sound of the suburbs

At the beginning there were three of us, Laurence, my long suffering partner, Fargy, a colleague from Le Rockstore and myself who with the complicity and loads of support from Fifi and Steph registered the name Luna Tick and headed feet first into the world of concert promotion. Our very first event was 25 November 1992 with New Fast Automatic Daffodils, the evening was a relative success with both the audience who were modest in terms of numbers and the excellent band both happy with the evening, we too were pleased despite our financial losses, this was to be the first in a long series! There was nothing stopping us and our second event was already lined up for 16 December with Inspiral Carpets. We thought this was it, the big time for us, what we were quickly to learn is that there is one hell of a difference between what a London based NME reading punter and the youth of a medium/large French provincial town chooses to attend. Again a good time was had by the 450 people in attendance.
The band had arrived in Montpellier the night before as it was a day off for them, being very much party minded creatures ourselves we agreed to show them around our fair town the night before, this of course was restricted to drinking holes. I don't think all of the band were present though there road crew were, please don't ask as I really don't know whether Noel Gallagher was still working with them or not or if he'd buggered off to form Oasis, what I do remember is that they had a charming lady as their road manager, whose name escapes me but I do recall that she was at the time Peter Hook's girlfriend, and she delighted with many hilarious stories concerning Hooky and his chums.
today's music comes from the Inspiral Carpets with one song from their debut album 'Life' that I seem to remember as having been rather popular 'She Comes In The Fall', and one of my favorite tracks from their second album 'Revenge Of The Goldfish' that they were touring in 1992 entitled 'Dragging Me Down'.
today's post is another in our series celebrating the 20th birthday of Le Rockstore and it is tonight that I am going to see Rinocerose supported by the reformed Otis Wood both of whom have been subject to posts in the past. As local promoter you often find yourself with a headliner that is touring without an opening act, as was the case that night with Inspiral Carpets, and so it was the first time that worked with Otis Wood, Montpellier's finest power pop trio to date that were to assume the opening spot that night. Both of today's photos are taken from that gig, and were taken by local photographer Eric Catarina for whom I thank. The Photo at the top of the page is of Carpets vocalist Tom Hingley, and the one at the bottom is of Otis Wood vocalist guitarist Florian Brinker. Note how both singers were wearing ace shirts that night!