Branded

Cirrus clouds dance across the sky like the vapourised remains of Hiroshima’s ballerinas. Men in suits scurry across the ground like bloated maggots feasting on the charred remains of a fallen fire-fighter. I stare down at the pavement as I walk through their town, not daring to look into their scowling faces. They know my secret, even though I cover my armband with one hand. They point and stare, then mutter to each other from behind their faceless masks.

Filthy.

Scum.

Parasite.

I wonder if my parents knew what they were creating when they fucked me into existence. Would father have ripped me from mother’s womb if he knew what I was to become? They are both dead now, so I can’t ask them. If I had the courage I would join them for the good of society. Hurl myself under a bus, or lay down before a train. But I’m just a coward, so I continue breathing the air I don’t deserve. Continue walking through a town I have no right to call home. Hunched over. Hat pulled down low, trenchcoat collar pulled up high. One hand covering my armband of shame. Trying not to think too much about my destination, what they will do to me when I arrive.

A young couple stumble out of a public house, holding hands and laughing. They don’t seem to realise the heartbreak they will cause each other. I wonder if they will create someone like me, another drain on resources. Or whether young love will turn into young hate in time to save their offspring from its future misery. I sidestep into the gutter to avoid them when they skip gleefully toward me. If only they knew what the future holds for them. If they did, perhaps they would end their lives now while there is still time.

A delivery van beeps as it rushes by. Its angry driver waves a fist at me. I walk on, ever closer to my destination. Cracks in the pavement pass like the seconds of my life ticking away as I rush toward my inexorable death. I wonder if it will hurt. If anyone will mourn for me when I am thrown into the incinerator, to be disposed of like the remains of last night’s meal. Will someone scatter my ashes? And if so, will I be blown back into their face by an angry wind who rejects me in death as much as I am rejected in life?

Headlines on billboards outside newsagents tell me how disgusting I am, as if I were somehow unaware of this fact after half a decade of constant reminders. Or perhaps they are there for the benefit of those more fortunate? To remind them their lives have value because they contribute to society, whereas I just drain the blood from it like a vampiric pubic louse.

I think about the letter. They say they want to help me, but I know all they really want to do is send the half-empty glass of my life hurtling to the floor. Shatter it into a thousand tiny fragments that will slice through the arteries of my soul. But that’s okay because I deserve it. The newspaper headlines tell me so, and the smiling, airbrushed faces on TV agree with them.

My destination looms larger. Others of my kind congregate outside its concentration camp walls, hollow-faced ghouls wearing the same armbands as me but making no attempt to hide them. There is no camaraderie between us, no sharing of mutual misery. Instead we avert our eyes, lest we make contact with each other.

A sign on the door welcomes me in seventeen different languages. Like a spider welcoming a fly into its web. A portal through which you lose any dignity you may have had the second you pass through it. Computer screens give false hope of escape to those hunched over them. Showing only the dregs nobody else wants, served up for the mass of lost souls like chocolate-coated excrement. Beggars can’t be choosers, after all. So we all line up, begging bowl in hand, and fight amongst ourselves for the scraps left for us while those in power gorge themselves on our festering carcasses.

I join the queue, wait my turn to see what they have in store for me. There’s no point hiding my armband any longer, so I let my hand drop to my side. Nobody takes any notice of me in here. We are all scroungers and skivers, fake cripples and workshy fraudsters sucking on the teat of tax payers. I know this to be true because the government tells me every day.

You’re All Weird Festival Club 85 Hitchin 19-20 November 2022

When Mark Astronaut left this realm at the beginning of July it left a big hole in many people’s lives. His crowd-funded funeral was so well attended it filled the crematorium’s car park to capacity, and countless others watched the service online from around the world. At the following wake there was talk of organising a weekend festival in Mark’s honour later in the year, and You’re All Weird was the eventual result – two days of music at Club 85 in Hitchin featuring lots of bands and musicians who were in some way related to The Astronauts. Many of them had ex-Astronauts in their lineup, and the surviving current day Astronauts would play on both nights with various guest vocalists.

For someone like me, it sounded like the perfect weekend – a chance to hear some of Mark’s songs for what might be the last time they are performed live, and also a chance to get a few more autographs for my copy of the book about Mark and  his various bands. Only problem was, it clashed with this year’s Morecambe Punk Festival, for which I had bought tickets and accommodation just two days before the dates for You’re All Weird were announced. I was gutted. Okay, so I could cancel the hotel in Morecambe easily enough, but the tickets for the festival were non-refundable – or at least they were until there was a lineup change, at which point I could pretend they were the band I was going specifically to see and get my money back. So thank you, unknown band who pulled out a couple of weeks before the festival date. It was on. We were going to Hitchin.

At this point I offered to live stream the whole event, so anyone who couldn’t make it to Hitchin could at least watch it second hand on the internet. I’d never done anything like that before, but I had a video camera with Wi-Fi and streaming capabilities so I thought how hard can it be? I was planning to film a couple of the bands anyway, so it wouldn’t have made much difference if I filmed them all and the video data went off to some computer server somewhere at the same time as it was being recorded onto a memory card. That was the theory, anyway. But when I went onto the streaming website mentioned in the video camera’s manual it said the service had been discontinued three years earlier, so I had to find some other way of doing it.

A short Youtube video later I bought an HDMI to USB converter for 10 quid and was back in the game. When it arrived I wired it all up and gave it a test run on my main computer; it worked perfectly, except I was only getting mono sound. It turned out that was normal for a cheap device like the one I’d bought, but I already had a Tascam hand-held audio recorder that can double as a stereo USB microphone so I decided to use that as well. Then I thought well I can’t really lug a massive computer to Hitchin, so I’d better test it on my 20 year old laptop. That dropped more frames than it saved, but my son had a more modern one that was up to the task, and I arranged to borrow that for the weekend. He didn’t have a laptop bag though, so I put it in mine for transporting. (You may think this is a trivial thing to mention, but all will become apparent later.)

We went down to Hitchin on Friday so it wouldn’t be too much of a rush, and got there around 4pm. As usual, the satnav lady dropped us off in the vague vicinity of the hotel we were staying at, and we had to figure out the rest for ourselves. The hotel entrance was down a side alley which we missed the first time, then we had to make our way around the one way system to find it again. Dropped all our stuff off, went round the shops for a bit, then watched a bit of telly. The previous occupant of our room had forgot to sign out of Netflix, so we messed up their viewing recommendations by watching our stuff, and added random things to their watch list to confuse them.

Saturday came, as I expected it probably would, and I woke up to a message from Dom (Astronauts guitarist). Someone had set up a website for a live stream of the event and Club 85 had shared it on their Facebook page. “Is this you?” Dom wanted to know. No it wasn’t, it was some scammer fishing for email addresses, passwords, and credit card details. How they knew about the live stream I have no idea, because I only told three people I was going to do it – I didn’t want to put people off buying a ticket and being there in person, so I was going to announce it on the day. The link to the bogus live stream was deleted, but by then a few people had already shared it. I hope nobody was ripped off.

Anyway, after breakfast I decided to wear my Punk Rock Nursing Home T-shirt so anyone who wanted to say hello would recognise me, and we made our way to Club 85 with the laptop, camera, microphone, tripod, assorted cables, and a sandwich for later. This was about 12.30 and the event proper wasn’t due to start until 2pm, so Mrs Marcus left to go shopping while I set everything up on a couple of tables on the balcony next to the mixing desk. With hindsight I wish I’d taken a longer HDMI cable so I could position the camera a bit higher up to get above the heads of any giants standing in front of the stage, and the inevitable sea of telephone screens being held up by everyone else. But I suppose all that adds to the overall atmosphere of a gig, and the audience are an integral part of it anyway, so they deserve to be on the video too. I had already decided on a static full-stage shot rather than zooming/panning like I usually do – mainly because I wasn’t familiar enough with most of the bands playing to judge when to fast-pan back to the singer, but I was also a bit worried about the HDMI adapter falling out of the camera if I jerked it around too much – it was relatively heavy, stuck out about 3 inches, and there was only a 3mm connector to hold it in place.

Indignation Meeting started doing a sound check, which seemed a bit odd considering they weren’t playing until Sunday, but it was a good excuse to test the equipment and make sure everything was working okay so I started to stream it to my Facebook page. Incidentally, there’s an interesting story about Indignation Meeting. They are a father and son guitar/drums duo from Leeds, who are very obviously influenced by Blyth Power. The thirteen year old son is a singing drummer, some of their songs are about trains, and they sound a bit like a sort of chaotic version of early Blyth Power (which is a good thing). They also saw The Astronauts for the very first time in May 2022, their last appearance before Mark died, and have since started covering a lot of old Astronauts songs. Sometimes, and also on this occasion, they are joined on bass by Joseph Porter’s hairy son Hugo.

Incidentally, speaking of Mr Porter – I saw this bloke with black hair sitting on a chair, and I thought ‘He looks familiar, I wonder who he is.’ So I went over and asked if he used to be an Astronaut. “No,” he said. I asked him if he was a Metatron, remembering that one of those had black hair the last time I saw them, but that wasn’t him either. Well who are you, then? I said. “I’m from Blyth Power,” he replied, then I figured out who he was, even though he didn’t look much like Joseph Porter at all. Then I thought, ‘Well should I get him to sign my book?’ While Joseph was a recurring character in the book, he was never actually an Astronaut. Except there was talk of him and Mark playing acoustic sets together at one point in the 1990s, which got at least as far as the rehearsal stage before the idea was abandoned, so technically … yeah, I got him to sign it. Same reason I got Steve Lake to sign it later on, though he did actually play keyboards on an Astronauts song released on cassette in the early 1980s,  which technically makes him a de facto Astronaut whether he likes it or not. He said he liked the book, anyway – Mark had given him one at some point, which didn’t really surprise me because he had a habit of giving them away, or selling them to people for a quid or something daft like that. But that was who he was, he wasn’t really interested in money and didn’t like taking it from people who were probably struggling themselves. Which is fair enough, they were his copies so he could do whatever he wanted with them.

So yeah, the streaming test worked – I knew this because I went outside to check it on my portable telephone, and there it was where it was supposed to be – so I switched everything off and wandered over to the merch table to get a few souvenirs before the doors opened and everyone else snatched it all. It would have been like a wet dream come true for any eBay or Discogs seller – loads of rare Astronauts records and CDs at giveaway prices. I could have made a fortune buying it all and reselling it, but I just wanted one thing that used to belong to Mark Astronaut so I settled on a test pressing of the Baby Sings Folk Songs single and left the rest for someone else. I also picked up a couple of posters which I now need to find frames and wall space for, the obligatory T-shirt which everyone will point at and say “Who the fuck are they?” and a cloth bag with Mark’s face on it to keep them all in, which I have no idea what I will do with, but it was there so I bought one. If there was socks and underpants I would have bought those, too.

There was also boxes and boxes of random records, CDs, and DVDs that had been found in Mark’s flat – with even more boxes of the stuff piled up downstairs near the entrance. I was under orders not to mention this in the book, for fairly obvious reasons, but Mark used to buy such things from car boots and then sell them from his ever-present Sainsburys carrier bag wherever he went. If you’ve read the book, you will know that this is how he first met quite a few of the musicians who later joined The Astronauts. (If you haven’t read it yet, but intend to do so at some point in the future, apologies for the spoiler.)

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, Club 85 in Hitchin, waiting for the masses to arrive and the first day of the You’re All Weird festival to start. Dom made me an admin on the Astronauts Facebook page for the weekend so I could stream it as them rather than just me, but for some reason every time I tried to do that the ‘Go live’ button was greyed out. So the best I could do was stream it as me, then share it as The Astronauts after it had started. That seemed to work okay, so I switched it all off again and went looking for some more people to hassle for an autograph. Mrs Marcus came back at about 1.30, and the doors opened at 2pm. A few people wandered in, and when I saw activity on the stage I started the stream running and shared it to the relevant places. Bish bash bosh, as they say somewhere. Everything went well until about half an hour later.

A message popped up on the laptop, telling me the battery was nearly flat and that I should plug it into the mains immediately. Eh? What’s it on about, I thought, it’s already plugged into the mains. So I checked the cable hadn’t somehow fallen out of the back of the laptop (it wasn’t that), then asked if the extension cable they’d given me might be faulty. A tech guy checked it, said it was working perfectly, so it could only be the laptop’s charger. Dom must have noticed me panicking because he came over to see what was going on. Then Bob, the owner of Club 85, came over. I told them the laptop wasn’t charging, they offered to go and get a new charger from the shop. Then the tech guy took the charger away to test it and came back saying there was nothing wrong with it, so it must be something wrong with the laptop. Arse, I thought, I’ve broke my son’s laptop and I’ll have to pay to get it fixed. But worse than that, I’ve fucked up the streaming I told everyone I knew how to do. I could have plugged the HDMI to USB thing into my portable telephone’s charging socket and done it that way, but I doubt the battery would have lasted any longer than the one on the laptop, so we were a bit stuffed.

Fortunately Bob had a spare computer I could use, so the tech guy set that up for me. I just needed to download the streaming program (OBS Studio, in case anyone is wondering), set it up again, and plug in the camera and microphone. By then I’d missed the end of the first band, and the beginning of the second. Which is a shame, but not the complete disaster it could have been, and there was someone at the other side of the mixing desk filming everything anyway. The computer, being a lot slower than the laptop, dropped a few frames here and there, but at least it was better than nothing and the stream was live again. So that was a relief.

But I suppose you want to know about the music? Most of the bands did at least one Astronauts song, and some did several. MJ Moon (an ex-Astronaut, joined for a couple of songs by Angus Duprey, another ex-Astronaut) was on first and even had the disembodied voice of Mark Astronaut join him on stage for one of the songs, which brought a lump to my throat and probably a few others, too. Current Astronauts bassist Paul’s band Pun were next, a sort of drum and bass duo with added guitar, if that makes any sense – they were very bass-heavy, anyway, and I’m sure there’s a proper name for it but I don’t know what it is. Aloah Dead were a sort of male / female duo I’ve never heard of before, so I don’t know what their connection with The Astronauts is. I was actually in the toilet when they started, so it’s probably just as well a shot of the stage was streaming at the time. They didn’t do any of Mark’s songs, or at least none that I recognised.

Anthrax played in ukulele and bongo form, something I’ve never seen them do before so I don’t know how common this is, but I quite liked it and felt it suited their own songs, as well as their version of Donkey Riding. Not sure what fans of their usual rowdy stuff would have made of it all, though. Redmaxx, one of the bands with ex-Astronauts in their lineup, played as a cut down acoustic duo, and after that there was a 30 minute gap until the next band so I stopped the stream and switched everything off to give the camera a chance to cool down – while my current camcorder has never overheated, my previous one did at Rebellion one year, and refused to switch on for another 3 hours – something I didn’t want to take a chance on after the laptop incident.

The venue started to fill up while I ate my sandwich, and suddenly there seemed to be people everywhere – which is weird at an Astronauts gig, there was literally hundreds of them as opposed to the thirty or so who used to turn up while Mark was still alive. I mentioned it to Joseph Porter when I spotted him again later, and he agreed that it was somewhat odd, then joked about faking his own death to see if it would bring in bigger crowds for Blyth Power.

The Sell-Outs opened up the evening’s entertainment, and had reformed specifically for the event after a gap of about 15 years – or most of them anyway, they had a stand in guitarist (whose name I forget) because nobody seems to know what happened to the original one. For those who haven’t read the book, The Sell-Outs were a young teenage band Mark took under his wing in 2000, and their bassist Joe and drummer Lee later joined The Otters – who in turn became The Astronauts. Vocalist Helen also sang backing vocals with The Astronauts sometimes, and was the person responsible for organising the fundraiser for Mark’s funeral. I’m glad I got to see them, because it’s unlikely they will ever play again. Their contribution to the Astronauts theme was Books, from the often ignored Soon album.

Pog, who had released an EP of Astronauts songs for the occasion, were next and played a few songs from the EP along with their regular folky type stuff. I’ve seen them a few times now, always with The Astronauts, and they are starting to grow on me a bit now, but to be honest I preferred Anal Beard. The new EP is good though, so I’ll check out some of their other stuff in due course. Another band that is growing on me is Rites of Hadda, who are edging towards being one of my favourite live bands at the moment and I should probably check out some of their studio stuff too. If they ever play near you, go and see them, you’re in for a treat. They’re very theatrical, or at least the singer is, and Mrs Marcus (who is an expert on such things) says the songs are very Pagan, whatever that is. The first time I saw them was in That London when they played with Zounds and The Astronauts. The first one they played at that, I was convinced was going to be a cover of Everything Stops For Baby because it had a very similar opening, but it turned out to be something different. This time they did do Everything Stops For Baby, one of the better versions of that song I’ve heard, but they didn’t do whatever the other one was called, probably because it would have just confused me.

Then it was Astronauts time, with Joe back on keyboards once more, swapping over to his original bass now and again to give Paul a rest. I wasn’t sure whether it would work or not without Mark, but the songs still shone through with both Joe and Dom doing a song each, plus a series of guest vocalists – the lass from Aloha Dead, Wasp from Rites of Hadda, and Steve Lake from Zounds. My only real gripe was they all stood centre stage instead of at the side where they were supposed to be. Wasp gave another rendition of Everything Stops For Baby, followed by New Dixieland Blues, and Steve Lake got the biggest laugh when he walked onto the stage with a carrier bag and said he couldn’t hear himself in the monitor. Then he said something about the long haired guy holding the rest of the band back, which seemed a bit mean. Anyway, he did Protest Song and Young Man’s World. Wasp was back for the finale, Melissa’s Party, joined by loads of extra guitarists and an extra drummer (who I couldn’t see from where I stood). The stage ended up full of people bouncing around shouting ‘It’s fun time’ but for me the best vocals of the night were from Dom on Time To Roam. He said later it was the first time he’d ever done lead vocals, but you couldn’t tell.

Dom and Paul were back later with Zounds, a band who don’t really need any introduction here because they are almost as well known as The Astronauts and have been riding on Mark’s coat-tails since 1978. If you’ve ever seen them you can probably guess what they played, and you would be correct. Along with that, Joe played keyboards on Dancing, and MJ Moon, Rico Ford, and some other bloke called Chris Hollis joined in for a version of Still Talking which rounded off the evening.

While I was packing everything away, Angus Duprey came over and wanted to know where he could get a copy of the Astronauts book. I got him to sign my copy, then pointed at the merch table and said there was some over there, but he had to go for his train so I said I’d save him one for when he came back tomorrow. I didn’t actually grab him one until the next day, so it’s just as well they didn’t sell them all.

Sunday morning I thought I’d better have a look at my son’s laptop, to see if I could fix it. I pulled out the charger and saw straight away what I’d done wrong the day before – I’d plugged the charger from my own laptop into the back of his, and it was nowhere near strong enough to power a more modern machine. Why that charger was still in the bag, I don’t know. I thought I’d taken it out along with my laptop before I put his in the bag. Oh well, at least I didn’t have to fork out to get anything repaired. So I charged the laptop up and sent Bob and Dom a message to tell them it was working again.

I wore my Astronauts Constitution T-shirt, and when we left the hotel this bloke said “Astronauts” to me. I looked at him, saw he was wearing a Rites of Hadda shirt, and said “Rites of Hadda.” Then me, him, and our respective women talked for a bit about the bands we’d seen the previous day, and I asked if they’d bought the Astronauts book. “Yeah,” the bloke said, and Mrs Marcus said “Thanks.” “Oh, was it you who wrote it?” he asked, then said he remembered all my weirdly specific questions on Facebook while I was writing it, and bought it specifically to support me. Which was nice. I’ve forgot his name now, but if you’re reading this, cheers for the cider. Incidentally, I later found out Joe from The Astronauts and a few of my Facebook friends were staying at the same hotel, but we never bumped into each other.

When we got to Club 85 I had to explain to the tech guy what had gone wrong with the laptop, which he was suitably amused by. The computer was still set up for me, so I shunted it onto the floor under the table to make room for the laptop. Nobody seemed to be doing any sound checks, so I just did a test stream of an empty stage for a few minutes, then switched it all off while I waited for the doors to open. I saw Bob Green and Alan Cowley arrive, so I accosted them for an autograph. They were both a really big help with the book, especially the early chapters, which would have been a bit crap otherwise because Mark didn’t remember much, and I was looking forward to seeing each of their solo sets. In case you don’t know, they were both in the 1980 version of The Astronauts who recorded Peter Pan Hits The Suburbs, and have played with Mark on and off as Restricted Hours over the last few decades. Oddly enough, they are both better known for Johnny Curious and the Strangers* who released a single in 1978, and I asked Alan if there were any plans for a reunion. He laughed and said no, nobody would be interested in anything like that.

Bob Green was on first, and when he got on stage I set the live stream going. There was a kid sat near us with one of those massive computer tablet things. He looked about 12 and was with who I assume were his parents, and he pointed at the camera and said “Are you allowed to film in here?” I shrugged and said “Yeah, probably.” “That’s my granddad,” he said, pointing at Bob on the stage. “Oh yeah? Your granddad’s famous.” “Yeah I know,” he said, “and so am I.” Then he wandered off to film Bob on his massive computer tablet before I got chance to ask what he was famous for. He must have gone home after that, because I didn’t see him again. Bob played a mixture of his own songs and old Astronauts ones on acoustic guitar. I was hoping he would play The Last Great Rolling Stones Lick In The Sky, just so Mrs Marcus would know who he was, because that was one of the songs we used to play on Sunday afternoons in the early 1980s while we cleaned our flat. He didn’t play it, though.

Alan Cowley was next, and also played a mixture of his own songs and old Astronauts ones on an acoustic guitar, including Don’t Think About It, which he played at Mark’s funeral. It’s become quite an emotional song for me because of that, and every time I hear it I’m reminded of what we’ve all lost. It’s the same with the theme tune of Coronation Street. While he tried to play it down in the interview at the back of the book, I know it was his favourite TV show because he went on to talk about Ken Barlow for a good half hour, and I can’t help wondering what he would have had to say about Spider being a spycop. Does going after fashflakes make up for whatever else he’s done? It would have made for an interesting conversation, but sadly one we will never have.

Indignation Meeting I’ve already mentioned, so there’s no point repeating any of that other than to add they opened with Let In The Light (aka Big Blokes), an obscure Astronauts song from 1978 that few people would have heard of. I’ll be honest here, I didn’t recognise it at the time, it was only when I was looking at the video footage later that I realised what it was – even then I had to ask them to make sure. The original was recorded at the same time as the live tracks on Back To Sing For Free Again Soon, but didn’t make it onto the cassette. You can probably download it if you go looking, or at least listen to it on Youtube or whatever. They also did Indisputable Fact and All Sorts. They did admit that Mark had pretty much disowned Indisputable Fact and refused to ever play it again, but said they liked it anyway and I’m inclined to agree with them.

Ben Pie and Rico Ford have a long history with The Astronauts. Rico was the guitarist through most of the 1990s, While Ben was their live sound engineer. Ben’s late 1980s band, Ben Pie and the Pasties, also contained two other members who later became Astronauts – Luke Welch and David Woodward. But of course you already knew all that, so you are just wondering what their contribution to the weekend was? They both played guitars, and Ben sang a medley of Astronauts songs from In Defence of Compassion and Upfront and Sideways, closing with Revenge (aka Bailiffs, aka Petrol Bomb The Bailiffs), one of many unreleased songs from the 1990s lineup of The Astronauts, or ‘the lost generation’ as I call them. It’s such a shame nobody offered to fund recording studio time during that era. What I wouldn’t give for a time machine and a wad of cash.

At this point you are probably wondering why I haven’t mentioned the live stream for a long time. That’s because nothing major went wrong with it, and I left it running all day for a solid seven and a half hours without anything exploding. The internet went off for about a minute or so, but that happened between bands so nobody would have noticed unless they were actually watching it live. At one point a message popped up on the laptop telling me my son’s Just Eat order was on the way, which caused a few dropped frames and may or may not have resulted in a chime sound making it onto the stream, so if I ever do anything like this again I should probably try and remember to switch notifications off. Oh, and one drunken celebrity got perilously close to knocking the tripod off the table when he squeezed past it to talk to the sound engineer, but that was the full extent of any problems.

During the short intermission Steve Lake sat at the next table with a bag of chips smothered in vinegar which made me and probably everyone else nearby hungry. I wanted to go and get some myself, but the next band were about to start so I had to make do with a vegan roll from Greggs that I’d taken with me. Incidentally, does anyone know why fashflakes rage so much about vegan rolls? I didn’t get raged at, because obviously there were no fashflakes present at an Astronauts event, but I see them all the time on Facebook, just … raging. Especially on adverts for vegan stuff. It’s the same with gingerbread persons, why do they feel so threatened by such things?

Anyway, Rico was back again with The Metatrons, a female-fronted band I’ve seen play with The Astronauts a few times. They seemed a bit more subdued than usual, but did a cracking rendition of Constitution, the cover of which, you may remember, was on my T-shirt that day. And speaking of Constitution, this happened much later on in the night but since I’ve gone to so much effort to set the stage for it here, when Angus Duprey arrived he pointed at my shirt and said “That’s my single, I played drums on that!” He seemed really excited about seeing it on a shirt, and I suppose I would be too if I saw someone wearing (say) a Punk Rock Nursing Home T-shirt. He told me he’d bought a copy of the single the previous day, having lost his original copy years ago, so it’s probably just as well I didn’t grab it when I had the chance. When I gave him the book I’d saved for him he said “I don’t have any money, how can I pay you?” I couldn’t think of anything, so I just let him take it. I probably should have told him to buy one of my other books when he gets home, or review it somewhere, but that’s just a hindsight thing and he did post a photo of it on Facebook the following day so it’s all publicity anyway.

Steve Lake got up to introduce Blyth Power, who didn’t play any Astronauts songs but did do the one of theirs that mentions Mark. I don’t know if this is common knowledge or not, but Mark rated Blyth Power really highly when we got around to talking about other bands, and I’m wondering now if that was some sort of Christian thing? We never spoke about religion, I never even thought to ask, but looking back it’s pretty obvious he would have been brought up a Christian, what with his dad being a vicar and all that.

SMASH were apparently famous for a while in the mid 1990s, and Angus Duprey said a friend of his was only there to see them. I must admit, I stopped watching Top Of The Pops and reading music papers long before then, so they pretty much passed me by – I think The Exploited, or maybe Cockney Rejects, were the last of the pop-punk bands I saw. I only heard about SMASH through Mark, but when I looked them up on Youtube and the like they seemed okay – a bit like 1977 punk, as if Discharge never happened – there’s even a documentary about them on Amazon Prime, which is worth a watch. Trivia fans might like to know that the drummer of SMASH is the father of the drummer of The Astronauts – something which the documentary failed to mention. They also played a lot with The Astronauts in the mid-1980s when they were known as Smash At The Blues, and shared a bass player – again, this wasn’t mentioned in the documentary. Didn’t play anything by The Astronauts, but the last time I saw them Mark said they had a song which mentioned him. Don’t remember if they played that one or not.

Speaking of The Astronauts, they were on next (after Chris Ripple’s poem about a dead cat) and opened with Lee McFadden singing Old Songs. Apparently Lee is quite famous, though I only know him from Facebook and as ‘that bloke in a hat who is always at Astronauts gigs’. We’d spoken a few times at those gigs, it was actually him who gave me the idea of buying a Tascam recorder after I saw him with one, and we met again in the toilet just before he went on. I remember thinking after he’d gone that I should have reminded him the line should be ‘There ain’t much food in the larder’ rather than ‘there ain’t much room in the larder’ – a mistake which ended up on the record. Not that such things would matter to anyone except me and Mark’s ghost, or course. Lee added an extra verse at the end of the song, which was a really nice touch – play me one of them old songs, you know the ones that were writ by Mark Astronaut. Then Joe did Rabbits, and that bloke Chris Hollis (who you may remember from earlier) came up for bouncy versions of Behave Yourself and Getting Things Done (the latter also having the kid from Indignation Meeting jumping around and shouting ‘At least they’re getting things done’ at the appropriate times). Helen from the Sell-Outs sang the last two – Baby Sings Folk Songs and Midsummer Lullaby – both of which she used to do backing vocals on in recent years, so I probably should have got her to sign the book as well but it’s too late now.

RDF, who ended the weekend, are a band I’d never heard of until the Otters EP Songs Beginning With The Letter H came out – one of said letter H songs being Heresy and advertised as featuring Chris Bowsher. ‘Who’s he when he’s at home?’ I remember asking on Facebook, and everyone being surprised that I didn’t know. There are probably people reading this right now and thinking ‘How could he not know who Chris Bowsher is?’ Well I didn’t. I did find out later, while researching the book, and it turned out his band RDF (Radical Dance Faction, a name which conjures up images of John Travolta prancing around in a disco, so would have put me off clicking on a YouTube link anyway) shared a lot of history with The Astronauts, as well as a few guitarists and backing vocalists over the decades. They’re not really my sort of thing, but I can see the attraction if you’re sat in a field somewhere smoking a spliff or three. A sort of boom boom boom deep bass reggae beat that vibrates inside your head, which I don’t mind sometimes when I’m in the right mood for it. Maybe I just wasn’t in the right mood for it that night, I’ll give it another chance when I am. I did get Chris to sign my book because of the Heresy thing, but he seemed very reluctant to do so. He wanted to know who I was, what I was going to do with it, and why it didn’t have my name on the cover. Just in case anyone else is interested in the answers – I wrote it, I keep it in a box and look at it now and again, and because a: I didn’t think anyone would care who wrote it, and b: because it would have spoiled the cover design.

So that was my weekend. I spoke to three of The Astronauts over the course of it, and they were all eager to do it all over again next year, probably on or around Mark Astronaut Day on 27 August and maybe even make it an annual event from then on. I hope they do, because those songs deserve to be heard live, and people deserve to hear them for the first time. It would also save me having to find a new favourite band to go on long distance road trips to see. While there obviously won’t be any new songs, there’s still hundreds of existing ones to choose from, so even if they played every week it would be at least a year before they had to do the same one twice. When the new album comes out, maybe they could play along to Mark’s vocal track and have a life size cardboard cut-out at the side of the stage (I’m assuming a hologram would be too expensive). It also occurred to me that there are still lots of songs that never got a studio recording, so maybe there could be one more album of those with different guest vocalists? Or a Mark Astronaut impersonator? Or just get a new singer, like Gong did? Dom or Wasp would get my vote.

Either way, as Lee McFadden said in the last line of his extra verse for Old Songs, Mark Astronaut will never die.

* I suppose you could argue Alan Cowley is more famous for the stuff he did with Kim Wilde, but as far as I am concerned you would be wrong.

An incomplete list of live gigs by Mark Astronaut and his various bands

If you can fill in any gaps, please comment or find me on Facebook.

1978

28 January

The Corn Exchange,  Hertford

The Astronauts, Lol Coxhill, Johnny Curious And The Strangers, etc.

? May

The Half Moon, Bishop’s  Stortford

The Astronauts, Alan Clayson And The Argonauts

20 May Hope and Anchor, London

The Astronauts, Soft Boys

8 July 1978

St Albans Civic Hall

The Astronauts, Bob Green solo, Dire Straits

Here & Now Tour 1978, unknown dates, but The Astronauts confirmed as playing at these locations.

Southampton University

Warwick University, Coventry (December?)

Fforde Green, Leeds

Austin College, Manchester

Unknown date

Somewhere in Hatfield, the day after Southampton University above

Unknown date

Hitchin College

The Astronauts, The Ruts

Rock Against Racism benefit gig

Unknown date

The Hope and Anchor, Islington

The Astronauts, The Soft Boys

1979

? January

Ludwick Hall

20 January

The Campus, Welwyn Garden City

The Astronauts, The Soft Boys

If It Ain’t Worth A Fuck, Fuck Off Tour, March 1979.

4 March

Bournbrook Hotel, Birmingham

The Astronauts, Dangerous Girls, The 012, Wilful Damage, Danny And The Dressmakers, Andy T

6 March

Art College, Canterbury

The Astronauts, Alternative TV, Danny And The Dressmakers, Wilful Damage, Andy T, The Sellouts, Funboy Five

10 March

Meanwhile Gardens, London

The Astronauts, Zounds, Danny And The Dressmakers, Psycho Hamster, Blank Space, The 012

? Summer 1979

Meanwhile Gardens, London

Restricted Hours, Nik Turner’s Inner City Unit, etc

Unknown date

The Hope And Anchor, London

Restricted Hours, Mickey Finn

Unknown dates, unknown local venues (“a few”)

Restricted Hours, occasionally joined by Bob Green and/or Alan Cowley.

Support band at one of them was The Robotics (with Chris Bland)

21 July

Severn Vale Celebration

The Astronauts, The Pop Group, The Mob, Cardiacs, Here & Now, Blank Space, Dangerous Girls, Androids of Mu

21 August

Acklam Hall, London

The Astronauts, The Mob, Androids of Mu, The 012, Dangerous Girls

Weird Tales Tour 1

? September

Leeds

? September

Blackpool

20 September

Eric’s, Liverpool

The Astronauts, The Mob, Androids Of Mu

21 September

Bournbrook Hotel, Birmingham

22 September

Funhouse Club, Manchester

The Astronauts, Danny And The Dressmakers

23 September

Oranges & Lemons, Oxford

24 September

Triad Leisure Centre, Bishops Stortford

? September

Wolverhampton University

The Astronauts, The 012, Blues Drongo All-Stars

16 October

Acklam Hall, London

The Astronauts, Zounds, The Mob, Androids Of Mu

12 November ?

Birmingham University

The Astronauts, Dangerous Girls, Here & Now, Duran Duran

? November

Herts Agricultural College

? November

Downs Farm Youth Club, Hatfield

1980

7 June

Meanwhile Gardens, London

The Astronauts, Androids Of Mu, Nik Turner’s Inner City Unit, etc

16 March

Triad Leisure Centre, Bishops Stortford

The Astronauts, Zounds, Exit

1981

18 March

The Nag’s Head, High Wycombe

The Return Of The Repressed Tour: Zounds, The Entire Cosmos. Unknown which ones The Astronauts played at except where mentioned.

3 April

The Golden Eagle, Birmingham

4 April

Manchester Polytechnic

6 April

Clarendon Hotel, London

10 April

Trinity Hall, Bristol

The Astronauts, Zounds, The Mob

23 April

Summer City, Aberdeen

24 April

The Cavendish, Edinburgh

25 April

St David’s North, Dundee

30 April

Fforde Green Hotel, Leeds

2 May

Huddersfield Polytechnic

The Astronauts, Zounds, Instant Automatons, Nice People, Murphy Federation – some tracks released on Rock Against The Bomb tape

4 May

Retford Porterhouse

23 August

Parliament Hill Fields, London

The Astronauts, The 012, Zounds, The Mob, etc

1982

29 August

Centro Iberico, London

The Astronauts, Zounds, The Mob, Null & Void

1985

8 March

Ludwick Family Club

The Astronauts, Smash At The Blues, Salad From Atlantis

10 March

Pindar of Wakefield, London

The Astronauts, Blyth Power

13 March

Demolition Ballroom, Bristol

The Astronauts, Blyth Power, Idiot Strength

6 April
The Ambulance Station, London
The Astronauts, Blyth Power, The Dynamics

11 June

The Clarendon, Hammersmith

The Astronauts, Blyth Power

7 December

The Crypt, St Albans

The Astronauts, Blyth Power

11 December

The Astronauts, The Angels Ov Light (Psychic TV), Blyth Power, Zos Kia

20 December

Ludwick Youth Club, Welwyn Garden City

The Astronauts, Blyth Power, Benjamin Zephania

1986

2 April

Timebox, London

The Astronauts, Blyth Power

25 June

Crypt, Sussex University, Brighton

The Astronauts, Blyth Power, Thatcher On Acid

23 November

Bowes Lyon House, Stevenage

The Astronauts, Conflict, Exit Stance, Karma Sutra

16 December

The Clarendon, Hammersmith

The Astronauts, The Walking Floors

1987

30 March

Sir George Robey, London

11 April

Rooftops, Bournemouth

The Astronauts, Blyth Power

29 May

The Richmond Hotel, Brighton

The Astronauts, Blyth Power, Salad From Atlantis

1 November

Bowes Lyon House, Stevenage

The Astronauts, Blyth Power, Thatcher on Acid, We Are Going To Eat You

1988

30 April

Swansea University

The Astronauts, Anhrefn, Karma Sutra

12 May

Doncaster

Mark Astronaut + Chris Bland

1989

19 November

Bowes Lyon House, Stevenage

The Astronauts, Blyth Power

1990

17 February

Co-Op Hall, Oxford

The Astronauts, Blyth Power

30 March

1 in 12 Club, Bradford

The Astronauts, Decadent Few

1 April

Bowes Lyon House, Stevenage

The Astronauts, Blyth Power

22 August

Shelley Arms, Nutley

The Astronauts, Blyth Power

1992

21 February

The Acton Arms, London

The Astronauts, Cuckooland, Ian Bone and the Living Legends

13 June

The Acton Arms, London

The Astronauts, Robb Johnson Band, Three Man Riot

12 July

The Acton Arms, London

The Astronauts, Haywire, Brassic Park

13 September

Bowes Lyon House, Stevenage

The Astronauts, Blyth Power

26 September

Sir George Robey, London

The Astronauts, Nik Turner’s Allstars

8 November

Bowes Lyon House, Stevenage

The Astronauts, Blyth Power

14 November

Sir George Robey, London

The Astronauts, Anhrefn, What If, The Atomic Chainsaw Sex Vikings

20 December

Sir George Robey, London

The Astronauts, Blyth Power

1993

20 February

Bowes Lyon House, Stevenage

Mark Astronaut acoustic, Nikki Sudden, Scum of Toytown

10 April

Sir George Robey, London

The Astronauts, Anus

16 April

The Forum, Tunbridge Wells

The Astronauts, Walk On Water

28 July
Ludwick Family Club, Welwyn Garden City
The Astronauts, Blyth Power

1995

26 July

Ludwick Family Club, Welwyn Garden City

The Astronauts, Blyth Power

1997

5 December

Zone Club, Hitchin

The Astronauts, Blyth Power

1998 1999

List missing.

2000

28 July

Club 85, Hitchin

The Astronauts, Blyth Power

2002

13 December

Club 85, Hitchin

The Astronauts, Blyth Power, The Sellouts

2003

18 October

The Green Room, Welwyn Garden City

The Astronauts, Redmaxx

13 December

Club 85, Hitchin

The Astronauts, Blyth Power

2004

5 November

Marquee Club, Hertford

The Astronauts, Atilla The Stockbroker, Fish Brothers

2005

29 May

The Green Room, Welwyn Garden City

The Astronauts, Frog Stupid, The Coquettes

16 July

Whistle Stop, Tallington

Blyth Power Ashes

Mark + Dom (pre-Otters)

2006

15 or 16 July

Rhythms Of The World, Hitchin

2 day festival

10 August

Wasted  Festival, Blackpool

The Otters playing as The Astronauts

15 October

Club 85, Hitchin

Mark Astronaut + Rico

2007

2 December

Club 85, Hitchin

30th Anniversary gig

The Astronauts, The Otters, Steve Lake, Alan Clayson

2008

31 May

Club 85, Hitchin

The Astronauts, Daevid Allen, Floor Nine

23 December

Evershot Village Hall, Yeovil

2009

7 August

Rebellion Festival, Blackpool

Mark/Dom acoustic

30 October

Club 85, Hitchin

The Otters

2010

17 January

Club 85, Hitchin

The Psephologist, The City Divided, Rise As They Fall

2 February

Proud Gallery, Camden

The Astronauts, Restricted Hours, The Otters, The Psephologist, Zounds, Babyshambles

5 February

Club 85, Hitchin

The Astronauts, Redmaxx

24 or 25 July

Rhythms Of The World, Hitchin

2 day festival

The Astronauts, Zounds, Glen Matlock, Hugh Cornwell, etc

Played Peter Pan album

2011

20 February

Hector’s House, Brighton

The Astronauts, Blyth Power, Pog

12 March

Rodeo Live Club, Athens, Greece

The Astronauts, Tilbury On Cloves

29 April

Caroline Of Brunswick, Brighton

The Astronauts, Robb Johnson, Pog

9 or 10 July

Rhythms Of The World, Hitchin

2 day festival

7 August

Rebellion Festival, Blackpool

The Astronauts, Here & Now, Alternative TV, Captain Sensible

8 October

Power Lunches Arts Cafe, London

The Astronauts, The Pheromoans, Woolf

18 November

Brixton Jamm, London

The Astronauts, The Mob, Zounds, Rubella Ballet, The Hamsters, Idiot Strength, Andy T

10 December
The Old Bell, Derby
The Astronauts, Addicted Philosophy, Eastfield, Andy T

22 December

Club 85, Hitchin

The Astronauts, Shoot The Director

2012

26 January

Club 85, Hitchin

The Astronauts, Patrick Fitzgerald, Steve Lake, Grae J Wall

23 February

Caroline Of Brunswick, Brighton

The Astronauts, Steve Lake, Pog

1 March

Boston Music Room, London

Another Winter Of Discontent Festival

The Astronauts, Subhumans, Zounds, Hagar The Womb, etc

24 March

The Hydrant, Brighton

The Astronauts, Patrick Fitzgerald, ASBO Derek

31 May

Caroline Of Brunswick, Brighton

The Astronauts, Pog, Lily Rae

29 July

Club 85, Hitchin

The Astronauts, Patrick Fitzgerald

23 August

12 Bar Club, London

The Astronauts, Alan Clayson, Hungry Dog Brand

24, 25, or 26 August

The Plough, Peterborough

The Blyth Power Ashes

The Astronauts, Blyth Power, Pog, Anal Beard, etc

13 October

Duke Of Wellington, Shoreham

The Astronauts, Attila The Stockbroker

16 November

The Green Door Store, Brighton

Hay Fever Festival

The Astronauts, Red Maxx, etc

30 November

Boston Music Room, London

The Astronauts, The Mob, Kill Pretty, Andy T, Hagar The Womb

2013

18 January

The Green Room, Welwyn Garden City

The Astronauts, Attilla TheStockbroker

28 March

The Green Room, Welwyn Garden City

The Astronauts, Pog

3 May

Mersea Youth Camp, Essex

Cosmic Puffin Festival

2 June

Duke Of Wellington, Shoreham

The Astronauts, Anal Beard, Bandana Collective

15 June

Beside The Birdbath garden party

Brighton

The Astronauts, Pog, Blyth Power, Anal Beard, etc

16 June

Lord Nelson, Brighton

The Astronauts, Robb Johnson, Pog

14 July
Club 85, Hitchin
The Astronauts, Blyth Power, Scum Of Toytown

2 August

The Albert, Brighton

The Astronauts, Asbo Derek

10 August

Rebellion Festival, Blackpool

The Astronauts

25 August

Blyth Power Ashes

The Astronauts, Robb Johnson, Monkfish, Anal Beard, etc

20 September
The Hairy Dog, Derby
The Astronauts, Zounds, Addictive Philosophy, Chris Butler

21 September

Bitter Suite, Preston

The Astronauts, Zounds

24 September

The Met Lounge, Peterborough

The Astronauts, The Destructors, Pennyless, The AKAs

30 September

12 Bar Club, London

The Astronauts, The Duel, Segs from Ruts DC, Freedom Faction

29 November

N0 6 King Street, Weymouth

The Astronauts, The Mob

2014

5 February

12 Bar Club, London

The Astronauts, The Fallen Leaves, The Long Decline, Electric Eyes

21 February

The Green Door Store, Brighton

The Astronauts, Alternative TV, Fractured

20 June

Sonic Rock Solstice, Builth Wells

3 day festival

The Astronauts, Lene Lovich, The Enid, Nik Turner’s Space Gypsy, etc

penultimate joe

8 August
Arcelor Mittal Orbit, London
The Astronauts, DJ Food, Paddy Steer

6 september

The Green Room, Welwyn Garden City

The Astronauts, The Lurkers. Last joe davin

7 November

Green Room, Welwyn Garden City

The Astronauts, The Protest Family

18 December
Glastonbury Assembly Rooms
The Astronauts, The Mob, Zounds, Anthrax

2015

7 March

Club 85, Hitchin

The Astronauts, The Metatrons, Pog

27 June

Beside The Birdbath garden party

Brighton

Mark Astronaut + Joe Davin, Zounds, Blyth Power, Pog, Robb Johnson, etc

19 July
Ye Olde Rose & Crown, Walthamstow
The Astronauts, Freddie Keen

8 August

Rebellion Festival, Blackpool

The Astronauts, Zounds, The Mob, etc.

31 August

Blyth Power Ashes

Anal Beard, Monkfish, etc. Astronauts may not have played

11 September

Balstock

Los Astronauts Muertos

4 October

Club 85, Hitchin

Mark Astronaut acoustic, Fishwife’s Broadside

21 November
Union Chapel, London
The Astronauts, Grasscut, Lilith Ai

2016

22 January

PKDK Tattoo Pub, Gran Canaria

The Astronauts, Repression 24 Horas, Hokvspokus

29 January
Club 85, Hitchin
The Astronauts, Inner City Unit

27 February
Boston Music Room
Another Winter of Discontent (AWOD) festival
The Astronauts, Zounds, The Mob, Rubella Ballet, etc

1 April

Kabaret Karamel, London

The Astronauts acoustic

9 April
Club 85, Hitchin
The Astronauts, Smash

4 November
Kabaret Karamel, London

The Astronauts acoustic

8 December
Hope & Anchor, Islington
The Astronauts, Zounds

2017

28 January

The Cowley Club, Brighton

The Astronauts acoustic – Joe + ? on violin

11 February
Green Room, Welwyn Garden City
The Astronauts, Smash, The Metatrons

8 April
The Hope and Ruin, Brighton
The Astronauts, Steve Ignorant’s Slice Of Life

29 July

Prince Albert, Brighton

The Astronauts, The Featherz, The Decadent Dayze

6 August
Club 95, Hitchin
The Astronauts, Clayson and the Argonauts

13 September
Club 85, Hitchin
The Astronauts, Gong

24 september
Robertfest, The Amersham Arms, London
Los Astronauts Muertos, ATV, etc

21 October
The Lexington, London
The Astronauts, Interrobang, The Cravats

28 November
The Cowley Club, Brighton
The Astronauts

2018

2 September

Club 85, Hitchin

Astronauts acoustic, The Hanging Bandits, Bruce McCrae, Smige

19 December
Hope and Anchor, London
The Astronauts, Mur-Man, Property, Spinmaster Plantpot

2019

22 February
The Green Room, Welwyn Garden City
The Astronauts, Pog, The Metatrons

23 March

Rockaway Park

The Astronauts, Steve Lake, The Brewer’s Daughter, Funky Breaks

19 October
The Prince Albert, Brighton
The Astronauts + Nik Turner, Asbo Derek

3 November

Club 85, Hitchin

The Astronauts, Rites Of Hadda, People Look Like Dogs

9 November
AN Club, Athens, Greece
The Astronauts, Radio Sect

2020

29 February
The Lexington, London
The Astronauts, Zounds, Rites of Hadda

7 March

Club 85, Hitchin

The Astronauts, Blyth Power, The Metatrons

2021

3 December

Club 85, Hitchin

Survivors 45 Years of The Astronauts book launch.

The Astronauts, SMASH, Rites of Hadda

11 December

Biddle Bros

The Astronauts, Aloha Dead, Pampered Fists

2022

2 April

Club 85, Hitchin

Andy’s Magic Garden – in memory of Andy Keeble.

The Astronauts, Los Chicos Muertos, Skimmington Ride, The Metatrons

14 May

The Astronauts, Blyth Power, The Metatrons, Pog

Mark Astronaut 27 August 1954 to 6 July 2022

I don’t think I ever told him, but Mark was one of my teenage heroes, and the only person I ever put on a pedestal that stayed there for the rest of my life. I still can’t believe he’s gone. His music has always been a huge part of my life, and every song has an attached memory for me. They saw me through good times and some very dark periods, but they were always there, playing in the background.

Mark had been ill for a long time, and needed an operation to fix it, but covid put an end to all hopes of that ever happening. Ever the professional, he continued performing through the pain he must have suffered, even when there was only a couple of dozen people there to watch him. Sometimes he would be very subdued on stage and you could tell how frail he was. Other nights he would down a couple of cans of energy pop and he’d be bouncing off the ceiling all way through the gig like the teenager he still was inside his head.

I always felt a bit guilty injecting myself into Mark’s life – the sheer audacity of a hack writer of teen fiction for the over 50s blagging his way into chronicling something as important as his lifetime’s work. The first thing he said to me was “I don’t want it to be a book about me, I want it to be about the band.” Which pretty much sums Mark up – he never wanted to take the credit for what he saw as a collaborative effort. He was just a member of a band who ended up singing because he couldn’t play any musical instruments. The fact that he wrote all the songs and composed all the music was irrelevant to him.

Never  meet your heroes, they say, because they are not the people you think they are. Mark was the exception to that rule, he was exactly like I always imagined he would be – intelligent, humble, scatty as hell at times, but always sincere – he wasn’t just writing protest songs for the sake of it, or to make money, he actually believed in every word and (to paraphrase one of the songs), lived his own life and did what he wanted.

We became friends while I was writing the book, I started making regular 200 mile round trips to Astronauts gigs and he would always come over for a chat when he saw me. Because we lived at opposite ends of the country most of the interviews for the book took place by telephone, but even after it was published he would still call me up pretty much every Sunday night to tell me what he’d been up to that week, his plans for the new album, any feedback people had given him about the book, and his ideas for promoting it – he even had a plan to sneak copies into the local Waterstones.

We’d talk for about an hour or so, until he would eventually say something along the lines of “I need to hang up now, I just remembered I was supposed to be giving X a call.” (With X almost always being someone famous.) Then we’d talk for another hour about random things – the state of the country, what we’d bought at our respective car boots that morning, our plans for a follow up book containing the lyrics to all his recorded songs, and a re-release of Soon and Seedy Side, the last of the ‘classic’ Astronauts albums from the 1980s. “But don’t put those shitty singles on it like All The Madmen did,” he would always say when the topic came up.

None of that will happen now, and neither will most of the things he mentioned in the interview at the back of the book. I don’t know if we will ever get to hear his last album, I suppose that will depend on how advanced the recording of it was, and whether the rest of the band will want to finish it without him.

It was always my intention to write additional chapters and publish them on my blog as and when anything new happened in the world of Mark Astronaut. I had already started on one called ‘I’ve Been Getting Into Books’ when I heard the news, but I don’t really feel like finishing it now. I know how it ends, and I just can’t bring myself to write those words. Because then it would become real, and I’m not ready for that yet.

Errors and omissions for the book Survivors 45 Years of The Astronauts

With a topic of this scale it was inevitable that a few errors would find their way into the book. I take full responsibility for these, and apologise to those whose reputations may have been affected. It was also perhaps inevitable that new information would come to light after publication, brief details of which you will also find below. If you know of anything else that is wrong or missing, please let me know.

Page 227. Along with Upfront And Sideways, a second cassette was self-released around this time. Called Mad Old Song’s Gone, it compiled selected tracks from Peter Pan Hits The Suburbs, It’s All Done By Mirrors, the two Bugle Records EPs, and Getting Things Done by Restricted Hours from the Stevenage Rock Against Racism EP.

Page 263. Waiting For July To Come Around dates back to the early 1990s lineup of The Astronauts, and was not specifically written for this version of the band.

Page 401. ‘a whopping price of £12’ for the Lovers single is unfair to Paul Stapleton, who organised its recording and release out of love for the band and made no profit on sales. The singles were hand-pressed at a cost of £8 each, with the rest of the money spent on printing costs and postage.

Page 402. Paul Stapleton says Mark Astronaut knew in advance that the Lovers song would be attributed to The Astronauts. While Mark still refutes this, it should have been mentioned.

Page 426. Photo by Rob Hurst.

Discography additions

The Madding Crowd
Bristol Class War cassette 1991.
Poor quality live recordings of Shoulder, Waiting For July To Come Around, Scoop, Typically English Day, Silence, Constitution, Chances, Seagull Mania.

Mad Old Song’s Gone
DIY cassette 1992.
Compilation of previously released tracks from early singles and albums. Behave Yourself, Typically English Day, Protest Song, Getting Things Done, Survivors, Following Orders, Moderation Is Boring, Sod Us, Seagull Mania, We Were Talking, Books, Midsummer Lullaby, Young Man’s World, Back Soon, Gold At The Top.

The Astronauts Book Launch Show Club 85 Hitchin

Our first Astronauts road trip since the apocalypse. We weren’t actually planning to go on one, but about a week earlier the owner of Club 85 messaged me and said they were having a launch event for the new Astronauts book and would it be possible for me to go along and take some with me. Yeah, I replied, no problem. Except I didn’t actually have any books, I was still trying to raise enough money through pre-orders to pay for the printing. But not to worry, that’s what friends and credit cards are for, and I wasn’t that far off reaching the target anyway.

So long story short, the next morning I sent the files off to the printer and hoped for the best. Fortunately, they arrived two days before we were due to set off for Hitchin. Unfortunately, the place we’d booked to stay at for the night cancelled on us because the owner had caught the covids from a previous guest. So we had to find somewhere else really quick, and ended up staying at a woman’s house who advertised on airbnb.

The next problem was how were we going to get to Hitchin? We wouldn’t be able to carry boxes of books on our 900cc motorcycle because they would be too heavy, and I didn’t fancy carting them on a train much, either. So we decided to go in our little 500cc car instead. Now cars like that aren’t really intended for long journeys, but we’d recently been to Leeds in it (45 miles) so we figured if we made a lot of stops at motorway services along the way it would manage the 120 miles to Hitchin just fine. Or at least that was the plan.

As an aside, the reason we went to Leeds was to see David Rovics, who I’ve always considered the American Mark Astronaut – think of a sort of left wing Billy Bragg and you won’t go far wrong. I never got around to writing my diary of that night, but it was basically him and some other bloke in a tiny pub with about 15 people watching. The only other point I would make was Leeds has some really weird and confusing road junctions, and it’s easy to get lost even when you have a little voice telling you which way to go.

Anyway, back to Hitchin. The satnav lady said it would take one and a half hours to get there, so we figured with all the rest stops it’d take about three hours maximum. We set off at dinner time, thinking we’d get there about 3pm, drop the books off at Club 85, then go exploring for a bit before we booked into the airbnb place at about 6pm.

Everything went fine until about twenty-five miles before we reached Hitchin. We stopped at services every forty miles or so, had a piss and a coffee, etc, then continued on our way. It was at the last service stop that we noticed the engine was really hot. As in cor blimey hot, or ooh eck I think there might be something wrong with it hot. So we opened the bonnet to help it cool down while we had our coffee. Half an hour later we were ready to go again, but the car wouldn’t start. Turned the key, nowt happened. Arse, we thought, now what? This was about 4pm, it had taken a bit longer than we anticipated to get that far, and we were still a long way away from Hitchin. We decided to leave the car a bit longer, tried again, still broke.

So we phoned the RAC (the car recovery company, not the far right organisation formed by Ian Skrewdriver – that would have just been silly)  – and told them what was up. They said they would send someone out, but it would be about four hours before anyone arrived because they were busy. Double arse, we thought. We’re going to miss our own book launch. But worse than that, we’d come all this way on an Astronauts road trip and we wouldn’t get to see them play. So we sat there for another half an hour panicking, until I decided to give the car one more try. It started. Yay, we thought, cancelled the RAC bloke, and off we went.

Then we ended up leaving the services on the wrong road, thanks to the stupid layout and lack of any signs telling you which way Hitchin was. The satnav lady was no use, she just kept saying to do a u-turn on a one-way road. But she readjusted eventually, and sent us on a ten mile detour back the way we had come. Then down some really dark and twisty narrow roads which were scary as fuck. We got there at just gone 6pm, Club 85 was surprisingly easy to find. Mark Astronaut was already there, standing outside and having a fag, so we said hello and took all the books inside.

Mrs Marcus got a taxi to the airbnb place so she could pick up the keys, while I stayed behind and watched the three bands do their sound check stuff. As an aside, the singing bloke from Rites Of Hadda looks completely different without his clothes on, but I suppose the same can be said for most performers. Then I pestered some of the celebrities to sign my copy of the book, plus a few of the hardbacks that various people had asked me to take with me for that purpose. I also picked up a copy of the ‘new’ 12” single, When You’re Not So High and swapped a few In Defence Of Compassion CDs for some Upfront And Sideways CDs.

“A lot of people have cancelled because of the new covid variant,” Mark said when he came over, “so there won’t be a big turnout.” Fair enough, I thought, big crowds make me nervous at the best of times, and my anxiety levels tend to go through the roof when there’s something like a global death plague epidemic going on. I arranged the books on the merch table, plus a few copies of Punk Rock Nursing Home I’d taken with me, and went and stood at the back, next to the mixing desk where I thought it might be a bit safer. Had to go back to the table a few times when people wandered over to buy things, but that was basically my spot for the night, and also that of Mrs Marcus when she arrived back at the venue. There was also a small dog for some reason. It kept wandering onto the stage, but it had gone by the time the bands started.

Rites Of Hadda were on first. I’d seen them before, on our last Astronauts road trip before the apocalypse when they played in That London with Zounds, but they seemed much better this time around. For a few seconds I thought they were going to open with Everything Stops For Baby as a sort of Astronauts tribute, because the opening few bars sounded pretty much the same, but it turned out to be something different. I regret not filming them or taking any photos, but I’m sure I will see them again one day and rectify that.

Mark came over again just before The Astronauts went on stage, to tell me I should probably go over to the merch table after they finished playing. I’d sold about ten copies of the book by then, plus one copy of Punk Rock Nursing Home. Someone (sorry, I’m crap with names) told me they liked my earlier book so much they bought all their friends a copy for Xmas one year, which was nice of them. For some reason that one always seems to sell well at Xmas, whereas the seasonal (sort of) sequel Christmas At The Punk Rock Nursing Home tends to do better in summer. I’ve also had someone on Facebook (who may or may not be the same person, I forgot to ask) tell me they discovered The Astronauts after first seeing them mentioned in that book and deciding to go and have a listen for themselves. But don’t buy Punk Rock Nursing Home for that reason.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, watching The Astronauts from the back of the room, video camera screwed onto the top of my walking stick as per usual so I can listen to it (and occasionally watch it) again at a later date. You could tell it was an Astronauts audience who had turned up, they knew most of the songs and shouted out others they wanted to hear. There was even a bit of dancing going on at some points in the proceedings.

The Astronauts did a couple of ‘new’ songs, which were actually very old ones which have been brought back to life again – Don’t Tell Me and Tearaways – albeit in new arrangement form, and one which I hadn’t heard before called It Was Always Going To Be Like This – which may or may not be new. Then there’s the usual stuff you would expect – Everything Stops For Baby, Protest Song, and a couple of tracks from the ‘new’ EP to help promote it. Why does he keep putting ‘new’ in inverted commas, you ask. Read the book and find out. There was also an encore of Getting Things Done – which, as an aside, was actually the working title of the book until about a year ago, when I changed it to Survivors instead – and it was all over. Time to pack up the camera, go over to the merch table, and flog some more books.

Now here’s the thing, I’ve only ever sat behind a table full of books once before. That was at a David Rovics gig in Rotherham many years ago, where I sold about six copies of whichever book it was I was trying to shift the whole night. To say the Astronauts books flew off the table would be a lie, because people actually picked them up reverently and threw money at me instead, but watching the big pile of them diminish to nothing over the course of about half an hour was nothing short of amazing. One person even wanted me to sign their copy for them, as if I am somehow important. I also sold another copy of Punk Rock Nursing Home, and gave one away to someone who demanded to pay over the odds for the Astronauts one.

I didn’t really get to see much of SMASH (or S*M*A*S*H if you prefer) because people kept coming over to buy stuff, and by the time I’d sold out and packed everything away they were half way through their set. They’re not a band I’m familiar with – to be honest their fame passed me by, and I only heard about them while researching the book – but they seemed okay. Again, no photos for obvious reasons. After that we hung around for half an hour waiting for a taxi to take us to our room for the night. I’d been on the cider, so we left the car parked outside the venue with the signed books in the back of it.

The next morning we got up and made some toast. The house we were staying at was well posh, I didn’t even know what half of the matching gadgets in the kitchen were for, and there was black squirrels in the garden. I had no idea squirrels came in black, I’ve only ever seen grey ones before and the odd photo of a red one in some nature reserve. Maybe they are like that blue elephant who broke his mother’s fountain pen while he was in the bath or something. They were too quick to photograph, so you will have to take my word for it. But they were definitely real. What are you on about, some of you are probably thinking, all squirrels are black. Well they’re not, yours are just weird ninja squirrels.

Anyway, we’d arranged to meet Mark Astronaut outside Club 85 before we set off for home, to talk about book promotion and the like. We were going to get a taxi, but then the owner of the house offered to drive us there instead. We got there just as Mark was arriving, and sat shivering outside the venue for half an hour until he had to go somewhere else. And that’s where our nightmare began.

The car started first time, and we set off. Went the wrong way and ended up on some housing estate, so we stopped to get directions. Then the engine died and the car wouldn’t start again. So we phoned the RAC and waited for someone to come. An hour later he turned up, twiddled about under the bonnet and said the fan belt was worn out and he didn’t have a replacement to put on it. He offered to get a tow truck out to take us home, but said it would cost £3 for each mile, so about £360 in total. Aaarghh, we thought, that’s more than we made from selling the books. Then he twiddled about a bit more, and got the car started. Take it really slow, he says, and it will probably get you back home eventually. Or at least part of the way, then you can call us back and get towed the rest of the way. Either way, every extra 10 miles you get will save you thirty quid.

So that was the plan, get as far as we can and then get towed the rest of the way if we have to. Except we needed petrol, so we headed for the nearest garage. And guess what? You have to turn the engine off to put petrol in, and it wouldn’t start again after that. Phoned the RAC, they said they don’t tow people home at weekends anymore and we will have to make our own arrangements.

As luck would have it, an AA (another recovery company, nothing to do with anonymous alcoholics) van pulled up at the petrol station. The guy must have seen us looking a bit distressed, because he came over and asked if we were okay. Bloody RAC, he said after we explained what had happened, and twiddled about under the bonnet before confirming we needed a new fanbelt. He actually went off to look for one for us at some places he knew, and said if he couldn’t find one we could just phone the AA, and they would register us as a new member. We would still need to pay to get towed home on the first day of membership, but at least they wouldn’t leave us stranded in the middle of nowhere in winter. Like the RAC did. So we phoned the AA and said we wanted to join them. Can’t do that, the bloke says, you already have cover with the RAC so it’s up to them to help you. And we don’t accept new members who have already broken down. So bog off and freeze to death, you northern bastards. (He didn’t actually say the last part, but that’s how we perceived it at the time.)

Ffffuuuuuuucccccckkk!

So all we could do was look on the internet for someone who could tow us home. At a massive cost, because they knew we had no choice. Then we sat shivering in a car for four hours because the heating only works while the engine is running. With one glove, which we had to take turns with. No idea what happened to the other glove, that’s just one of life’s mysteries. Maybe the RAC man stole it. Then it started raining and it got even colder.

When the tow truck eventually arrived it had a massive crack in the windscreen, and we must have been vibrating from the cold because he said we should go and sit inside it rather than hang around while he loaded the car onto the back. So we didn’t get to see whether he had shut the car window or not after he’d finished pushing it up the ramp, which then meant I worried the whole journey, expecting all those limited edition hardbacks people had asked me to get signed would be turned into liquid mush with all the rain pouring onto them. He kept reassuring me that the window was indeed closed, but you never know.

As it turned out, the window was closed and the books were all safe. We got home at about 9pm, which marked the end of the most expensive Astronauts road trip to date. But it was worth every penny. We’re hoping to do it again soon, various locations have already been suggested by Mark. We’ll probably go to those by train, though.

Survivors – 45 Years Of The Astronauts

Formed in the summer of 1977, The Astronauts have been lurking in the shadows of the British underground music scene ever since, criminally underrated and ignored by most despite their extensive back catalogue of albums and singles – each one a bona fide classic in its own genre-defying way.

With extensive input from frontman and songsmith Mark Astronaut, along with many of the musicians who have played alongside him over the years in both The Astronauts and his various other musical ventures, this is the story of how it all came about – from the bedrooms of 1970s Welwyn Garden City to the 2020 national lockdown. Also includes an extended interview conducted in 2021 and discography of all bands.

468 pages, illustrated throughout with photographs, flyers, fanzine articles, reviews, etc.

Sample pages below (click to enlarge).

Ltd edition hardback SOLD OUT

UK Paperback (Bandcamp, post will be expensive outside the UK)

UK Paperback (Amazon, cheaper if you get free post)

USA Paperback (Amazon)

Australia Paperback (Amazon)

Preview: Survivors — 45 Years of The Astronauts

Sample pages from the forthcoming book about Mark Astronaut and his various bands — The Astronauts, Restricted Hours, The Otters, Los Astronauts Muertos, and The Psephologists. Covers the period 1975 to 2020. Also includes details on fellow travellers Here & Now, The Mob, Zounds, Blyth Power, etc.

The text is still being finalised prior to editing, and we don’t have a cover image yet. No publishing date yet either, but we are aiming at summer 2021 when we hope to have some sort of launch event with music, etc.

The Astronauts / Zounds / Rites of Hadda at The Lexington, London, 29 February 2020

Another year, another Astronauts road trip. Last time, me and Mrs Marcus made the 300 mile round trip on our motorcycle to see them in their home town of Welwyn Garden City, which you can read about here.

This year I had a box of In Defence Of Compassion CDs to give to Mark Astronaut, and we had a choice of two locations – London, where The Astronauts would be supported by Zounds, or Hitchin (wherever that is), where they would be supported by Blyth Power. It was quite a tough choice, but in the end we chose London and decided to make a weekend of it.

I didn’t fancy biking it to London, it was cold and I would have just got lost in the one way system or confused by congestion charges and things like that, so we went on the train instead. Which, as it turned out, was just as well because everyone in London seems to drive like they are in that Carmageddon game – I mean, what the fuck?

You step on a zebra crossing, and instead of stopping to let you cross like Yorkshire drivers do, they speed up and try to kill you. And people on mopeds are no better, they ride around with their legs dangling down on the road, as if they are going to kick you in the face when they weave around you on the zebra crossing.

We got to London at about dinner time, but we weren’t allowed into the Travelodge we’d booked until 3pm so we decided to go shopping while we waited. I wanted to go to All Ages Records in Camden, to see if they still had any of the books I sold them last year because I’ve never actually seen any of them in a shop before.

So I told the satnav lady on my telephone the postcode for the record shop so she could direct us there. Unfortunately I forgot to tell her we would be walking there rather than going in a vehicle, so she took us on a very long and convoluted route that took over an hour to get there. Which was made worse by flurries of snow and hailstones – I thought it was supposed to be warm down south? Probably something to do with Brexit or whatever. On the way there, we found Youtube,  which we didn’t even know was a real place.

Anyway, we eventually got to the record shop, and the first thing I noticed was they had a poster advertising the Astronauts gig in the window. Ooh, I thought, I’m having that. We went inside, and our punk credentials were checked by two small dogs who came over to give us a sniff. We must have passed the test, because they wandered back to the shop’s owner to let him know we were okay.

I had a flick through the A section for any Astronauts albums, because I’ve never seen any of those in a shop either, and spotted the It’s All Done By Mirrors reissue and the Survivors singles collection, which I obviously put at the front so people can find them more easily.

Then went over to the counter and asked if I could have the poster in the window. “Yeah, sure,” the bloke says, so Mrs Marcus went and grabbed it for me before anyone else had the same idea. There was a shelf full of books near the counter, so I had a look to see if any of them were mine. I found Runaway, pointed at it, and said to the bloke, “That’s me.” I assume he understood that I wasn’t referring to the skinhead girl on the cover, because he said he could do with ordering some more books from me as all the others had sold out. Which is kind of good. Now I just need to remember to email him about it.

I asked how well Astronauts records sell in his shop, he said they sell now and again, but not often. Then I showed him one of the In Defence Of Compassion CDs and he said he would order a few to go with the books. He seems a good bloke, and it’s a good record shop to go in if you are ever in the area.

We had planned to go to some other shops we had found on the internet, but time was getting on by then, and the box of CDs was getting heavy, so we decided to get a bus back to the train station so we could find the Travelodge.

It turns out you are not allowed to use money on London buses, you have to either use a credit card, or pay the driver with an oyster (which I assume is some sort of local bartering currency? Probably easier to carry around than jellied eels or whatever.) Being vegetarians we obviously didn’t have any oysters, but Mrs Marcus did have a credit card. So she tapped it against this thing on the bus to buy a ticket for herself, then tapped it again for mine.

“Can’t do that,” the bus bloke says. “Got to use your own credit card, or pay with an oyster.” Eh? We don’t have any bloody oysters, and we only took one credit card with us. I thought one of us would have to walk back, but he must have taken pity on us or been in too much of a hurry to spend ages arguing about it, because he let me on for free. Rather surprisingly, the bus didn’t smell of oysters. Not that I know what an oyster smells like, I’m just assuming they have some sort of odour. Also found out people in London don’t like it when you talk to them on buses.

Finding the Travelodge was just as much fun as finding the record shop, thanks to the satnav lady trolling us again with directions designed to confuse us. We ended up at the wrong one, but we eventually found the one we were supposed to be at, and settled in with a sandwich with some weird green stuff in it, like wet tea leaves or something, and a plate of cardboard chips. London food is strange.

Mrs Marcus used her own satnav lady to find The Lexington when it was time to go, because we had both fell out with mine by then. It wasn’t far, just a short walk away, which was handy. It’s smaller than I expected it would be, basically just a corner pub with the music part upstairs. Which probably explains why the tickets sold out so fast.

Downstairs was packed out and noisy, so we went upstairs to see if we could find Mark Astronaut to hand over the box of CDs. He wasn’t there yet, but I was assured he was on the way. We left them with Steve Lake’s missus instead, who was selling Zounds stuff, and went in search of a suitable place to watch the gig from.

The first thing I noticed was a big camcorder on a tripod just inside the room where the bands would play. Ooh, I thought, someone is going to film it and I might be able to snaffle a copy off Mark later. I asked Joe Davin, an ex-Astronaut who seemed to have just appeared next to me, and he said it was going to be streamed live over the internet. Okay, I thought, maybe I’ll be able to download it when I get back home.

A few people headed upstairs, so I thought I’d best find somewhere to watch from before all the best vantage points were taken. There’s an elevated bit with some seats next to the bar, and a lot of the seats had a ‘reserved for …’ note with a name written on it, but we found a couple in the corner that didn’t so we perched on those for a while until Mrs Marcus reminded me to scatter a few Runaway bookmarks around the venue. It’s called marketing, or product placement, or raising brand awareness, or something like that.

Anyway, I also wore my Punk Rock Nursing Home T-shirt, partly for the same reason, but mainly so Facebook friends who were there would be able to find me if they wanted to, since I have no idea what most of them actually look like. A couple of them did, most either stayed away or didn’t notice me.

While I was placing bookmarks in strategic positions someone prodded me in the stomach and said “I’ve read that,” referring to the book advertised on my T-shirt. At this point, one of two things usually happens – they either tell me how much they liked the book, or they want to punch me in the face for making fun of Thatcher being dead. Fortunately it was the former, but you never know these days.

While I was heading downstairs to put bookmarks on the tables down there, everyone started coming up for the gig, so I changed my mind and went back up again. It’s a very narrow stairway, so I wouldn’t have been able to get past them anyway.

Rites of Hadda were on first. I’d never heard of them before, but they were pretty good. They reminded me a bit of Dr and the Crippens, not so much in the music, which was a lot more melodic with saxophone and stuff like that, but in the way the singer dressed. First he was a nun, then he had some sort of feathered suit, then at the end he had these big butterfly wings with flashing lights on them.

After that it was the main event of the evening, The Astronauts. Mark seemed a lot more energetic than he was last year, which was good to see, and Joe Davin rejoined for the evening on a little synthesiser type thing which probably has a more technical name.

Presumably because of the new In Defence Of Compassion CD, The Astronauts opened up with Suburbs, which I don’t think Mark’s done for about 30 years because it went a bit wrong a few times. They also did Problems and The Nurse from the same album. In fact most of the set was old stuff, with just Flounder and Not Doing It being the only relatively modern ones.

Young Man’s World was the highlight for me, because it is obviously the best song Mark Astronaut ever wrote, and anyone who says otherwise is just plain wrong. They ended with Melissa’s Party, which is a cover version of an old Otters song that gets really noisy at the end.

Zounds were on next, and it was pretty obvious a lot of the audience were only there for them, because there suddenly seemed to be a lot more people there, all leaping around and joining in with the chorus to songs mostly taken from their first album. In fact I don’t think they played anything at all from their second album.

As you may know, the current guitarist and bass player are also Astronauts, so it wasn’t really a surprise when Steve Lake invited Mark Astronaut onto the stage for backing vocals on Can’t Cheat Karma, which The Astronauts covered on one of their more recent albums.

“Mark Astronaut, everybody,” Steve says as Mark wanders off the stage. I see blank faces everywhere. They don’t know what they are missing out on. Joe Davin also got up to play synthesiser on one of the songs, and towards the end there was a woman from Nigeria whose name I didn’t catch doing a sort of reggae version of War.

After the gig I went in search of Mark Astronaut, and found him surrounded by people who wanted to hug him and tell him how much he means to them. Which is perfectly understandable, so I didn’t want to interrupt any of it. I still remember the first time I ever met him, I touched him and swore I would never wash my hand ever again. Unfortunately it was the hand I use to wipe my arse with, so that wasn’t really practical.

While I waited for the hugging to stop I met Helen Robertson, who sometimes does the French singing during Baby Sings Folk Songs when they play that. Turns out she was also in The Sellouts, who shared band members with The Astronauts for a while in the early 2000s, which is the period I am working on in the book at the moment. So now I know her name I can annoy her with lots of silly questions until she gets bored with me and stops replying.

Mark invited me to the after show party backstage, which probably sounds very exciting so I won’t spoil your imaginations with the reality of it all. Met up with some more people I knew through Facebook, a lot of them for the first time. They probably told me stuff that would be useful for the book, but without something to record it on all that information is lost to me because of my memory issues. So hopefully they can either email it to me or arrange a phone call to say it all again. They all seemed to be pleased with the way the CD had turned out, anyway.

Everyone else had gone home by the time I left the little room backstage, and Mrs Marcus was sat by herself wondering where I’d gone. I must have forgot to tell her about the party, or maybe it took longer than I thought it had. Anyway, after that we bought a pizza and went back to the Travelodge.

The next day it was quite sunny, so we decided to go sightseeing instead of just wandering around shops or getting the train back home. I wanted to show Mrs Marcus all the pigeons at Trafalgar Square, and she wanted to see where the queen lived. The bus was too complicated without any oysters, so we decided to get the underground train thing instead, which we hoped would be a bit easier to get onto. But while we were at the ticket machine we saw we could buy a daily bus ticket for about half the price, and even better, it would let you buy two of them on one credit card. So we went on the bus.

Got to Trafalgar Square, and there was about 3 pigeons instead of the thousands that were there the last time I went to London. There was a sign with a picture of a seagull and a red line through it, presumably meaning ‘no pigeons’ so either they are very law abiding birds, or someone has murdered them all. After an hour looking around the art gallery we decided to go and visit the queen, and maybe watch her getting trooped by them red blokes with big heads.

We couldn’t find the queen’s house, so we went to have a look at the Houses of Parliament instead, to see if there were any toffs to shout at. Didn’t see any toffs, but there was loads of coppers with machine guns glaring at us from behind barbed wire fences, so we made a hasty retreat before one of them decided to take pot shots at us. Ended up walking past Downing Street, which had even more coppers with machine guns. After that we thought bollocks to it, and got a bus back to the train station, where we would be relatively safe.

Got home and found out the live stream hadn’t worked too well, but it did capture the Rites of Hadda set in its entirety before things went wrong. There’s a few Astronauts songs in there as well before it cuts out, and I think they caught most, if not all, of the Zounds set with random glitches. It should be still there on Facebook if you want to have a look for it. Search for Lost Data Productions, I think it’s in three separate bits. Then go and buy all The Astronauts albums you haven’t already got.

 

The Astronauts In Defence of Compassion CD re-release

The sleeve notes I wrote for the 2020 Retroactive CD re-release of The Astronauts album In Defence of Compassion. You can listen to the album here, and possibly buy the CD if they haven’t already sold out.

Bandcamp

Recorded over the course of 1989, In Defence of Compassion was The Astronauts’ fifth studio album and one which vocalist and songwriter Mark Wilkins would later describe as the most overtly political album he has ever recorded.

With the exception of Secret File, which dates back almost to the very inception of the band in the summer of 1977, the eleven tracks it contains were written over a three year period between 1984 and 1987, and form a loose narrative based around a then-future 1990s dystopia which becomes more and more authoritarian as the album progresses.

Mark Wilkins was without a band when Acid Stings offered to fund and release In Defence of Compassion, and turned to long term friend and guitarist Chris Bland for help in finding suitable musicians. Bland suggested Terry Cain and Martin Meadows, both of whom he had performed with in the early 1980s post-punk band The Glee Club.

With Wilkins living in Welwyn Garden City, Bland and Cain both based in London, and Meadows having recently moved to Brighton, full band rehearsals were scarce and this version of The Astronauts made only four live appearances together during its short existence.

Acid Stings chose Raven Studios in Surrey for the recording location, which at the time operated from a spare bedroom in the home of its owner Alex Cable, drummer of the female-fronted anarcho-punk band Internal Autonomy. The tracks which originally made up side one of the album were recorded there over a five hour period in the spring of 1989, and the band went their separate ways shortly after.

When Mark Wilkins later returned to Raven Studios to record the vocals for those tracks he found Alex Cable had added his own synthesiser to them, along with extra guitar played by a friend of his called Jason Gray. While somewhat surprised at this, Wilkins liked the overall result Cable had achieved, so the extra instruments made it onto the finished album.

Rather than find another new band to record side two, Wilkins turned to Russ Seal, another friend and collaborator who had previously produced the earlier Astronauts albums Soon and Seedy Side for All The Madmen Records, to complete the album. These remaining three tracks were recorded in Seal’s bedroom in Luton in the autumn of 1989.

Along with owning his own recording equipment, Seal was a musician in his own right, having played in several local bands, and offered to play all the instruments himself rather than involve other musicians.

Wilkins already knew he wanted to include an expanded version of the Orwellian song Secret File, which had previously only been available in a very primitive form on a limited edition cassette released in 1978, and this formed the majority of side two.

While discussing what else to include on the album, Russ Seal played Mark Wilkins a tape containing a drum track he had recorded with his brother Steve several years earlier combining an electronic drum machine with a bass drum, floor tom, and bamboo sticks being hit together. This formed the basis for the ambient track Behind The Mirrors, which is still occasionally played on the radio to this day.

Russ Seal also composed the album’s closing track, Sudden Pause, which featured vocal samples from the 1955 Charles Laughton film Night of the Hunter. Again, this was something he had recorded several years earlier, and the same sample would later be used in Pudden Sause, the opening track of 1999’s You’re All Weird album.

In Defence of Compassion was released in January 1990, and sadly its themes of poverty and social decay remain as relevant today as they were all those years ago.

The bonus lo-fi tracks included with this release were recorded at Ludwick Hall in Spring 1988 by the Seedy Side lineup of The Astronauts shortly before they disbanded, plus a young woman the bass player had met earlier in the day on saxophone. Nobody remembers her name, and nobody saw her again after this.

No Cold Water and Somnambulist were originally intended for release as part of a split single with The Apostles to be released by Acid Stings later in the year, but a mix up with cabling meant one of the guitars failed to record properly so the project had to be abandoned.

The master recordings for these tracks are now lost, but were dubbed onto a cheap cassette tape for Mark Wilkins at the end of the recording session. It is from this cassette which these tracks, many of which were either never recorded again or would take a further thirty years to see release, have been rescued. As a result you will notice a distinct drop in quality from the studio tracks which precede them.