Letter of the month

LOCAL HEROICS

Fabulous feature on Eric’s in RC 400! In post-punk Britain it wasn’t only big cities like Liverpool which had their own clubs, record stores, bands and collection of “oddballs”.

My hometown of Keighley in West Yorkshire had The Funhouse and The Gory Details nights on Mondays in the early 80s. Run by Bradford poet and musician Nick Toczek the likes of Southern Death Cult, March Violets, Sisters Of Mercy, The Lurkers and Vice Squad descended on the town to play The Gory Details. See the flyer from back in the day (below). The audience members formed their own bands – The Shakes (the best, who should have been huge), Teenage & The Wildlife, The Last Laugh, Unit 3 and the two that tasted the greatest success – Skeletal Family and New Model Army. Keighley was also one of the few towns that The Sex Pistols played.

Keighley had its answer to Probe records in Liverpool: Discount Records was situated near the town’s railway station. It was the place to purchase national releases by the likes of The Business and The Adicts along with the first records by New Model Army, Skeletal Family and the one that got away from a wider audience… The Shakes’ I Kill God/Funeral Rites.

by Graham Scaife, ex-Keighleyite
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