THE IMMORAL MAJORITY
was the product of an amphetamine fueled evening of deprivation in about 1891
or 1981, which ever came later. The plan was for Malcolm to yell his amphetamine
driven poetry over a totally unformed backing using musical instruments, I say
using not playing, the backing and poetry was designed to irritate, (and it
did) we only played live (you cant rehearse when you don't have any music) all
we needed were like minded musicians, immediately I called upon Paul, who to
this day maintains that the 1 gig we did before he joined was one of the best
things he's ever seen, with Malcolm in a white wedding dress, a random selection
of people (from the audience and the other bands who were on that night) wandering
onto the stage area picking up whatever came to hand and joining in, I honestly
have no recollection of this as I was completely wasted, I believe I played
guitar and drums, I don't even remember the custard pie fight we had at the
end of our set, Paul filled me in later. We also drafted in Mally who was the
ideal bass player , so we set about doing as many gigs as we could get, though
once we started playing often we began to form songs, and eventually it did
become musical, I might put some up here one day , its all on cassette tapes,
over there, in the corner, by the turtle.We had the plug pulled out of the wall
to shut us up whilst Mal not Mally Mal Mal jeered about Thatchers education
cuts to an audience of trainee teachers at a gig in a teacher training college(
I have no recollection of that gig either), we built up a fine reputation as
a support band, we would always make the headlining band sound good, we did
have fans though who would come to our gigs religiously to see what stupid crap
we would come up with and to join in, two audience members became our backing
singers for a few gigs, it was a lot of fun, though I was pretty wasted most
of the time. There are things which have resurfaced with Gonzoid from this era
(Pronounced error). In terms of musical ability Paul was pretty much light years
ahead of the rest of us, though it has to be said that Mally was a good bass
player, that was part of what I think led to its demise, as we performed we
became better musicians, eventually even I was becoming able to keep time, Mally
was developing into a really tight punchy bass player, we even rehearsed! our
confidence grew regarding stage presence as well. Mal not Mally Mal Mal's words
were great, 'I Used To Be a Nice Boy But Now Im a Cunt', 'Come Down Come Down
I've Got a Comedown', the classic 'Garstang Bus Station', 'Chase The Dragon'
(Which defined the time where the tory government of Thatcher began turning
a blind eye to all the heroin that was being imported as a way to stifle the
'punk rock rebellion')he wrote tribute songs to early 80's scottish pop queen
Sheena Easton and another mourning the death of Crossroads character Arthur
Brownlow, he wrote what he saw through those bullet proof glass thick spectacles
he wore,
About Malcolm;
He never cleaned his teeth and this led to them being quite green, with yellow
crud between them, he lost all his teeth later that decade, he never took to
the false ones they gave him and did without. Recent sightings reflect his sight
has worsened and he is now all but blind. He was a really nice guy and we all
enjoyed having him around, he was pencil thin and wore huge goldfish bowl spectacles.
He would happily wear anything clothes wise, and I mean anything, he was at
the time working in the local record shop, the only one where you could go and
hang out listening to the latest releases, and they didn't hassle you, We all
met because of this record shop, though it later served a darker purpose in
Malcolm's life at this point he had about 5 million credibility points for working
there( the shop was called 'ear ere', and it was my home from home for a while,
every day after school it would be like a social club for us, there wasn't a
great deal for youths to do in the late 70's before computer games and cheap
goods. So we used to hang out there smoking and listening to punk records.)
I left to live in Athens in 1984, the immoral's carried on for a while but then
they went their separate ways.