Somewhere around early Spring of 1991, I forget how (Probably through the efforts of a friend who I won’t name) I ended up becoming a regular at a almost long forgotten record shop just Oxford Street in Manchester called PowerCuts.
Powercuts (originally called Yanks) which was a second-hand record shop which sold their records at what was then a stupidly cheap price much cheaper and interesting than the likes off OurPrice, Virgin Megastore or HMV were selling them at. (Stock that they picked up stupidly cheap on twice yearly trips to America, something like a 1p a record and sold back at 99p or even cheaper sometimes making a massive profit margin allowing them to sell new albums at cost price under-cutting everybody massive).
Over time, I’ve forgotten much stuff I bought there and also a lot of what I actually bought but my first experience of the now late Richard H. Kirk came from there a month or two after I first went in there.
I remember the time well. I had just being taken on my job at Great Universal after 9 months on a Youth Trading scheme and after a error I got three weeks salary come through at once and my friend in the accounts team had asked me to go for a few beers with him after work.
However, when I was due to finish at 4pm, he knew he wouldn’t get into the centre of Manchester until at least 6pm, so I decided to pop into Power Cuts for a browse not really expecting to buy anything then got blasted out by Cabaret Voltaire’s Here to go as soon as I walked in.
By this stage in my life (I was just turned 19), I had already being engrossed in so much music that itself is a article in itself which I know confused and puzzled people at school from Scottish Folk / Traditional music, Country and Western Music, Bruce Springsteen, baggy music briefly (Stone Roses / Happy Mondays / Inspiral Carpets etc) then in a more left field turn, Spacemen 3, Durruti Column and perhaps even more surprinsingly Linton Kwesi Johnson (which is a story for another day).
Although I had had a varied music upbringing as you can see from the above, my knowledge is and was terrible of the popular music of the time, and this included heavy metal / rock such as Guns N Roses and Ac/Dc, which one of my friends loved and I simply couldn’t stand.
I have no diea how my friend who was and is still a huge fan of Guns N Roses and Ac/Dc still found out about Powercuts but I always remember coming out with a large bag of cheap vinyl everytime I went in and was partly responsible for me branching out into Industrial and punk
That and Cabaret Volitare.
When I walked in and they were blasting Cabaret Volitare’s Here to go which sounded so dubby but poppy, I knew I had to buy it in particular after I noticed that Adrian Sherwood had mixed it (who I had just got into through Tackhead’s Timing tick bomb recently after hearing it on a radio show somewhere) and stood at the counter, the guy who was there I do remember saying I should also get Live from the YMCA, their first album which I will enjoy even more, so I came out from there with what I discovered a wonderful 12 inch and a brutal industrial punk debut album which sounded like two completely different bands.
Two completely different brilliant bands.,
Hearing Richard H. Kirk, perhaps the key member of the group (and the only member of the group who stayed in the group throughout its lifetime) had passed away a few days back brought back a lot of memories of Power Cuts with its dusty smell and rails of cheap records and the excitement of when I played Live from the YMCA which was very different indeed from most music I had heard at that stage.
Kirk who aside from Cabaret Volitare in the 1980s produced so many albums I frankly lost count off including for example 1986's Black Jesus Voice for example which I only heard for the first time last year after picking it up for 29p at Powercuts (Got buried in a box during a move shortly after and never heard) but I was there when he re-surfaced by himself with last year’s ‘Shadow of Fear’ the first album by Cabaret Voliature (minus both Watson and Mallinder) in many years back, and it was incredible.
I got it curious more than anything else after not hearing the Cabs work in years or much of Kirk’s solo work, but it was post modern I guess taking a 80s funk / industrial into different genres which I hadn’t heard before and then with three more Eps / albums ‘Shadow of Funk’, ‘Dekadrone’ and ‘BN9Drone’ – all of which were the Cabs in vastly different work and would have fitted in wonderfully with the ambience of Power Cuts.
Sadly Mr Kirk I don’t think ever went to Power Cuts, but I would like to think if he walked in with me that day he would have seen what their use of dadism, punk, industrial, funk, dub and cut ups did to my own work with the blasting out of ‘Here to go’ and ‘Live at the YMCA’ did to everything I thought about music that day.
And that is something I will always be grateful for.
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