lloyd cole & the commotions | birmingham | 1987

i had wanted to go and see lloyd cole and the commotions when "easy pieces" came out but i had to wait two years, and by that point they were playing places like the NEC.
this meant that the easiest way to see them was to buy a ticket that included a coach trip and the last time i'd done that it was to go to manchester to see frankie goes too hollywood (who, by the way, were massively disappointing).

i bought my ticket and arrived at the bus station at the appropriate time.
the concert was OK - a bit bland, workman-like, note-perfect, excitement free.

but the concert itself isn't really the reason for this story.
it was the coach trip that i remember.
specifically for this:

the coach arrived on time.
there were about 20 people waiting at telford to go to the show.
the bus made it's way to shifnal to pick up a dozen more.
from shifnal the next stop was to be birmingham coach station and from there we were to go directly to the NEC.

except we got on the motorway (the M54 for those of you who might be interested) but instead of travelling directly to birmingham the driver took us off the motorway and dived down country roads, through a couple of obscure villages and then, shouting through the carriage, "won't be long", the driver pulled the coach over at a farmhouse, got out and disappeared through the front gate and into the side door of the building.

we all looked at each other in bewilderment.
if this had happened today no-one would even have made eye contact as we'd all be immersed in our iPods and PSP's, but back then as we waited talk started of what on earth was happening.

the driver left us on the side of this lonely country lane for nearly 20 minutes before climbing back onto the coach and, without a single word of explanation, drove a strangulated route back onto the motorway and continued our journey.

to this day i have absolutely no idea what was going on (though i could probably take an educated guess).