My main memory of Babelfish Studios, Partick, Glasgow is the opening day - a Sunday around July 93, I think. I had attended a wedding reception the previous night at the Cameron House Hotel on Loch Lomond and boy, did I attend to the free bar. In fact, I was cautioned by the father of the groom not to partake of it quite so freely...Somewhere in the haze of Sunday morning I woke up in my soon-to-be-vacated flat, remembering that though I'd just relocated my wallet I had cancelled my cards at 3 am the night before when, freshly dumped off the coach, I thought I'd lost the contents of my pockets as well as my self-respect. And then I remembered not only was I due to be performing at the grand opening of my mate Alan's studio, I was also moving flat, from a lovely skylit room in Ruskin Place to a dump with permanently detached toilet seat in Kersland Street. Around one, Mike, my bandmate from the Prairie Dogs, called round to find me careening around the thankfully pre-packed boxes before heading to hell to barf in the downstairs toilet. Somehow we accomplished the move with a much greater degree of precision and timing than I brought to our mangling (me & Mike on guitar, Alan on bass, can't remember who played drums) of Hey Hey, My My. Nobody's fault but mine. Despite such an inauspicious start me, Mike and Alan - with a variety of drummers - rehearsed there quite a bit and recorded with Tony Soave on drums in December 93 using Mike's 8-track. I did some attic room rehearsals with Alan & Gavin, too. It was down at Babelfish where, desperate for some contemporary sheen to our efforts, I bought a light blue Boss chorus pedal secondhand.In a similarly misguided manner. I ended up working at the DSS in Partick over the road from a club called the Volcano (the only time I ventured in there me & my new friend Rob were advised by a dancing plumber to “get some ecky down your necky”) and a P45’s throw away from Babelfish. Other folk I remember being involved included a bearded chap there who looked like a young Roy Harper and his Dave Gilmour-obsessed girlfriend who sang with a guitarist called John (who sold me the chorus pedal) in a rock blues band in which Alan played bass. I saw them at the Halt once. Despite covering Black Velvet by Alannah Myles they were alright.
Hearing that the Velvet Underground were playing the Playhouse was mind-blowing. And not one but two shows – I remember saying one must be for Sister Ray and the other for the rest of the material. I’d read that the Velvets had played Heroin live in 1990 but the idea of them getting together half a mile from where I grew up was crazy: my favourite group reuniting after 25 years (with Cale) or 23 years (with Reed) and doing it on Greenside Place – it was outrageous. I’d had a little VU history with the venue as in early 1982 I’d seen Nico play at the Nite Club (directly above the Playhouse) with the Blue Orchids. At one point she mentioned L-oooo-uuuu Reeeeed was soon to play in London and the thought of him playing 393 miles away was pretty exciting in itself. I didn’t know she’d stayed in Edinburgh and was living in Manchester. I was aware of Rab from The Scars but, living away from the city, hadn’t realised they’d briefly lived together in Stockbridge, frequenting bars on St St...
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