The First Night of the MIC Club

First published in 2016 in the NGG fanzine... 

Poster by Syd Matthews

In January 1982 I was still at school half-heartedly studying for A levels, which I would sit in June 1983, with no idea at all what I would do after that. But I was in a band. This was purely by virtue of owning a drum kit. I had only a basic grasp of what I was meant to be doing with it, but it was enough for me to be a member of the Rubberman 12 (pronounced Rubberman Dozen); a trio with my pal John Gawen on bass, plus singer/songwriter/guitarist Mike O’Halloran. 

Mike’s main influences, courtesy of his older brother, were Todd Rundgren, Love, the Velvet Underground, The Jam, Orange Juice, Talking Heads and Joe Jackson. His songs would not have been out of place on the Postcard label; post-punk pop with a funky twang that just fell short of being twee. C-86 before its time, I suppose. The-Beatles-in-Hamburg it was not. John was a big Bunnymen and Bowie fan and I was mad on The Doors, Magazine, Vic Godard, Love, The Fall and Frank Sinatra. However, since that Christmas party, we had each endeavoured to see The Milkshakes and Prisoners as often as possible. 

We had done a few gigs at parties and village halls over the previous year and were looking to start doing proper dates in proper venues. On Sunday 28th February we turned up to watch the Prisoners at the Red Lion in Northfleet. It was one of the rare dates in those days where the Milkshakes were not playing with them as the two bands used to gatecrash each other’s gigs as a readymade double bill. The Prisoners were now no longer a trio, Jamie having joined them a month earlier.

Without a support band, I can’t remember whether we volunteered our services or whether Prisoners’ bassist Allan Crockford suggested that we could have played if only we’d had our gear. We didn’t need to think about it. My mate Mick Dray had driven us there in his bronze Honda Civic and we duly set off back to Wainscott and Chatham as fast as possible to collect guitars and drum sticks, returning to the pub about 45 minutes later. We played a short set of about five or six of Mike’s numbers, politely received, until we concluded with our take on ‘My Generation’, leaving the stage to bemused silence. The Prisoners took the stage after us, now upgraded from a trio to quartet, with Johnny Symons’ classmate Jamie Taylor on a Casiotone organ.

Rubberman Ian

It had been great evening and all that was holding us back (we felt) was a lack of places to play. 

A week or so later Mike had spotted a new venue in the local paper’s gig listings; MIC Club, on Railway Street, Chatham. He and I decided to find it for the mentioned gig by some act called Oubliette. We had no idea who they were and had never heard of the club before. It took some finding. For a start, the entrance was actually on Medway Street. There was no sign to denote that we were at the right place. We walked through a door into a hall with nothing in it but a wide staircase. Walking up three large flights we eventually came to a door on our left and stepped in. The room was large with a great number of wooden chairs and tables, lino on the floor and a fairly low ceiling, brightly lit by fluorescent strip lights, containing very few people. By few, I mean fingers of two hands territory, including the New Romantic/ electronic band, bar staff and us two. The stage was in the far left corner.

Rubberman John 

A bar was on the right in the mid distance and we eventually saw that the room was L-shaped, with further floor space beyond the right side of the bar. I cannot recall if we were charged entry or whether it was free. We met a guy, the manager/owner, who was called Sandy and told him that we were a band and that we were looking for places to play and wanted to check this place out. He was very welcoming and asked if we had any fans. Oh yes, we said, we’ll bring all our fans. He gave us a date; Friday 9th April 1982. It was that simple. 

Rubberman Mike

“Oh, one other thing we should mention.”

“What’s that?” says Sandy.

“Er, some of our fans are not quite 18 yet.” (Mike is a month past his 17th birthday. I am still 16).

“As long as they buy my drink I don’t care.” So that’s that then. 

The MIC Club was about to be born.

This was exciting news. We put some wheels in to action and told our ten fans (I can name them – Mark, Sarah, Brady, Alison, Helen, Gail, Paula, Sian, Wilf and Mick) to stick the date in their diaries. We even managed to get a gig at the Good Intent in Rochester on Saturday 3rd April and my diary notes a Grammar School party at the Good Companions club on 7th April (no recollection of this). It was going to be some week, but all the focus was on the MIC date.

Mark Matthews, later of the Dentists, was our number 1 fan. He was just beginning to learn the bass and was an enthusiastic champion of the band, bringing his little entourage of friends from Rainham to watch us rehearse in Mike’s garage on several occasions. Mark’s dad designed and printed some posters for the gig. We printed numbered tickets on yellow sheets of paper, about two inches square, and sold them at our all-boys school. Our friends Paula, Alison and Helen sold some at the all-girls Rochester Grammar school and I shifted about 20 to colleagues at Sainsbury’s, where I did a Saturday job. 

Our ten fans grew somehow into a colossal 197 tickets sold and we split our £98.50 thus; £2.50 for each of our mums for doing the driving to rehearsals and gigs and we paid ourselves £30 each. Not sure about the odd quid left over. Thirty quid was a huge sum for someone two days away from their 17th birthday. 

Our support was The Gruffmen, whom we had got to know as Allan Crockford was also their bassist and saxman Martin Waller had been the first of the Milkshakes crowd to chat to us on a friendly basis. My memory recalls him also helping with some lifts to gigs in his blue works van. I cannot recall whether we asked the Gruffs to support or they approached us for the gig and I don’t think we gave them a bean from the ticket money.

As mentioned in the last issue, the Gruffmen have left little to posterity other than in the hazy memories of those who saw them. They played exclusively covers in a swinging make-the-party-last style (I don’t mean they sounded like Herr Last and his Orchestra, that’s just my little joke). Think of a cross between Mitch Ryder, The Troggs and The Modern Lovers with former Pop Rivet and soon-to-be Milkshake (and future Delmona, Wildebeest, Mindreader and Lord Rochester) Russ Wilkins at the helm and genuine Gravesend superstar eccentric Sexton Ming at the kit. With a roster of 200 songs, perennial faves included Dirty Water, Tequila, Respect, Pipeline, Night Time, Bright Lights Big City, Yeah Yeah, and… you get the idea. As a NGG reader you are doubtless familiar with the Prisoners and Milkshakes and, if you never saw the Gruffmen, you’ll have to take my word for it that, for a little while in the summer of ’82, they were the best of the three bands. And I say that as someone who has two Milkshake gigs in my top three of all time. 

Rubberman Fans

Anyway, with a packed room full of 15-18 year olds, plus a few people as old as 22, it was one hell of an evening. Sandy, a rotund beaming former cabbie of Indian descent (MIC stood for Medway Indian Community Club), his kipper tie at half-mast, was delighted. He couldn’t wait to book us again. I expect we may have also put in a word for our mate Allan’s other band, though Allan wouldn’t have been slow at coming forward touting for Prisoner gigs. 

The MIC was on the map and before long a Monday night residency was booked for the Prisoners, Milkshakes and Gruffmen, which, without the schoolkid Rubberman 12 following, pulled in no more than 20 people, 10 of whom were the musicians. I guess enough was drunk on quiet nights for Sandy to keep the residency going. He smiled just as much when the club was dead as he did when we packed it.

Then, on 19th May 1982, Mike, John and I turned up for a Wednesday Milkshakes/Gruffmen/Outer Limits gig (no Prisoners according to my diary) and were astonished to find the MIC was once again packed. It turned out that TVS were filming some of the gig for a documentary on the Medway music scene. The clip shows the Milkshakes playing what was to be their first single ‘It’s You’ and depicts a scene every bit as thriving as that at the Cavern two decades earlier. There was no scene before that night.

There were no more sparsely attended Milkshakes gigs after that night. The MIC was now on the Medway map.

Rare photo inside the MIC

The chart that week had included ABC, Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Depeche Mode, Simple Minds, Joan Jett and Yazoo. Here was a sweaty club, lit by fluorescent strip lights, where I find myself dancing to bands playing Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Kinks covers. At various times over the next twenty months I would think how lucky I was to be right here, right now. I really couldn’t envisage anywhere better on the planet.

The venue felt like it was ‘ours’, by which I mean the Milkshakes and Prisoners extended circle. Very few other bands played there. It never became part of the regular Medway circuit with blues, rock or metal bands, though it did host a Country & Western club every Saturday night. Looking back, Sandy had accidentally attracted a bunch of 16-25 year old kids who were using the club as much as its original purpose as a hang-out for the local cab and bus drivers. I don’t know if the local Indian community ever actually used it. 

Please note that this was not the Rubberman 12's backdrop! A
remnant of the MIC's Saturday night C&W night!

On Monday 31st May the Rubbermen played again, with the Prisoners this time. I cannot recall the financial details or who supported who, but the place was again packed. I sat behind my Ajax drum kit looking out on familiar faces (mainly female) going wild. I thought it was wonderful. I had found what I wanted to do with my life and I was doing it.

It was the last ever Rubberman 12 show. As soon as we finished playing that night Mike, like Ziggy with his Spiders, told John and me that he wasn’t going to do it anymore. “I didn’t like the crowd” he said. “What – all those girls dancing?” “Yeah, it was awful. It was like a football crowd. I hated it.” And he kept his word. There was no comeback, no Aladdin Sane. The Rubberman 12 were finished. The next day I had promised to have a rehearsal with Mark and a friend of his called Bob Collins, so I went from one band to another. It worked out in the end, but it felt like moving from a Premier league team to a Sunday league outfit overnight. 

Bob, Ian, Mark as the Ancient Gallery

Our new band eventually got to play the venue, more than a year later, with Goth-lite act (Goth had not yet been invented) The Cracked Actors and I also played there as Tim Webster’s drummer in the Outer Limits for a while. The new band went through several name changes (The Hoovervilles, Cheese in a Hostile Matrix and The Ancient Gallery) and a couple of vocalists before we settled on being called The Dentists. Oddly, the aforementioned Good Intent became the Dentists’ home base, although, like the MIC, for only a very short period. Other bands who played at the MIC included Tony Zemaitis’ The Heroes, Glenn Prangnel's The Offbeats, and George Hargrave’s The Pressure. It is possible that The Meteors’ sole visit for a psychobilly night was the only time a non-Medway band played there.

Bob, Ian & Jock - Ancient Gallery

John and Mike stuck together, briefly in an Associates-style act called Swoon Babboon, and eventually in the Outer Limits (when I got chucked out). He became the Milkshakes third bassist when Russ left in early 1984 (or thereabouts). Mike teamed up with Tim Webster’s brother Steve and Bertie (after he had left the Milkshakes) to form a sax-led 1940s/50s swing trio called CC41, but, as far as I know, never showcased his own songs in a band again. He eventually became a cameraman and video producer. 

The Prisoners played the MIC on the night that their first album, A Taste of Pink, was released in September ’82. They and the Milkshakes were both regularly playing further afield with occasional forays into Belgium, Germany, France and even London! (The Prisoners didn’t play London until January 1983, when they supported The Barracudas at the Moonlight Club). 

But to the MIC they would return. After a while gigs shifted into the hitherto unknown ‘back room’, a space of similar size, but square rather than L shaped. The atmosphere remained the same; 180 to 200 young people having the time of their lives in Oxfam clothing listening to music almost as far removed, not only from the sounds of the charts, but also from the stuff John Peel was playing, as it is possible to be. 

The Prisoners and Milkshakes played the last ever night at the MIC on Friday January 27th 1984, commemorated by the live album on Russ Wilkins’ Empire Records. It had been a mere twenty one months since the Rubberman 12 and Gruffmen show. I cannot recall exactly what happened to end it. I think the council made a compulsory purchase on the building as they wanted to (and did) build a flyover as part of a new traffic system. I think Russ or Billy would occasionally bump into Sandy. Who knows what he’s up to now? It was a long time ago.

The Big Two were far from finished, although the Gruffmen ceased as Russ took over from Bert as the Milkshakes’ bassist, but something was lost and never quite recaptured with the closure of Sandy’s club. The end of an era, certainly. My band with Mark and Bob had found a new vocalist, Mick Murphy, and we were ten weeks away from our first gig. And that’s a whole new story for another day.