14 iced bears | shrewsbury | 1988

i mentioned in an earlier post that i'd be returning to the 14 iced bears.
so, here we are.

i'd kept in touch with robert since we met at the beat happening show and, through thunderball records, i ended up printing the bears t-shirts (it was my job - i was a screenprinter) along with the "drugs not jobs" t-shirts which were made for kilgore trout but made famous by some bloke out of spacemen 3 wearing one in some glossy mag a few years later.

anyhow, we put the bears on at the english bridge centre in shrewsbury with my band supporting.
by this point the 14 iced bears had stopped writing 2 minute scratchy pop songs and were quickly turning into psychedelic monsters.
i suppose the first sign of this was the united states of america cover ("coming down") on the "mother sleep" EP (mind you the title track was pretty psyche-y too).

the venue was full of indiepoppers.
to be honest you could've put on anything under the banner of an indie gig and people would have shown up from miles around.
not a whole lot happened in shropshire.

the 14 iced bears began quietly, ebbed and flowed and then got loud.
then got louder.
and louder.
and they blew out two very large windows alongside the stage.
glass pushed out into the street.
a mess.
those stood along the sides of the hall moved inward.
some left.

the indiepoppers didn't know what had hit them.

there was trouble with the venue manager after the show.
fortunately, though i had booked the bears, i'd done it through a promoter who put on a bunch of things around town.
so, like the coward that i pride myself in being, i left him to it.