Virtual Jukebox

A very self-indulgent one next. I was chatting to an old band-mate the other day and I mentioned how none of the music we'd ever made was on-line anywhere. He corrected me, telling me that he'd digitised an old cassette and put it on YouTube (thanks Fluffy)!

Love, Chips and Peace (LCAP) was the nearest thing that Bradford's 1 in 12 Club had to a "supergroup". All of us were in "serious" punk bands, but the lead singer had an amazing way with comedy lyrics set to the tunes of cheesy disco songs, so collected together whoever he could to put together the silliest band we could possibly manage. I played bass for them for a couple of years, and also a couple of years ago when we reformed for a friend's birthday party. My first gig with them happened when the original bass player couldn't make a gig in London - I learned the entire set sat in the back of the van on the drive down the M1 to London, which for LCAP was considered a rather luxurious amount of practice. Despite being as sloppy as possible being one of the guiding principles of LCAP, it was, of course, by far the most popular of any of the bands any of us were in!

Unfortunately the whole tape is one long video, and the quality is terrible, so don't feel as if you have to listen to all (or any) of it!  I don't think I'm on much of this recording, as it was mostly made before I joined the band permanently, however if you jump to around 22:20, there's a delightful picture of me and my DIY customised bass at that very first gig that I played with them (in a squatted pub called the Grievous Bodily Arms!) There are photos of the lyric sheets if anyone fancies singing along!...

Really enjoyed looking and listening. So many clever, funny and hard-hitting lyrics about stuff happening back then. We need more of this sort of thing right now! 

Really enjoyed looking and listening. So many clever, funny and hard-hitting lyrics about stuff happening back then. We need more of this sort of thing right now! 

In my experience arts venues are a pretty good place to hang out as an autistic person; I find that creative people are often more accepting of my differences, and there's usually a good chance of finding one or two other people who at least think in a slightly unconventional way, even if they're not autistic themselves - there's only one letter difference between autistic and artistic!

We had a nice little community art gallery in the village that I used to live in, which was always interesting, as the artists were often around to talk to, and the picture gallery itself was always a low-stimulation environment (I still avoided opening nights, though!)

This has encouraged me to be slightly more adventurous and to try and seek out the quirky venues I frequented in my youth.

For a brief while, when I worked at a cinema, I was part of an interesting sub-culture where I felt more at home. 

Thankyou on behalf of LCAP!

The lead singer was an amazing guy, his way with words is incredible, and he could churn them out at a ridiculous rate. He's also a fantastic magician, in the Tommy Cooper "pretend it's all gone wrong" kind of style; he used to get plenty of free beers that way when his giro had run out. I hadn't seen him for nearly 20 years when we got together for the re-union gig, and when we were catching up and I mentioned my autism diagnosis, it turned out that he now works in a special needs school helping autistic teenagers! I can well imagine that he's brilliant at it, he's one of those people that can befriend absolutely anyone, and generous to a fault.

Sunflower said:

We need more of this sort of thing right now! 

Yes. I think it is still out there, but most of the small venues that used to put on cheap punk gigs just aren't there any more, and there's such a flood of dross on the internet these days that the gems are very hard to find unless you stumble across them by accident (or on this thread!)