The Saddest Story from the days of the Kirkcaldy Bands

I'd held off writing this story for my website for years. I suppose writing about the death of one of your closest friends will always be difficult. I also was slightly concerned about my friends family coming over the page on my website and being upset. Ritchie's been gone now for fifteen years, so I feel, if nothing else, all the feelings I had at the time he died are a bit less raw now. At the time it seemed such an inexplicable event that I think a part of me couldn't take in that one of my contemporaries had died at the age of twenty five. I had re-occurring dreams where he would just show up somewhere like nothing had happened and not believe why we would think that he was dead. I think a part of my sub-conscious just couldn't believe it. More recently I had that dream that I think most people get, the dream that you go back in time, you look like you did at the time, but have the knowledge you have now. In the dream I went back in time to 1985 and was in my mate Mark Deas's room in Dunnikier Road in Kirkcaldy, where we spent loads of time that year. All of our circle of friends was there and I had the biggest dilemma of my life. How do you tell one of our closest friends that he'd better enjoy life as he only had seven more years to live? In the dream I held off telling him. Who could say what the best thing do do would be?

The rest of this blog post is a cut and paste from www.kirkcaldybands.com. I used to have the music file up on the old site, but I couldn't bring myself to write the story behind the song. I'm glad I did it now. Ritchie was such a great guy and a huge music fan, I'm sure if he could give an opinion, he'd have wanted his 1986 debut to be available to the world.

Of course, the actual MP3 file can only be downloaded from the page at Kirkcaldybands.com, which is: http://www.kirkcaldybands.com/HTML/workshop.html

"Bill Gimix used to organise Workshop evenings in the St Clair tavern in 1985 and 1986. These were a great idea. He'd do the disco and the idea was that new bands, that didn't have the money or the fan base or the contacts to get a gig of their own, could come to the the workshop and play a 10-15 minute set. It gave many of us, including me, our first taste of being on stage. Guys would really respect the timings, not play for too long, and you could see around four or five new bands in one evening - I think the Family Shampoo (who later became the Silent Falls) played their first gig at a workshop.

The ends of workshop evenings were often a bit special. Bill would run out of bands to put on, and often we'd improvise a jam from whoever was there. My first appearance on stage was at one evening like this, in the summer of 1985. My memory is a bit fuzzy about who was actually playing in our improvised band, but I recall Mark Deas was on the drums, Andy Carr on guitar and I think Mark Carr was involved somehow too, he was maybe singing, I was playing bass. We had no concept of what we would play and Mark Deas just said, "lets just make a racket for 10 minutes". It was great, I just played whatever I felt like. I have no clue what it sounded like to the audience, it seemed to go down quite well at the time, but this was the end of the night and everyone was probably quite drunk.

The recording below was made at a workshop on March 28th 1986. There are MP3's of The Surgical Wars and Sphincter Control on this site from recordings that were made that night too. I only recorded the workshop from The Surgical Wars onwards, so I'm not sure who else played that night, maybe it was The Family Shampoo or Gene Regulation.

This is another jam, made out of members of other bands. Andy Carr (after he left Sacristy and before he formed the Summerfield Blues) is on bass (playing my bass in fact) and sings the first vocal, Davey Wallace from the Gimix is on guitar and sings the second vocal, Bill Gimix from the Gimix, Sphincter Control and The Surgical Wars is on the drums - making his third appearance on stage that night and Andy Carr, Mark Carr and I's old School friend, Ritchie Smith is on Harmonica.

This may have been Ritchie's first appearance on stage. He had been talking about learning to play the harmonica for a number of months, but I had never heard him play with a band before. Seeing him go up on stage that night, I was concerned that he may be no good - but I was blown away by his playing - he is by far the best thing about this recording. I was amazed by the volume too!

Ritchie went on in the late '80's and early 90's, to play with a number of local blues bands. I regret it now, but not being much of a blues fan myself, I only saw him play once or twice, and can't recall which bands he played in. He may have been the Tubesnakes amongst others - Robin Deas (Mark's brother) played with them too. Ritchie used to drag me along to see blues bands at places like the Preservation Hall in Edinburgh, but I could never completely get into it - I guess blues is something you either get or you don't.

Ritchie and I were close friends towards the end of high school, lost touch a bit in his first year of university, but met again in the glorious summer of 1985. He had taken on a "hippy" image at Edinburgh Uni and I can still picture him walking towards me wearing an afghan coat, hair all over the place, in the Bevie Park around July 1985. He was a big part of our little circle of friends in the mid to late '80's and he was one of the people who made that time so special.

As the '80's turned into the '90's Ritchie developed clinical depression. To my enormous regret, I think we were all too young at the time to really see how serious his condition was. He also began to slowly distance himself from our crowd, I learned later that this need to isolate yourself is a classic symptom of clinical depression.

Ritchie took his own life in October 1992. It was a huge shock, almost impossible to believe one of our circle of friends was gone. In all the confusion, I almost missed the funeral - but Dave Acari of the Summerfield Blues called Ian and we managed to make it over to the funeral on the day. Standing outside the crematorium was the last time most of our circle of friends from 1985/6 was all together in one place. It was so strange to see all the guys again and Ritchie not to be there.

Taking his own life seemed an almost inexplicable act to me at the time, we all seemed to have so much to live for in the early '90's. As I've got older, I've got more insight into depression and can see now how life can become unbearable for some people who's minds work in a certain way.

He'd have loved this website. Back in the day, we'd show up to any gig that was on in town, he'd have been at many of the late '80's gigs that have recordings on this website, I have happy memories of many conversations with him in the Wheatsheaf, the Heritage or the Harbour Bar on the relative merits of the Ghost Train and the Gimix. He was also a huge technology fan, although he didn't live long enough to experience the internet.

So this is the way I'd like to remember him, on stage for the first time, playing the blues, in his element.

If you turn up the volume at the end of the song, you can hear some classic Skittle atmosphere. Bouncer Neil McDougal (or big fat hairy Neil as we called him) asks the band to call last orders for him, Andy Carr and Davie Wallace shout "last orders at the bar please" together and Neil shout's back "stereo!". You can also hear some friendly banter with me shouting at Ritchie and some conflicting option expressed between my sister and I on Mark Deas's jumper!"

Simon Richard "Ritchie" Smith, December 14 1966 - October 1992

Pictured in Summer 1985