Tag: Capones

You’re my only friend, and you don’t even like me – 17th April 1994

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

I don’t like no-one, well except for you

A wild and willing 16-year-old, somehow I got into town and searched out like-minded comrades in teenage delinquency, knowing they would be gathering at Capones, a hotel room situated atop a dirty multi-storey car park in the centre, up from the church where you’d find green-haired youths sitting on gravestones with their bottles of Merrydown. Like joining any cult I knew no one but was accepted immediately as a member because I had already made the choice, they recognised the signs, the ripped clothes, the safety pins and messed up hair, so they joined me as much as I joined them.

So I talked to someone who had patches on their sleeves of names that I recognised and made friends. I told of my knowledge of American bands of this hardcore genre and this guy suggested I meet his friend and so started at long close friendship, that very night him being recruited to play bass guitar in the band Shock To The System and me later joining them when they changed their name to Atrox (shock); all through this friendship that started in that dim hall.

Young and rebellious we rejected the ways of our parents (ha!) and strove for a better world (in our ignorant teenage minds). Through dramas and drugs we were close in outlook and preferences, taking trips down to Bournemouth in the evenings of our early twenties to look back and wonder where this new new generation was going wrong. (I later realised it was us who were going wrong but that’s a longer story).

Proud and cynical we thrived off each other’s dark outlooks, revelling in the glory of life’s disaster. Myself the more adventurous of the pair I took initiatives when needed and we helped each other through several bands and a couple of publications. To look back now and see the tiny streams of change is easy, though I didn’t recognise them as such then, they soon turned into rivers which would not be turned back and this year would be the crucial year in our separation as friends.

The emotional heartache I went through was tough but I realised that by trying to remain friends was like paddling the canoe against the tide, no matter how hard I tried to make it up the river I was always pushed back, and what kind of friendship is that, when all effort is countered? I turned the canoe around and found myself in the vast oceans of love and warmth that others offered me. Myself as Mr Cynical was no more.

pic: screenshot from this video taken in January 1984 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNll6PtC9qM – where I bounce around in front of the band Confessions of Sin, proudly showing off my hand-made Better Youth Organisation t-shirt. I thought I was really something – I was really something else.

Graveyard Booze Up – 17th April 1984

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 2 Comments

Digging up bodies, taking back cider
Kicking over crosses, I lay down beside her
Graveyard, graveyard booze up

We tanked her up and she came down
We went to the graveyard instead of around town
Graveyard, graveyard booze up

The skeletons started dancing cos we had too much beer
So we danced with them and forgot about our fear
Graveyard, graveyard booze up

30th May 2023 – If we got to Bournemouth during the afternoon we would grab some lagers and cider and sit around the graveyard next to the car park where Capones was on the top floor. There were often other punks around getting drunk and being generally reckless. It was quiet and secluded so no one really bothered you there. You can see from the picture there was a lot of tree cover and the paths through were really only for folks wishing to attend graves, which didn’t seem to happen very often.
Mary Shelley is buried in this graveyard – something which I just learned this minute! I wouldn’t have known who she was in 1984.
30th Oct 2024 – Shared with Word of the Day Challenge – graveyard

(Self Abuse), Confessions of Sin, The Thing, Josh and Jon at the Junkyard, Disgusting Pukey Scarves – Capones, Bournemouth – 12th March 1984

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

12th Mar 2023 – Looking at this line up I was kind of absent of memory but then the name Josh and Jon at the Junkyard reminded me – they were a ‘band’ in the style of early Neubauten, SPK etc, making rhythm and noise with metal drums, old sheets of metal and angle grinders. I’d seen little glimpses of this music on TV and it was exhilarating to be face-to-face with flying sparks and the iron smell of an industrial factory.
This is what gigs were supposed to be about.
Confessions of Sin would have been a perfect compliment, with their Stooges/Birthday Party weirdness. I probably skipped Self Abuse this time as they were probably the odd ones out in this line-up, a little too straight-ahead punk rock.
Damn, I’d forgotten all about this. I wonder who Josh and Jon were? A quick search reveals a song video and the attached picture. Not much else though.

Cult Maniax, Screaming Dead, Butcher, Self Abuse – Capones, Bournemouth – 26th November 1983

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 2 Comments

The Cult Maniax bass player was so drunk he had to play slumped in his chair, often also with his girlfriend on his lap. A dedication to alcohol, that was a key part of the UK punk scene at the time.

I found Butcher a little bit one-dimensional after a while but loved Self Abuse. Shock To The System were my favourites though. They just had something a little special that separated them from the rest. I was soon to make friends with them.

These flyer photos were posted by Rut to a concert website