Ticket
James, The Railway Children
The Boardwalk
15th December 1984

James at The Boardwalk.With an invite that offered free vegan food and soft drinks; how could you say no to that!I'm not sure if it was at this but Fiona a.k.a. Venus Flytrap did a rather odd and slightly disturbing support.I used to go to the Boardwalk quite a lot,being a hop,skip and a jump from my abode.Got loads of flyers to upload from it.I recall The Godfathers being particularly good,putting a bit off umph back into good ol' rock 'n roll ,which seemed to have evaporated a little round that shoe-gazey,gothy,bedsit wimp rock time ;(a touch of the Nick Kents seeping out there methinks).I remember The Proclaimers being good too (honest!).It surprised me how two blokes could sound like four blokes singing.Anyway they ended up with a song in one of the Shrek films so they must be good."They Might Be Giants" with their lagerphone, which anyone can make (a few bottletops,a pole and away you go...) ,with The Housemartins standing appreciatively in the audience.Obviously lots of bands rehearsed there,Dub Sex being one that springs to mind.I left my car outside there one Saturday night (an Austen 1100,my pride and joy), and when I came out of the flats where I lived ,on the Monday morning, for a brief heart-stopping moment I thought someone had nicked it till I remembered what I,d done.Well when I got to old "Bessie" someone had glued newspaper all over the windscreen with "Don't Park Here Again!" scrawled across it and 'cos it was a freezing cold day I could only scrape a little hole big enough to drive back to Hulme ,whereupon I removed the the rest of the offending material.I'm sure the nice people at The Boardwalk would never have done a thing like that....!!??Needless to say alcohol would have been involved in my lapse of memory and judgement, and all in all,being late for work, at my job in Trafford Park, it turned to be an expensive night out.Oh yeah,and as always James were good.First time I heard "Folklore" on the wireless it "blew me away",as the young folks might say..