troublegum

Live music, Obituaries

Therapy? – Bedford Esquires – 1 April 1998

October 8, 2012

Regular readers of SGTMT (I almost wrote that with no sense of irony, almost) will be aware that the origins of this blog lie in a now defunct independent record store in deepest Bedford.

Nowadays Bedford lies somewhere in the past, a series of blurry and obscure teenage memories (did James really vomit on that girl whilst talking on the phone to his mum?). But today Bedford sprung back to mind through three remarkable news stories. Firstly, this one about a Lion on a Bedford residential estate. The line ‘Locals speculated that it could have been a pig’ is total genius, you couldn’t make it up (though probably they did). Secondly, this even more bizarre story about an elderly couple and cannabis. My normally un-astute brother wisely commented that these stories maybe related…

However, it was this third story that was most affecting – Esquires will fight for survival. For any Bedford teenager with a genuine interest in music in the mid to late 90s (or for many years prior and since) Bedford Esquires was pretty much the only place to sample half decent live music. The venue hosts a reach heritage of bands in their infant stages gracing their miniscule stage, including; Coldplay, Franz Ferdinand, Muse, Supergrass, Bloc Party etc. etc.

I warmly recall seeing The Pecadiloes (pretty much the only decent band to ever come from Bedford), Carrie and others I now can’t recall. Tom and Luke (fellow SGTMTers) were big fans of their DnB and Breakbeat nights (can anyone recall what they were called?) and I still remember how pumped we were when our chum Arthur got to DJ one Friday evening.

However my abiding memory of Esquires will always be seeing Therapy? at a not very ‘secret’ gig on a Wednesday evening in a totally jammed room, health and safety regulations didn’t apply that night. At the time Therapy? were not ‘huge’ but still a pretty big deal, they were warming up for some festival or something and put on a totally stunning (though somewhat overly sweaty) performance.

Bedford without Esquires probably won’t be much different, it’ll just be slightly more boring. All the same, I’d hate to see the only decent music venue in the town (if not the county) go to pot (no pun intended).

#saveesquires

Watch two awful music videos for Nowhere and Screamager;

I found this by The Pecadiloes:

And this by Carrie:

You can still buy the brilliant Troublegum album by Therapy? on CD from Amazon or on MP3 from iTunes

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5 Comments

  1. Ephraim Zimbalist says:
    October 9, 2012 at 7:11 am

    There is nothing like your earliest memories of music venues. I watched Arthur Brown, and Pugma Ho, on the tiny stage of Cleopatra’s (later Clouds) in Derby (I missed Bowie, who played there a few weeks before). I claim my hearing damage was from watching Mott the Hoople at Derby’s Kings Hall (which was the municipal swimming pool, boarded over).

    Keep music live.

    This is an unusually solemn comment. So, this man goes into a bar, and sees a chicken, a Dalek and Anna Friel, and the barman says [fill in your own punchline]

  2. Ephraim Zimbalist says:
    October 9, 2012 at 6:04 pm

    Whoa! I would have liked Therapy? had I not found QOTSA later. And the Pecadiloes (I choose to believe they COULD spell, but chose not to) scare me half to death. Pre-echoes of Nirvana, there, which is no bad thing. Nirvana (via my son) brought me back to rowdy music, after years in the wilderness thinking rock had died when John Bonham did. Oh, and is that surfer music, from Carrie? Nah. Hey, did I tell you I have a Teisco del Rey, the King of the Surfer guitars? Oh. Sorry. I repeat myself a lot these days. Are you my nurse?

  3. Ephraim Zimbalist says:
    October 9, 2012 at 6:06 pm

    And to put you out of my misery:

    ” and the barman says; ‘The usual?’”

    Did I say it was a joke? It’s a Zen Koan, disguised as a joke. Now you won’t be able to sleep, will you.

  4. Tom Careless says:
    October 9, 2012 at 10:35 pm

    holy sweet baby moses, those therapy? videos are unbelievable.
    i miss the pecas.

  5. Ephraim Zimbalist says:
    October 13, 2012 at 7:19 am

    Oh, and before you pull the plug on comments …. I mentioned the ‘chicken/Dalek/Friel’ scenario to my other half, in circumstances I won’t go into, and she interrupted my hilarious anecdote to say; “What was the Dalek drinking, and how?” Which might explain why we have been married for 36 years. And we knew each other before that. In the biblical sense.