Muses on Bornemouth 1990

I can only think of one or two bands that I would describe as truly original. This is one of them.


I first came over the Throwing Muses in the year of 1990. That year I had the somewhat bizarre experience of living in an out of season Bournemouth hotel, for blocks of one week, or two weeks at a time, it all added up to three months of Bornemouth.


I was learning how to be a professional Procurement guy at the time. It was great fun. This was when business travel and staying in hotels still seemed interesting to me.


I was also with such a great bunch of people. Me and two other Scottish guys (Gary Diggens and Steve Casselles) really bonded and we had such a great time. That's when I learned the dangers of the phrase "put it on my bill" in a hotel bar. I was not earning much at the time and could not claim back huge drinks bills, so the fear I felt at check out time was very real!


We were in the bar every night as I remember. I was going to say with all the drinking, it was amazing I passed. But now I think about it, I didn't first time. But it was great fun all the same. 1989 was, so far, the most miserable year of my life. I was determined to have fun in 1990. I could almost sense the change of the decade bringing about a change in me, as I was sick outside my mate Andy's house at New Year 1990 (sorry Andy, don't think I ever told you that before, hope you didn't have to clean it up!).


I used to arrive in Bournemouth with my old faithful Sony Walkman (bought in 1988 and still functional, though obsolete, when I left the UK in 2005) and mountains of cassette tapes. Yes kids, this was 14 years before the invention of the iPod! I used it so much that I had to buy a transformer from Bournemouth Dixons to plug it into the wall instead of it chewing through all the batteries. As I remember, at the time I was learning about costing models and I must have worked out there was a "return on investment" in buying my transformer, I had to be very careful with money in those days.


Somehow listening to the Throwing Muses in this rather bizarre setting of half empty Bournemouth hotels, out of season, filled with Procurement students and the occasional retired person, really appealed to me. There was a kind of faded grandeur to all these hotels. The hotels were past their best and quiet.


Hearing Kristen Hearsh's screamingly, frighteningly original music, seemed to fit in these odd locations. As I remember, I also used to frequently listen to John Cale's "Fear is a Man's Best Friend" and I also had a bootleg tape of The Television personalities "Live at Janey's Bay Hotel Gourock 1983", which also seemed to fit the scene.


So the Throwing Muses and Bournemouth 1990 are inextricably linked in my mind. We finally got to see the Throwing Muses in 1991, the year Tanya Donnelly left the band.


I didn't know it was her last tour at the time, so I was really glad to have been able to see her with the band. Like when Keith Moon died, I think the Who died with him. I didn't think Kristen should have continued with the band without Tanya.



Around 1998, after years of having it out there on bootlegs, the Throwing Muses released their original demo tapes, which contained most of their first album and the wonderful "and a she Wolf after the war", "raise the roses" and "sinkhole". It was great to hear these songs in their original form. What I really loved about this CD re-release though, were the liner notes. Kristen Hearsh's words here always make me want to cry. They are great words about a great band. But also, like most well written pieces, they reflect thoughts more universal. I love the fondness she has of the band in those days and how she misses them. The fascination with the musical creative process is great here too. I hate losing touch with people I spent good times with. Kristen's words remind me of the great times I related on Kirkcaldybands.com, but they also remind me of the guys from Bournemouth 1990. Great times, great people, great memories.

"I swear to God, we thought we were a party band. As Throwing Muses, at age oh, sixteen or seventeen, we were gleefully impressed with ourselves and our ability to bring joy to people through sound. We were then stunned and horrified to see audiences react with something like stunned horror.

So, this sound became our mission. Every note and word had to fascinate us. Every song had to be alive, like a great person... full of colors and sweat and memories and potential We never expected anyone else to want to listen again and this was okay. I guess we figured we,d get the internal right and the external world would either fall into place or disappear. It kind of did both.

We became somewhat suspicious of our fans, though,, Why are you here? we would ask people who came to our shows. Maybe they were just falling into place.

It has been suggested that I was insane during the Muses early days, something I have vehemently denied in my effort to prove that this stuff could come out of our girlfriends our sisters, and our mothers. Listening now, I wonder if I was all there, but maybe that was the point. Our girlfriends, sisters and mothers have been known to go elsewhere at times, too.

The difference is that I had lovely, funny, talented musicians to go there with me. These Muses saved my life, quite literally, over and over again. They are full of colors and sweat and memories and potential; they are great people. I miss them

Besides, the idea was always to leave a big, fancy present on the table and tiptoe out of the room."