pastels | birmingham | 1988

towards the end of 88 and through 89 i went through a stage of getting into gigs for nothing.
the first one i remember was the pastels at burberry's in birmingham.

i and a couple of friends had arrived early.
i was wearing my best duffle coat, jeans and desert boots and sported a scruffy basin haircut.
i could hear the pastels soundchecking inside.
i banged on the doors.

eventually a doorman opened the door, peered out at us and asked, "yeah? what d'you want?"
i asked if he could tell stephen pastel that mark flunder was at the door (mark was a mutual friend - he was in the mctells and he'd filmed the pastels movie, "a bit of the other").
the doorman duly disappeared off into the venue and a few minutes later returned to let us in.

we wandered down towards the stage and as we came into view stephen shouted, "that's not f*cking mark flunder!!"
"no", replied aggi, "it's not - but he looks more like you than you do".

that broke the ice and after saying our hello's we found a corner of the venue to sit down and wait for the evening's entertainment to start.

as it turned out this was to be the night that i met another future friend.
the pastels support for the gig was dandelion adventure - they were yet to release their debut LP , "puppy shrine" - and we watched them soundcheck.
i thought they were great and so, after they were done, i went over to the guitar player and introduced myself.
"did we sound OK form out there?", the guitar player asked.
"i thought you sounded great - really liek the membranes!", i responded.
the guitar player gave me a hard stare and then in a raised voice said, "don't you know who i am? don't you recognise me? i'm stan! i was in the membranes!".
oh.
oops.

i apologised profusely, bought him a lemonade, and he forgave me (he's a very forgiving chap).

there was, i'm sure, a third band on the bill that night but i can't for the life of me remember who it was..
if you know, please tell.