UTB versus Soap

In my half century as a TV viewer I’ve only got into the soap operas twice. The first was Neighbours, when motorbike-riding bad boy Mike started “going steady” with Plane Jane Superbrain. Jane was a minger because she wore specs. Mike wasn’t just a motorbike-riding bad boy, he was also an incredible visionary because once he saw Jane with her specs off he realised what nobody else did- She was well fit! What a find! Like accidentally striking oil in the back garden. The romance that followed gripped us all at Kibble Bank but I’m not here to talk about the first time I got into soap operas, this is about the second time. It was November 1995 and now whenever autumn turns to winter my memories turn back to the time I got really into Emmerdale.

The Dingle family had been introduced to the show the previous year and Steve Halliwell, the actor who played Zak Dingle lived in Burnley. He lived up Todmorden Road, went in the Woodman pub and was reasonable pally with Uptown Band stalwart Dave Pilling. He used to come and watch Joe Madden’s World Famous Uptown Band quite regularly at weekends and expressed fondness for us. Everybody did back then, the combination of my Dad’s erratic brilliance combined with the undeniable dynamism of a load of 16 to 20 year olds made the band a spectacle of sorts. Whenever Steve Halliwell came to a gig my Dad would “whisper” to me, “that guy with the beard is off Emmerdale.” As Mike Moore would say, he learnt to whisper in a helicopter. Anyway, I hadn’t ever watched the show so it was academic to me. I was still impressed because nobody from Burnley is ever on telly, especially not through acting.

Around September 1995 Steve started asking if we’d play a party for him. He’d just been given a permanent Emmerdale contract, Zak Dingle was there to stay. He wanted to throw a party at the Sparrow Hawk in Burnley and invite all the cast of Emmerdale and all his Burnley friends along. He wanted the Uptown Band to play and he wanted to play a few songs himself with some friends from the show. We already had a gig in the diary for the date he wanted in November but being men of no substance we simply fucked it off. It was a wedding anniversary or something that had been in the diary for ages. We just suddenly said we couldn’t do it, we probably told them we had to miss it to play for the cast of Emmerdale thinking they’d ‘get it’. As far as we were concerned this was a massive opportunity. Presumably we thought the cast would love it and somehow their fame would rub off on us. Maybe we’d be offered a role as a covers band in the show. Maybe ITV would give us our own show. Fuck knows. When you live in Burnley you don’t understand what goes on in the world of showbiz, it’s a mystery box. Much like the television itself is when my tortoise looks at it.

So once it was decided we were doing the gig I decided I was going to ‘get into Emmerdale.’ No point being in a room of celebrities and not knowing who any of them are after all. I had six weeks to get stuck in but you can hit the ground running with a soap. Nicky, Nathan and Richard all got on board too. We all watched Emmerdale every fucking day. Sometimes even twice, afternoon and evening, why not? We got the gist, the Dingles were scrubbers, the Tates were rich bastards. Chris Tate was in a wheelchair, Kim Tate was all sexy and conniving and shagging an earnest young plonker called Dave behind Chris’ back. It was all going off. Six weeks was all it took and we were in deep.

We went down to Birmingham the day before the gig to pick Richard up from university, a noble rescue mission based on the fact that Richard was now so into Emmerdale that he simply had to get back home for it. We got stuck in traffic on the M6 for hours and hours on the way back to the gig. It was terrifying, all that Emmerdale watching might go to waste because of the stupid M6. We made it though, of course we made it. We got everyone in there too, a guest list of dedicated six-week Emmerdale fans. Nathan was 17 and determined to pull someone off Emmerdale. He hung around Kim Tate and Tina Dingle like a bad smell all night, no joy but much of life’s beauty is in the chase right? It turned out the people in the room weren’t exactly like their characters on the show. Kim Tate wasn’t a vindictive, power hungry slag (because this was real life, not the TV show) and was really quite nice. Chris Tate wasn’t in a wheelchair (because this was real life, not the TV show) and was a towering figure. Dave wasn’t actually shagging Kim Tate (because this was real life, not the TV show) and they actually just seemed on friendly terms. We weren’t thrown off by any of that though, we just talked to them as though they were the characters from the show. I remember Dad talking to Zoe the vet and telling her he really admired her for standing up to the Tate family, before hurriedly adding “in the show.” We were a bit like Brooke Shields’ cameo character in Friends. Worse in a way though because we weren’t comedy constructions, we were genuine buffoons blurring the lines of reality with Yorkshire soap stars.

Everything changed in an instant when those guys hit the stage though. We’d played a bog standard set to mid-level enthusiasm. I even cleverly inserted phrases from the Emmerdale theme music in every solo I did. We were warming the night up for the Emmerdale cast band of Zak Dingle on drums, Terry from the Woolpack on bass and Vic Windsor from the post office on guitar. The punters were excited, the band were pumped. They had all the gear too, Vic Windsor had two Mesa Boogie stacks and a pedal board. There was tension and anticipation in the room, what would they be like? It’d take me too much time and effort to generate the kind of suspense that was felt by that room full of cast members and Burnley gawkers so let me just cut to the chase and say they were proper dogshit. They hopelessly trawled through a set of badly played blues rock covers including a good few Hendrix butcherings. It became quite obvious that Vic Windsor from the post office took himself pretty seriously, hence his seeing it as appropriate to publicly murder Purple Haze and Hey Joe. At the end of it he stood there and berated poor old Zak Dingle for his playing, accusing him of speeding up and slowing down. That’s a shit do when it’s your party and you’re just trying to have a few drinks and jam with some work pals. Zak Dingle was a proper chap though, he didn’t take shit off postal workers and fired back with pluck.

We did another set, filled with standard Joe Madden fare as you’d expect, but somehow the charm and humour didn’t come back to the room. Vic Windsor from the post office carried on with his ill-informed musical tirade during our packing up until Zak Dingle had had enough and lamped him. They were rolling around on the floor of the Sparrow Hawk hotel bar all spitting and swearing. Obviously they were actors so you could never be quite sure whether the whole thing was an elaborate Beadle’s About wind-up but it all seemed pretty genuine. Terry from the Woolpack separated them and attempted to heal the rift. Would this mighty three piece ever manage to work things out and play again?

Unfortunately they did.

Don’t watch that, I just did and it made my arse clench.

I went cold turkey on Emmerdale the day after.

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Wakeman On Fine Form

If you haven’t seen this yet then your algorithm is knackered and you need to adjust it by watching nothing but lengthy interviews with prog session legends for the next week. Or maybe you did see it was there but haven’t got round to consuming the full hour and a half. Go for it though, it’ll fly by. Rick is on tremendous form and is funny as always, but the fact that he knows he’s talking to a proper musician means he’s prepared to go in deeper on a few subjects. It’s fantastic to hear stories about his early session career and its beginnings when he was still at school, there’s some great stuff about Thomas Goff and all the stuff about writing with Yes is priceless. I’d have listened to another six hours of it.

Stax: Soulville USA

I’ve wanted to watch this for ages and I finally started this week due to Sky Documentaries suddenly working on our package. I think Kate told Sky we were cancelling so they turned a load of stuff on for free to charm us. It’s WELL good. Simple as that. There’s footage I’ve seen before but enough that I haven’t. Your heart skips a beat every time you see some footage of Otis hanging around and having a laugh, he’s just there and he’s alive and a happy human in the studio having fun with his friends. It’s devastatingly frail and you know it’ll all be over before it’s even really started. I allowed my heart to be warmed by the tales of the Stax roadshow coming to Europe and the UK specifically as it was the first time they all truly felt like stars. We’re a far from perfect country and we’ve had plenty of issues with race in our history, but to hear the legends of Stax talk about eating in restaurants together, staying in the same hotels as their white colleagues and generally being allowed to feel like human beings made me feel the slightest twinge of something like pride. I’m glad these beautiful people who’ve brought me so much joy in my life felt welcome when they came to the country I live in. They don’t mention gigging in Nelson though.

RIP Phill Matthews

Burnley tragically lost the fantastic, towering figure of Phil Matthews this week. For people of my Dad’s generation he was a light-heavyweight contender who fought for the British title. A serious athlete with giant fists and thunderous knockout power. For people of my generation he was a loveable crackpot who turned up singing anywhere and everywhere. I was once at a New Year’s Day party at Paddy Patterson’s house when he showed up unannounced with a PA system and sang relentlessly for the whole day. To about eight people who were eating their dinner. He used to set up on the street outside the Mechanics at every Blues Festival, dueting with passers-by. The last time we played an Easter Sunday at the Talbot he turned up and told us that he was going to be singing Little Red Rooster with us. We had no way of stopping him, he bellowed it out while we gamely played along. A couple of verses in he told Dave to do a guitar solo then got himself into a difficult looking squat position and started grunting into the microphone. I leaned over the organ to ask my Dad what on earth Phil was up to. “I think he’s laying an egg,” he said.

Farewell Phil, you are missed already.