|
|
 |
Miki's Reminiscences
 Miki
Berenyi has kindly offered to contribute her reminiscences of
touring with Lush to this website. In typical Miki fashion, her
accounts are honest, fair, eloquent, personal, humorous, and just
plain great reading! They are an essential part of Lush's history,
and she will be contributing more of them in the future as time
permits.
 Miki
is also providing complete lists of gigs for each year, from her own
records, and I am updating the main
Gigography with links back to
this page.
On a personal note: virtually everyone I've
spoken with who knows Miki has told me the same thing - that she is
a kind, generous, intelligent, down-to-earth person. For the record
I must state here that, despite her strong denials, its all true!
|
 |
 |
|
|
Miki in Her Own Words
|
Original line-up of Meriel on vocals,
Emma on guitar, me on guitar and backing vocals, Steve on
bass and Chris on drums |
|
1988.06.12
Brixton
Canterbury Arms
Jesse Garon and the Desperadoes
Lush
Horsehead |
No stage,
just a vocal PA. One of the members of Jesse Garon was a
Sounds journalist who never forgave us for becoming
successful. To be fair, we were probably fucking awful at
this gig, but he never changed his opinion about us and
relished slagging us off in print at every opportunity!
Horsehead were a loud, heavy throaty-shouting band who were
later to call themselves God (no ego there, then). I
remember their singer, who always wore an overcoat and
sported a mullet, never failed to tackle me at gigs to rant
on about how shit Lush were. He took our success as a
personal insult and I actually felt rather apologetic
towards him, despite having to listen to his barrage of
invective, as he was clearly traumatised by it all. Feelings
ran high in those days but, honestly, what really made these
boys so vicious was pure, unadulterated sexism. To be
outdone was one thing – but to be outdone by a GIRL!!! |
|
1988.06.19
Ealing
College of Higher Education
Lush |
Emma was doing her Humanities degree at
this college and got us the gig. There was another band (I
think we supported), but I’m afraid I can’t remember their
name. What I do remember was that the saxophone player was a
bloke called Fred Harris (look him up on Wiki) who we all
recognized from our childhood as a presenter on Play School
– a UK tv show for pre-schoolers. We were genuinely
impressed by this brush with fame. |
|
between 1988.06.25
and 1988.07.22 |
I think it’s around this time that I had
to leave The Bugs (who I played bass for). I’d already
missed one Lush gig because of a clash of dates - my then
boyfriend, John Rowland, filled in for me on that occasion.
(He later became a member of Billy Childish’s band Thee
Headcoats, as Johnny Johnson.) Anyway, I had to make a
choice so I left The Bugs. (I’m afraid I can’t recall when
or where that Miki-free gig was) |
|
|
between
1988.07.22
and 1988.10.09 |
I’ve got a feeling
that it was around this time that Meriel left but I really
can’t be sure. |
|
1988.10.09
Camden
The Falcon
The Sun Carriage
Lush |
Bands would often share
equipment in those days - not so much guitar stuff, but the
bass amp and the drum kit (etiquette dictated that you bring
your own sticks, cymbals, hi-hat and bass-drum pedal).
Unless you were playing a big venue, swapping over the whole
backline was a bit over the top and in those days most
musicians were either unemployed or students (ie broke), so
the more you could pool resources, the better. We didn’t
have a van, just a mate with an estate car (couldn’t get all
the gear in!), so we’d turned up at The Falcon with no drums
and asked the Sun Carriage if it was ok to use their kit (it
had never been a problem at any of our other gigs), but
their drummer flatly refused. He gave us this great long
lecture on how unprofessional we were and he’d never heard
of any band sharing their equipment, but what I really
remember is that he had this slightly wanky but very brand
new expensive leather jacket on and it was like we were
smelly and poor and he was this rich bastard! In the end we
managed to get Colm from My Bloody Valentine to get his
drums over to us so we could play the gig – lucky he only
lived up the road! |
|
1989.12.02
Glasgow
QMCLoop |
We were on the bill, but we didn’t play!
There was a power cut or something – maybe the PA blew up?!
Anyway, after battling through ice and snow to make it to
the gig, only Loop played. They did an instrumental set with
just amps turned up full, which went down really well,
particularly because everyone appreciated their refusal to
give in to bad luck. The bloke from Jesse Garon who I
mentioned before reviewed the gig for Sounds, and managed
crucify us in print. I think he said something about
Scotland rightfully closing its borders to Lush. We always
referred to this review as proof of the loathing we
generated – quite an achievement to get a bad review even
when we didn’t actually play. |
Stay
tuned for more! |
|
|
|
