Steep Track, Sharp Bend

 Found an old iPod in a drawer today while sorting out some stuff, I stuck it on charge and went about my domestic chores, drank some coffee and stuck bids on Stax records on EBay. I was pleasantly surprised that the olde iPod took the charge so rigged it up to my system via an actual wire lead and stuck it on shuffle. Well, when I say stuck it on shuffle I actually mean I had to work out that it wasn’t actually touchscreen but ‘click wheel’ remember that? How far have we come in such a little time, fuck me, we were grinding corn using a windmill for 700 years and yet I’d actually forgotten that there was an electronic device that wasn’t touchscreen! Anyway, first track that came up was by a forgotten Manchester band called Intastella, a track called ‘People’ It immediately took me back to a pub in Derby called the Garrick, an old mod pub on the Ashbourne Road, me and Barse had originally set out to see a band called Heliotrope, a sort of Levellers / Hawkwind type crossover band that we had seen before at the Vic. But for some reason they no-showed so we decided to take a punt on the Garrick instead. Lo and behold I had my socks knocked off instead by Intastella, remember this is pre- StoneRoses/HappyMondays/Oasis so to see this band smashing it was, well, rather spiffing. All the ingredients of Hammond organ, phasing, live drums and 303’s coupled with a great girl singer,sent us home very happy chappy’s.

Here’s a photo of my Trek. The warning sign made me laugh. Some wag had added the Superman cape to the bloke going over the handlebars, hilarious for around thirty seconds until it was me going over the ‘bars sans cape…….