly spring to mind. We had quite a few unknown indie pop acts, even to great archive blogs like Cloudberry, who never made their own mark but had fun trying. Quite a few local south London groups too, much like from my GPC days, who didn’t have that many places to play. They didn’t fit the indie pop scene in the strictest sense but it was nice to help them out in some small way.
++ And were there any bands that you would have wished you’d have booked and for a reason or another didn’t happen?
I had just missed out on The Siddeleys, they had split up just before I started. A gang of us used to follow them all over London, such a great group and we were heartbroken when they called it a day. We felt a bit slapped in the face by Johnny Johnson to be honest; she got fed up playing the same places to the same people. None of us realised she was very ambitious and hard-nosed, her lyrics that we warmed to and identified with seemed to be the opposite of that kind of personality. The group that she disbanded the Siddeleys for, Armstrong, were painfully average.
I used to go up to people at gigs and just ask them if they wanted to play at a small club in Deptford for door money and no mixing desk. Oh and can you bring your own stands and mics because people kept stealing mine. People like Robert Sekula (14 Iced Bears) and Rob Wratton (Field Mice). Both of them turned me down quite happily but it was impressive that a shy twerp like me would just go up to them and take liberties. Not even so much as a how do you do, but then getting a conversation out of Rob was painful. Most of the bands I got from just writing to them or ringing them up from details on the back of 7” singles, or John Peel of course. Most said yes without any squabbles about money and that. They all got what I was trying to do; it was like a party most Saturday nights in someone’s long cosy room rather than a full blown rock night out. We had curtains and nice carpet, made for some good acoustics. And the toilets were clean, that’s always a deal breaker if you ask me.
I did bump into the bassist from the Glitter Band in a music shop in Catford where I was getting the vocal PA repaired, and had a chat with him. They were doing all the old hits as a three piece during 1990. I was a huge fan as a kid, Gary Glitter was my first pop concert in 1973 and it had blown me away. Of course I asked them to play a tiny pub room in Deptford, I thought that would have been hilarious to see the look on the landlords face if nothing else, but then the talk started involving contacting managers, security, riders, advance tickets, dressing rooms and showers and what not, four figure sums of money and it would be best to do it in a larger venue he suggested, and it stopped being quite so amusing.
++ Did you DJ or put together the songs in between bands as well as booking the bands? Was it just you or was there a bigger team?
It was my idea to put on my favourite bands in my local pub, I didn’t worry too much about the actual practicalities of it, it just fell into place once it got going. The landlord let me have the room upstairs for nothing as long as people bought his drink, I bought a vocal PA and used my own mix tapes and the tape deck from my hi-fi. On the first night Sue and Stu from south Croydon turned up for the Fat Tulips and said did I need help on the door. That was just how it worked; people turned up for a love of the music and got involved in some way. It was never run to make money, more like an enthusiastic living fanzine run on a tiny budget. I made some great friends who are still friends today. People like Richard Coulthard from Waaaah was a regular and we all had a whale of a time on the coach trips to Bristol for Sarah parties. We were all part of the same small crowd.
++ What would you say was your most successful night as an indiepop promoter?
The packed nights included the Sea Urchins, everyone and his dog turned up for that one and we only had an official capacity of 70. I remember looking round and thinking, this is getting daft, I coul feel the floor sagging, I’d better put a house full sign up or something. Then Michael from the Field Mice turned up and I had to let him in rather than turn him away. Heavenly always pulled a big crowd as you would expect. Local indie group Screeming Custard fans drank the pub dry on two occasions. I loved the way my favourite bands were all such lovely people, so friendly and approachable, apart from one group who were completely obnoxious and thought they were something special. We didn’t do ego.
But it wasn’t just the ones where loads of people turned up, St.Christopher played with Brighter watching as paying punters in the audience, and that for me was a magical moment. We had a fair few ‘famous’ faces pop in, like Bob Mortimer, Bob Stanley, Matt & Claire, Fruitbat etc. I know it was a colossal pisser for the groups when not many people turned up and I had to pay the bands out of my not too impressive British Rail wages, but sometimes The Venue up the road would wipe us out by having Lush or some other indie superstars playing that night. We never stood a chance. New Cross and Deptford were great places to see John Peel / indie bands in the late 80’s and early 90’s.
We did feature in the My Secret World documentary, the gig with a special Amelia Fletcher solo set and Another Sunny Day (mostly solo thinking about it). That was a great night as it also featured a debut performance from Confetti (they gave in to my constant nagging to do it).
++ Another thing that is really cool were the flyers for The Fountain. Did you make them?
It was all home-made, no desktop publishing unless you could afford an Amiga or something, and a decent home printer of which there weren’t any at the time. Found images, cut up lettering from newspapers, a manual typewriter and some Letraset. Just things that were lying around my flat in New Cross. Sometimes I’d just photocopy the latest single and use that as a template. I used to hand out photocopied ‘postcards’ to likely looking people at Greenwich market to advertise the club, obviously it was a thinly disguised ploy to talk to short haired indie pop women but I was never good at that either.
++ At some point you wanted to do a live compilation CD with recordings from The Fountain, right? What happened?
The lack of a posthumous live compilation appearing was basically down to differing and poor quality of the recordings. Some were done by Richard Waaaah and some by Tim Chipping. We didn’t have a mixing desk to record from, it was play through your amps and sing through the PA, the venue was small enough to be able to get away with that. I’ve certainly got a few shows in mp3 format (or wavs) can’t remember now.
I also figured I’d have to get permission from the acts involved to release it to see if they would allow it. It would have been a free download, I certainly wouldn’t have charged money for it but maybe one or two of the groups would have disputed that. It was a road I didn’t want to go down to be honest. I have put Another Sunny Day and one of the Brighter shows up on Youtube (audio) and if I can find them I will link those below. They have not had many views, maybe need a leg up in some way
++ And when did you stop doing this? Why?
It ran for a year, and it was to be honest approaching the arse end of a genre cycle. Finding new groups that fitted the bill or even excited me were getting thin on the ground. I’m not one for doing the same thing and overstretching it until it snaps. I think it ran its course and I achieved everything I’d set out to do. We had Britpop taking over by then as well and I was not impressed with that lot, bunch of fake prancing show offs if you ask me.
++ Had you been in other bands after Soundhouse?
I had one more go at being in a pop group called Jacobs Room, with Gary who played guitar on Themes for Dreams. It was his songs that were mostly middle of the road rock/indie, nothing your blog or readers would be too interested in unless they were being polite. I did enjoy arranging all the songs and ‘playing’ everything on them apart from the guitar. We used a Fostex 4 track as the backing tape and we were joined by a singer who didn’t really suit the music. Did three gigs then I left because Gary wasn’t putting any money into the group and I was basically getting myself into serious debt making a fist of things with modern equipment. I wanted to be in a group where people would put their hands over their ears. I wanted to make an unholy wall of noise racket but underpinned by swoony sort of tunes. Then I did some TV theme cover versions using distorted Casio’s in the privacy of my own hell-hole / bedroom. Then I just stopped on the music front and tried to be normal. That didn’t go well either.
++ What about the rest of the band, had they been in other bands afterwards?
As far as Adventures in Colour went, George changed his name to Morgan King and won a Swedish Grammy for some commercial house music. He is still active and plays drums in the reanimated Lene Lovich band mostly on the continent – there’s a name for the 70’s pop kids there. Lisa I really don’t know, I’m sure she will fill you in. Gail has probably been in about 50 punk bands since and is still racking them up. Gary Parker has continued in various indie rock bands. I think Lisa and myself just grew out of it ☺
++ Was there any interest from the radio?
Not that I know of. The GPC tapes were never of broadcast quality after they had duplicated them, so even the local community station in Thamesmead wouldn’t have played it even if they knew about us.
++ What about the press? Did they give you any attention? Fanzines?
Nope, it was just a very immediate local thing. There was a feature in a Woolwich newspaper, and Adventures in Colour got a good mention, but it was about the GPC overall and what it did and how it helped people. It’s only because of the internet and various obscure music hunting sites that have dug us up after all these years. We simply had no idea. It took me years to get copies of two songs and there is still another AIC one to be found on yet another obscure GPC tape. This has yet to be documented and made available online like the others and I can’t even remember what it was called.
++ Aside from music, what other hobbies do you have?
I run a Facebook group about Silvertown & North Woolwich local history but that doesn’t take up much time. I still dabble with weird electronic sounds but not seriously. Whereas I used to sigh when my Dad listened to military bands on the music centre at home, so my sons sigh at me when they catch me listening to Whitehouse or some other god awful racket. I don’t watch telly or follow the news. I’ve finally turned into my Dad by turning off lights and plugs, and wanting to make a nice garden for the family and pets. I like mending things too. Hope that’s late middle aged and dull enough for your readers ☺
++ Been to London many times, and really liked it. But never to Silvertown or Plumstead. I want to know what would you suggest doing there, like what are the sights one shouldn’t miss? Or the traditional food or drinks that you love that I should try?
Silvertown was/is famous for four things, Tate & Lyles sugar factory, the Thames Barrier, the Royal Docks and now London City Airport, which they built in peoples back gardens and paid for double glazing as a gesture of goodwill. It’s basically always been a place where working class people had to put up with noise and fumes from various heavy industry which was always far too close to housing. It’s changing now, loads of new unaffordable multi storey flats, so the working class are being pushed out and big earning city workers moving in. The newer people don’t mix or socialise locally, and tend to be quite transitory, they don’t appear to give a shit about the local history and whatnot, just a place to live that’s fairly near the city on a rung on their own progression ladders. You really shouldn’t try the kebab and pizza shops that have replaced the chemists, the greengrocers and the post office. A walk under the Thames through the damp foot tunnel is always an experience, and the ferry is free so you can go back and forth a few times until you get bored.
Plumstead was and still is very suburban, mostly residential, an attractive place to live that doesn’t get many mentions because it’s just tucked away behind Woolwich. It has a lovely old common that they haven’t built over yet.
++ Anything else you’d like to add?
Thanks for showing an interest after all these years, I’ve been aware of Cloudberry Records for some time, keep up the good work.
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