Tapeworm Gig
Joe Shooman says, ‘Skinflick were heavily involved in putting this together in the curved lounge at SU Bangor and it ran all day. It was most of the local noisy people past and present (hence Lungs and Glaring Green in there as well as Vaffan Coulo etc) and Fflaps had a stormer. Genital Deformities were great too as I remember. We recorded all of it – at least all the local bands – with Graeme Rowlands, who worked with quite a few bands at some stage in the early 90s punk/DIY Bangor scene. Subsequently around 20 tracks came out on a tape called – due to the curved (Banana) lounge – ‘The Tapeworm in the Banana’. I don’t quite know how many actual copies there were – maybe 100? But they were all dubbed from the master DAT so the sound quality’s pretty good – pure DIY stuff, I designed the sleeves with cut and paste bits and bobs from papers, porn mags and other silly sources and got them photocopied in red ink somehow. I don’t have a track list but Duncan Black I think still has a tape handy. I’d love to hear it if he can be arsed digitising it [:-)] There’s some really funny stuff on there like Barry – lead singer in Babies With Rabies – complaining when his band goes into ‘another bloody solo’. And a classic performance of Tony Blackburn by Oz. As far as I know, the only time that song was ever recorded.’ (click here to listen to this track).
Justin Skinflick wrote this on his blog:
Local fanzines were popping up. We had one called ‘Tapeworm Soup’ with articles and news by various bands, mostly having a dig at the students’ union.
The Students’ Union agreed to rent us the Banana Lounge on a Tuesday night. It was a weirdly curved venue, but it did come with a stage and a PA. The costs were a lot higher, and we wanted to bring in bands from farther afield so we could gig-swap with them to get some away gigs in. A brilliant duo from Northampton who we had played with, called ‘Hex,’ came to play. Our guitarist was dressed as a woman for the evening; he did make for a very convincing woman, if I’m honest. The bass player from Hex, drunk, had found a pork pie under the stage which he was offering the guitarist in exchange for sexual favours.
There were some good shows there, and it culminated in the All Day Xmas Tapeworm Show. From midday to midnight, 14 or more bands playing all for a massive £5.
It took 3 months to organize. The main man, big cheese, head honcho—or as he preferred, the Entertainments Officer for the Students’ Union—had made certain stipulations. We had to hire their PA and we had to hire their security. All in all, we were £450 in the red before we even started, but what a lineup!
We had all the local favourites as well as bands dragging in from all over: Genital Deformites, Unholy Row, and Excrement of War to name a few. We kicked it all off with a Bangor-based supergroup doing Lard covers called ‘Colon Blow.’
The day went well. Some guy pissed on the stage during someone’s set. The bass player from Unholy Row was so drunk he had to be carried on stage, but that didn’t matter because they played the greatest song ever written, ‘Bollocks to Xmas.’ Some bands didn’t show, so some were drafted in last minute. People drifted in and out all day, and for the headline act, we threw on a brand new band called ‘Plastic’ playing their first ever gig. At the end, we were tired and broken, but everyone wanted to get paid. So once all debts were settled and all of that work and planning, we ended up with £15. It didn’t matter; we were in the black and we had pulled it off.
‘The Tapeworm in the Banana’ is available to hear / download here