Cuttings

A massive earthquake hit Mexico City on 19 September 1985 , prompting this benefit gig at ULU. I only actually found out about it on the Tuesday (22 October) of the same week of the gig, so we didn't have advance tickets and it was a case of chancing it on the night. The car breaking down twice, once in Trafalgar Square, the second in Shaftesbury Avenue, didn't exactly help our chances, but we did it just - with one of us being the last but one admitted. Support were James , who performed a slow version of " Fire So Close " and a song about earwigs (amongst others). New Order were on top form this night, borne out by the reviews in Melody Maker and NME below. State of the Nation featured some additional lyrics and interesting use of echo on the drums towards the end. Echo also featured on guitar parts in Everything's Gone Green , embellishing it nicely.  Hooky introduced Age of Consent as a tribute to Gary Holton , who'd died earlier that day, and was ...

Page 6—New Musical Express 27th July, 1985 IT'S A WOMAD, MAD, MAD WORLD GAVIN MARTIN and ADRIAN THRILLS return from ‘The Mexican Embassy’ and other vantage points at last weekend’s WOMAD Festival in Essex to declare — hey, some of these events are good! First, second, and third world pictures by FOUR EYES . IT STARTED late, of course, and stayed that way the whole time I was there. The crowd didn’t seem to mind, they arrived gradually in painted charabancs and buses —weekend campers, the festival freaks, alternative entrepeneurs, purveyors of mind-altering stimulants, women carrying their children in kangaroo pouches, squaddies from the nearby army camp, kids with outrageously painted faces. They set up home in a cross between a Saxon village and a Morrocan street bazaar. The easygoing frugality extended to the backstage area where the changing rooms were a collection ofsmall marquees (no limo entrances and hasty Glastonbury style exits here). Flanked on one side...

FROM RUSHOLME WITH LOVE • “I'm working with Morrissey again,” says JOHNNY MARR to his old friends ANDY ROURKE and MIKE JOYCE, thus astonishing the world and adding a new frenzy to the upcoming nostalgia-fest of SMITHS CD reissues. Could it ever be so wonderful again? Will we see the return of the creative team that thrilled our bones and gave Britain its last truly great, guitar-slashing, flower-flouting youthquake? Or has the partnership been renewed for another, more mercenary reason? The NME investigation begins here - firstly with a fan's-eye account of how amazing it felt when The Smiths blossomed through the mid-’80s. JOHN HARRIS and TED KESSLER remember the highs and poll the inspired thoughts of the band’s many indie descendants - from Lush to the Manic Street Preachers. Over the page, JOHNNY ROGAN, author of The Severed Alliance and the world’s premier Smiths-watcher, talks to ex-Smiths Rourke and Joyce, reveals the bizarre machinations that have reunited Marr and Mo...