membranes | wolverhampton | 1988

wolverhampton polytechnic had a small subterranean student bar.
you could get about 50 people in there.
we'd heard that cud and the membranes were playing and so hopped in our old morris minor (god this blog gets more indie schmindie with each post!) and trundled along.

cud didn't show and so the membranes treated the 20 or so people there to a very long set.
i know a lot of people who claim not to like the membranes.
live they ROCKED.
some of the records are a bit drab but i still have a fondness for every one of them.

over the course of the 80's and early 90's i saw the membranes a LOT.
but this gig stands out for one reason.
it was the first time i had any contact with a brummie called daren.

we were leaving the poly and in front of us was a young chap wearing a denim jacket.
the back of this jacket was hand painted with the cover of a bogshed record.

i had to say hello.

we spoke briefly and went our seperate ways.
i mention daren here as he will probably turn up in several of these posts.
i might as well get the rest of the story out of the way now.

after meeting the boy in the bogshed jacket i thought nothing about it.
a few weeks later i went to a concert in manchester and there he was.
we said hello.
just about every gig after that featured a brief exchange of hello's.
he seemed to be everywhere i went.

the last time i saw him was in the early 90's when i bumped into him at a blues explosion show and he informed me he was in a new band called pram.

i didn't see him again until last year when his nephew contacted me about my band, mentioned his uncle had joined the nightingales as their new drummer, and gave me his email address.
and there he was - brummie daren with the bogshed jacket.

now we're firm friends.
our conversations mainly concerning ridiculous gigs we both attended, how much more beer we can drink and how it seems like we've known each other forever.

(apologies for the sappy ending, but it's a nice story).