The Grain 18

13. THE 'NEW' GRAIN...

I went in to 1988 with a serious sense of optimism. The co-operative was growing; whilst we appear to have lost Momento Mori for reasons that still escape my memory, we'd picked up Leviathan (the electronic music duo of Paul Wells and Mal Cieslak) and Alex Cable's Internal Autonomy, a politically charged anarcho punk outfit, thus further stretching the musical diversity of the project. And we were kinda hopeful that Greed would be joining the fray. Ehrlich Bullet, of course, the secret's long been out on that one. We'd also taken on local music columnist, Adrian Creek (who'd done a page for the festival programme), to write a regular column for the zine, undoubtedly hoping for better local press coverage for whatever events we put on. After a rather satisfying first year, we had hoped to take the whole thing on to a different level for the second, so the first issue of the zine that year was titled "The New Grain" and was the first to have a cover price, albeit only 10p (about 25p in today's equivalent). The official explanation given inside was that the money would be used to finance a freebie sampler cassette to be given away with a future issue, though that would never come to fruition, whilst there was also a mention of a charity compilation called "New Grain-Aid!", planned to raise funds for specialist equipment for Frimley Park Hospital. And then there was the ultimate aim; to spread the word of our locally based band / poet / artist (we still had Iaino doing his underground cartoons for us) co-operative outside the area that bore it...

Beyond Frimley Community Centre - the final frontier - these are the voyages of The New Grain co-operative - it's continuing mission; to explore strange new towns, to seek out new ears and new eyes - to boldly go where no Camberley band had gone before (NB - please accept our most humble apologies with regard to Bros). And we had a cunning plan...

The first and only issue of "The New Grain" was published early February with a 10p cover price

The advertising poster for The Crypt gig, drawn for The Charles by a friend of theirs by the name of Helen Macdonald, now famed as the Costa Book Of The Year and Samuel Johnson Prize winning author of "H Is For Hawk". I was disappointed with it myself, I'd thought it was a spelling book for Twizz.

The Charles had already played at The Crypt, the almost perfect alternative underground venue (literally, it being underneath St. Paul's Church in Deptford, south east London), supporting The Magic Mushroom Band. We had thought it would be the ideal place to take The Grain to the capital, doing pretty much what we'd done at the first Grain gig, including the joint encore. We'd talked to venue manager, Andy (I can still picture his face, but for the life of me can't remember his surname!), and he'd been up for it, giving us the date of Friday 18th March (original Crypt flyer on the right). All the details went in the February issue of the zine; we had booked a fans coach, with pick ups in Aldershot, Fleet, Farnborough, Frimley and Camberley (tickets £3.25, available at The Rock Box) and were ready to proverbially rumble. But things were already starting to go wrong behind the scenes. The Charles had been struggling ever since the theft of Tarquin's drum kit before Christmas, something Chris now acknowledges as most likely the first nail in the coffin. Although being able to borrow a kit when needed, it does rather stifle the ability to be spontaneous. The next nail had already been mentioned in the zine, though we hadn't realised that's what it would end up being. The Charles' page reported that Benedik was to leave the band, being replaced on guitar by "someone who used to be called Jason". The Charles used to say stuff like that. This turns out to be one Jason Grey, of whom Chris says "I'm not sure if that worked out." History would suggest it didn't. Tarquin tells me they did "one or two practises with Jason before losing heart with it all." And then The Charles were no more.

The Crypt gig still went ahead, only we ended up supporting veteran psyche rockers, The Pink Fairies, instead. It was a night that forged some of our first contacts in the psychedelic underground, which would prove quite fortuitous in the future, which was just as well, because without its founding fathers, The Charles, The Grain could surely no longer be a viable proposition. However, I was determined that it should not be forgotten. Although it had not even survived till its first anniversary, it had already had the most profound effect on my life and there is no way I would have let it end without an official swansong. Since our dalliance with Earworm Records hadn't come to anything of any great significance, we'd been toying with the idea of starting a label of our own. It seemed appropriate to combine these two ideas; so, following 18 demos, the first official release on the new MMATT (Music & Elsewhere) label would be a charity compilation entitled...

☼ G R A I N Y M E M O R I E S ☺

"The best thing about being involved in The Grain for me was access to the music, closely followed by a sense of belonging to a group of kindred spirits. I was quite shy as a teenager and didn't hang about with people who shared my taste in music, because they all seemed older and more confident than me. Being able to get hold of the music easily, via the Rock Box, and being able to find out about the local music scene, that I was too young to be a part of at the time (I was 15/16), was really important to me."

White Hawk (now PR guru, author, and founder of award winning community website for herself and others with multiple sclerosis, 'Jooly's Joint', as well as being one of the most remarkable women I've ever known - Julie Howell)