Hmm just found this site1, someone else's gigography. Geed by my success yesterday of tracking down the Snuff gig I was at in Winchester this one I went searching again for the first time I saw the Senseless Things, which I remember was in Southampton with the Cropdusters. The only way to find some of these small gigs so long after the fact is to find someone equally nerdy online who is also archiving all their gigs. And this is a great one.
Now, I remember I saw Tad at Portsmouth Poly and I remember someone saying to me at the gig "are you going to see Birdland? What's up I suppose they're not metal enough for you". That was around the time of the gigs below:
- Tad Portsmouth Polytechnic 1989-10-28
- Nirvana Portsmouth Polytechnic 1989-10-28
- Wedding Present Portsmouth Guildhall 1989-10-30
- Greenhouse Portsmouth Guildhall 1989-10-30
- Ten Thousand Maniacs London Royal Albert Hall 1989-11-07
- Indigo Girls London Royal Albert Hall 1989-11-07
- Jesus and Mary Chain London Brixton Academy 1989-11-11
- Perfect Disaster London Brixton Academy 1989-11-11
- See See Rider London Brixton Academy 1989-11-11
- All About Eve Portsmouth Guildhall 1989-11-15
- Summerhill Portsmouth Guildhall 1989-11-15
- Primitives Portsmouth Guildhall 1989-11-20
- Pale Saints Portsmouth Guildhall 1989-11-20
- Wonder Stuff Portsmouth Guildhall 1989-11-22
- Eat Portsmouth Guildhall 1989-11-22
- Neds Atomic Dustbin Portsmouth Guildhall 1989-11-22
- Mudhoney London Astoria 1989-12-04
- Mega City Four London Astoria 1989-12-04
- Dark Side London Astoria 1989-12-04
- Snuff Chichester Thursdays 1989-12-11
- Onion Johny Chichester Thursdays 1989-12-11
- Birdland Brighton Richmond 1990-01-10
- See See Rider Brighton Richmond 1990-01-10
- Birdland Portsmouth Polytechnic 1990-02-16
- Destroy the Boy Portsmouth Polytechnic 1990-02-16
Those are the gigs attended by Paul Wingham not me... So can that have been the Tad gig I was at? When they were supported by Nirvana? I'm sure it was not but it's tantalisingly close, they are pretty close together in time... I suspect Tad must have played the same venue again sometime between October and February though, and that was the one I was at. Damn.
This was the one I came in here for anyway:
Cropdusters Southampton Eastpoint Centre 1990-12-23 Senseless Things Southampton Eastpoint Centre 1990-12-23
I think someone I was at that gig with did meet Kurt Cobain though, maybe in Portsmouth, around this time, and swapped their jumper with him for a Nirvana t-shirt. Maybe my rose-tinted rear view mirror is just really scratched and blurry though.
UPDATE: just googled and the friend who I thought it was is now a woman, though they were a boy when I knew them.
Paul Clarke's blog - I live in Hythe near Folkestone. Married to Clare + dad to two, I'm a full-stack web engineer, + I do js / nodejs, some ruby, other languages etc. I like pubs, parkrun, eating, home automation and other diy jiggery-pokery, history, genealogy, Television, squirrels, pirates, lego, and TIME TRAVEL.