McAllisters
The McAllisters
The McAllisters began to move, stir and feel the rush of life upon their keel in the post-post-punk dog days of '85. We'd all been in groups before, in my (davidthomaskettle) case, 1st school-formed band featured both a future art object and a pig-in-embryo. But the last time I'd seen action was in a group featuring those whom God had blessed and those for whom God was already dead. A little known and barely remembered (even by its own members) noise outfit, the short lived Atmospheric Walkers who, in the halcyon summer of '82, nonetheless headlined the legendary Dinner With Franco event at the Clifton Hope Chapel, which ended explosively in orgiastic scenes of mayhem and none too subtle violence. Chris Bonnington is rumoured to have been present. The MAP to the palace of excess was, though, subsequently lost somewhere along the Cumberland Basin road. But cassettes were made. And exchanged. And re-cycled, in early eco-minded deference to future generations. And that same DIY ethic was still abroad well into the mid-80s... Others in the group had also recently appeared, notably in the delicately nurtured and amusingly named noise merchants, the Six Poisons...
I was the only Bristolian (Rovers) among us... the rest of the group hailing from as far afield as Wakefield (via Tirana), Southampton (via Andalucía), Birmingham Alabama and Toronto. Wham were top of the charts, Labour was enmeshed in the long long process of disintegration (though Madonna's breasts were beginning to get the attention they'd long been seeking), the miserablists were lording it in both main and indie stream, and charity rock was beginning to gather its defining Geldoffian and Red Wedge-head of steam...
Initially a cotham-garage-band two-piece - dtk guitar/vocals & markstevenaldridge (Rovers) on drums, our initial impulse, as dyed in the wool van vliet fans, was to give free vent to those ol'beefheartian inclinations for a delirious minute (or month) or two, before accepting that the captain could best be saluted by avoiding that kind of inevitable pastiche-effect entirely. Plus, every indie band and his dog back then appeared to think it was a birthright to essay a sort of 2nd/3rd gen scratchy guitar relationship to the Magic Band... but that way, the way of emulation, lay the worst kind of pretence. Or so we thought. So no itchy, angular intertwining guitar figures, odd stop/start structures, field recordings, surreal/dirty lyrics or freeform Ornette Coleman type blowing for us... and definitely no animalian white boy funk... instead we went downwards, and inwards, below the line, in search of the Avonmouth delta blues... all estuarian and riffy... and pre-grunge grungy... until, a bit later on, the onset of the grebo sub-genre reminded us to steer well clear of that particular mess, and to massage our postpostpunk sensibilities in another direction entirely. One vaguely sign-marked rockabilly, post-fall ramshackle hooks, intensified and riffed into heavy stooges-esque repetition, leavened with hyper-romantic washes of melody.
With the limitations of the guitar/drum line-up becoming all too apparent, we then became 3, joined on bass by Frank Hoxha (City) from Tirana (via Wakefield) and began to hone the dirty, estuarian/swampy sounding style guitar and the heavily repetitive riff thing... in this 3 piece form, we played our first ever gig in early '86, opening for the Idiot Sideshow at the Montpelier Hotel. We absolutely thrashed it, and yet, things were still not quite right, as I was quickly forced to admit (like many a strummer before me) that I was incapable of simultaneously playing the guitar and singing. So a guitarist (Dave H - also Wakefield) was added and our sound rapidly coalesced into something journalists began to accurately characterise as hypnotic and compelling. And brutal. The thudding and tight-as-fuck rhythm section was augmented by a guitar that sounded as though it had been distilled from an essence of bad sex, Breugel the Elder phantasmagoria and a precognition of Hideo Nakata's Ring cycle, but played with the exquisite precision of Richard Dadd's fairy feller cracking his big fat nut...
This then was our first "signature" sound. Approaching the well established (revered, even) Bristol funk/punk nexus with a degree of caution, we had by default eschewed the funk, and more or less embraced the punk. Or at least the post-punk. We felt at that moment we were the rightful post-post-punk heirs, and were ready to claim our birthright. We didn't shamble, shimmer or shoegaze. We went on the attack. And played a hatful of gigs, responses varying in degrees from profound indifference to wildly expressed enthusiasm, and recorded a series of demos that accurately documented this phase of the group's life. The songs recorded followed, on the face of it, an apolitical course, as far as such a thing was possible in an era when Thatcher was really starting to get on peoples' wicks big time, and most contemporary groups/punters lost no time in nailing their colours to the designated mast, but we preferred a less overt line of attack. We just affected to hate the audiences, proxies for the (alternative) consumer society they affected to despise, rather than affecting to favour a collectivist, utopian vision of redistributed goods and services. Songs celebrated (over)consumption of that which was always readily available, existential (wahey!) automotive excess, noir films reimagined as thrash feedback, Cary Grant the Bristol boy morphing into Jack Nance in Eraserhead (Bringing Up Baby X 2), numinous pre-dawn river walks that might as well have been early Terence Malick storyboard contenders were they not so clearly and openly touched by the divine hand of God, and none too numinous night time hospital visits...
Despite having co-authored this unique (signature #1) sound, Dave H left us to concentrate on his own project (the weirdly wonderful God Bless U) and Frank took up the discarded guitar, adding depth and soul, honing and refining the previously echoey cellar-sound into something relentless, grinding, exoteric. We began to feel the need, however, for another melodic edge to cut against the remorseless homogeny of the sound, and the group soon mutated into a 5 piece, adding a bass player - Dave Britton (City - and Bristol boy #2) to replace Frank and a 2nd (melodic) guitarist, Andy Wallace (unknown allegiance - Sourhampton). And so we began to fashion what we, and others, notably the late, lamented Marc Crewe - our principle champion at the time - regarded as our 2nd, but not ultimately defining, signature sound. A churning, melodic, repetitive, occasionally rockabilly-inflected, guttural soundtrack to the established political and cultural neuroses of the age.
With this line-up came a slew of new demos, including embryonic versions of our pseudo-hits, "Mother Confessor", a paean to the hypnotic effect that the reigning female demiurge appeared at this time to have on ally and enemy alike, and tally-ho hunt sabs workaround "Grey Suit Rebel Search". Other songs fingered C of E hostages to fortune and self-defined destiny, city road street life, more numinous Machen-inflected bloody stories, the simplicity of singing, and a sort of quasi-cover of Like a Virgin (Like, a Version)... we weren't big on covers, our only other stab in that direction being a rattle-along version of Devo's "Sloppy (I Saw My Baby Getting)" that we used as a stage livener...
At this point Dave B decided he'd had enough. He had been tight, and very efficient, his lines unerringly precise and to the point. His replacement, chrisbuffalomartin (Toronto), was a shoe-in. The Buffalo selected himself. Equally tight, he also brought the kind of propulsive energy that feels no pain and the drive to succeed that it's possible we might otherwise have lacked. Plus, as owner, and experienced Visconti-otyped bassist/chief engineer of the studio where we recorded (E-Plus, later "The Facility") we didn't need to think twice. Chris (and Andy) added a kind of upbeat positivity that maybe wasn't always apparent in the demeanour of the original group members. Certainly on stage, where the brand of intensity they both favoured manifested itself as manic and hyperactive, in contrast to the static, or at most occasionally strolling, indifference of the singer and rhythm guitarist. This visual schism, amplified by a neurotic mix of fashions (Oxfam chic/overcoats as well as standard issue decadent leathers and mascara) appeared to have a mesmerising effect on most reviewers, whose thesauri now unerringly sought out synonyms for "hypnotic" and "brutal"...
So, the presence of Chris and Andy, it might feasibly be said, represented the last piece of the jigsaw, the group's final transition from artful but work shy bastards into potential contenders for a slice of whatever action might be going. Finally galvanised us, in other words, into some real-world action. More gigs, including a collection of London dates, followed. Inevitably, these ranged from the 3 men and a dog scenario (George Robey in Finsbury Park/Greenwich Tunnel Club) to established club nights at Dingwalls and Jon Fat Beast's Bull & Gate (Hype) set-up, plus the likes of The Cricketers at the Oval. And we finally got around to recording for release. Under the auspices of the gvt Enterprise Allowance Scheme/Scam (massage those figures) a label (Jolly Good Records) was hastily founded, a distribution deal was done with Revolver/The Cartel and we went for it. "Mother Confessor" and "Grey Suit" were joined by "Sooner or Later" (disarmament talks re-imagined as failing love affair), "Lamentable" (noir nightmare on city rd), "Poetry Corner" (in vogue spy-boy memoir fantasy), "Terry & June" (their final words) and was released (minus Sooner or Later - lack of space) as "Too Much Money Propaganda" - a 12" EP whose title was appropriated from stream of consciousness local busker Aston L Henry - which was reviewed dismissively by Jane Suck-Solanas in the NME, but more importantly, and encouragingly, by (among others) the Bristol Evening Post, and very positively in the esteemed local listings mag, Venue. Our most oft-quoted claim to fame, though, was that several tracks from said EP were played by John Peel (representing, therefore, an almost literal 15 warholian minutes). Attempts to secure a Peel session, however, were bafflingly unsuccessful.
Whatever, even without the patronage of the bedroom fantasist's favourite lugubrious disc spinner, we immediately attempted to capitalise on this relative (by the standards we'd set ourselves) success, and lost no time in recording another EP, comprising 4 songs - "Oh Yeah" (cock rock shakedown, frenetic violin and harmonica), "Down and Out on Chickenly Blues" (thumbs down jaunty rundown of charity rock meme), "You Are What You Will" (highspeed Crowleyan buffoonery) & "Rag The Holy Man" (PiL's Religion for late-blooming poetry stoners) - which we believed expanded on and furthered the TMMP envelope. Sadly, however, we'd run out of money, so these songs were never released. Honing our art with the welfare state picking up the tab (like virtually all other bands of the era) and various enterprise allowance enabled schemes going tits up meant we lacked the funds to self-release again, and in the absence of actual record company hard cash, there the matter rested unfortunately... we were running out of money and time.
Yet, unlike pre-Bowie Mott the Hoople, we refused for now to throw in the towel (although it wouldn't be that long in appearing)... and after one last line-up change (founder member Mark had had enough and was replaced on drums by local enigma "Meirion Thinkpiece") we recorded a final EP (also never released - again, lack of hard cash) comprising 3 songs - "There and Back Man" (farewell to all that desperate 80s reinvention nonsense), "Eccentric Art Collector" (@221B) & "Cold Coat"(whattheyteachinschoolsnowaboutplanetwaves) - that we came to regard as our very best work, the sound re-mutating into something that incorporated newer elements, most egregiously the pure noise aesthetic, but more obviously the most effective flowering of the two guitar attack to date, at breakneck speed, pounding bass, whirls and whorls of speedy keyboard fills - at the height of our powers....there's a section in EAC that, heard blind, you'd swear came skittering down a time tunnel from the sessions for the first Roxy LP - back to the beginning of things... which is clearly a very good place to start...
But it wasn't to be. We were well fucked and out of puff by this time, and after a particularly enervating affair at the Cricketers, we toasted the embers and went our separate ways. Offspring were appearing... other priorities/opportunities/escape holes were manifesting themselves... At the height of McAllistermania in late '87 (after the release of the EP) there were rumours of label interest, but these sadly never amounted to anything, impetus was lost as group members started in on family rearing and the group eventually folded under the weight of frustrated ambition and the need to seek satisfaction elsewhere. But there was a time, late '87 into the beginning of '88, when expectations were high and belief unlimited.
Only one of us (Frank) still lives in Bristol, returning from Tirana, enriched after having cleaned up in property speculation after the fall of communism, and is now a producer of esoteric radio programmes at the BBC. Mark translates technical manuals (and I assume erotica) from Polish into English and back again in Kraków. I still dabble in making up tunes, creating soundtrack music on a computer, and writing novels, in Perth WA. Andy has been rumoured (for the last 25 years) to be living in one of the old anarchist communes in Andalucía, though no-one will say anything definite about it, while Chris was, at last sighting, rumoured to have gained his PhD in the doctoring of noize (sic)...
David K (August 2015)
