Dedicated Records
Aaah memories. I have three wonderful memories of 1991 that are connected to bands signed to Dedicated Records.
In 1991, two of my favourite bands were signed to Dedicated Records. They were of course The Family Cat and Spiritualized.
At the time I thought I was ever so indie because here I was loving two bands that very few people that I knew had ever heard of. I genuinely thought I had discovered them. Then I saw them live and I realised that I was a naïve little puppy and I had not discovered these bands but had rather been invited into an exclusive little club.
I saw Spiritualized first in 1991, in a room inside a college at Kent University. The gig I, you may recall, went to see with my Dad and two of my mates. He stood at the bar and held court to a bunch of students, dissecting music history with gay abandon and telling anyone who would listen that the Beatles were ‘rubbish’. On the way home, as two of my mates slept in the back, my dad stuck on a cassette of Otis Redding and told me about one of his heroes. It was the first time that I realised that my dad, like me, had heroes and was once a young man.
The price that evening was £2. It was the ‘Feel So Sad’ single tour. I have seen them tour every single album since then (apart from the latest one) and they never fail to make me beam like a Cheshire Cat on happy drugs.
I saw The Family Cat for the first on time on May 29th 1991, at a place called The Dome in Tufnell Park, London. I went with a girl called Karen and her friend Lucy. We spent the night at Lucy’s big sisters flat over in the East End near Bethnall Green. I felt very grown up as we sat the next night in a student bar. I sat in the bar there and read the student paper of Queen Mary Westfield Students Union and thought it was rubbish and right about then I decided that I could probably write much better (and the jury is still very much out on that decision) and I also decided that I wanted to go to college and then University and learn how to be a journalist (as it happens I didn’t actually study journalism in the end). I sat on Lucy’s sisters sofa about two hours later, fuelled by vodka and lime and told Karen in an attempt to sound cool that one day I would write for the NME (that didn’t happen) to much laughter.
In July 1991, I went to something called The Slough Festival. It was headlined by Creation records pretty boys Ride. After the festival Dubstar Chris and I were ligging about failing in a pathetic attempt to get backstage by pretending to be journalists (“Please, I need the loo” was about the strength of our argument). However, through the fence there I met two lads from a band called Chapterhouse and for about fifteen minutes I sat and chatted with them through a fence about what it was like to play a festival and tour and release records and stuff. As I stood up to leave, the band asked me which magazine I wrote for again, and I shook my head and said I didn’t, but then an idea popped into my head. “I write for a fanzine” I said/lied. “if you give me a forwarding address I’ll send you a copy of the next issue of ‘Dive’” (it was the first word that came into my head). Within twenty seconds I had their manager’s card. So it was there that I decided that Chris and I were going to make our own fanzine (which we did, it lasted for two issues, before Chris decided he wanted to turn it into a Viz tribute comic)
Aah memories
The Sound of Being Ok 