THE MILK TRAIN:
Back when Ross & I were working together we made a plan.
This was a real plan, a plan that involved more than just recording
until dawn, on Jack & Southern, a plan that required us to put
our heads above the wall & step out into the world.
We’d recorded on his back bedroom for months, but now it was time
to assemble a band to see if our songs sank or swam. Scraping together
just enough money to buy a few hours in a freaky little back street studio
we set about making the dream a reality.The studio was a thing from another
time, decorated in the style of ‘during the war’, quant & fake like there
was still rationing. Classical columns lined the walls, lovingly fashioned
from corrugated cardboard, a dusty perfumed smell in the air that clung to
the back of your throat when you sang & stuck to your clothes for days.
The band, who knew the engineer from experience giggled as he excitedly
drew me to one side & asked,
“Would like to see my photographs?”.
The pictures he showed me were of blokes striking sue-do religious poses,
lost in rapture, immersed in a spiritual experience, gazing towards the
heavens with doe eyes, squeezing fat candles,…I declined,
“Perhaps another time” he said, deflated.
Clutching our precious tapes we made our escape, hoping we had captured
magic, energised by this new drive to go public with our precious songs.
It was time to let the world hear how good we were & we were heading for
the lights beyond the edge of town, out even past Newport, crossing the
boarder into the badlands of England, right into the belly of the Beast.
Scouring telephone directories for names we recognised we started
cold calling all the record companies we remembered from the labels of our
favourite albums. Most told us,
“We don’t do appointments, but if you send your tape we’ll listen to it”.
We knew their tricks, it was pub legend that they took your tape, got
some other artist to copy it, call it their own & make a million off it,
leaving you with nothing, but a story no one would believe. No way we were
getting suckered, they all got struck off the list as we assembled an
impressive meeting schedule of ‘two’. We were going to London anyway.
We’d knock on every door until someone let us in, it was going to be
legendary, people would talk about it for years like we were Dylan riding
freight trains into Manhattan.
In the absence of a box car we chose the ‘Milk Train’, the last slow train
to London, stopping everywhere & parking in sidings for us to stretch out
on the seats & sleep before hitting the streets just as the City was waking.
We’d find a cafe, wash our faces in the gents, comb our hair in cracked
mirrors. Then, fuelled on stewed tea & fry-ups &, we’d unleash our music on
a music industry so unprepared for the sound of our music that they would
hail us as the next big thing & fight for our signatures. We were writing
history.
(K)
Karl Hyde 