EDITORIAL RANT

After the launch of issue 5, a great party featuring live sets from Jad Fair and Ui among many others, we decided to use the art gallery more often for gigs, due to size, cost, etc. First up was a show with Eugene Chadbourne and Kenny Process Team, a great night but not too well attended. Amid the birdcage and rake playing, guitar noodling and jazz, a lot of money was unfortunately lost. Then came Cee Bee Beaumont and NY Loose at the Free Butt, which was our one successful night of the past year! Vertigo actually had the Free Butt’s door record for a while there, which amounts to nothing more than pure exploitation when you consider that only forty people can ever see anything in there, so we were pretty glad to lose the record just as quickly. Still, everyone packs ‘em in down the Butt, so we’re not exactly alone; we’d just rather not do it again. One good point was all the press attention that NY Loose had generated (When else do gig-goers turn up in taxis?!). It turns out that the promotions people from the Stone Immaculate indie-rock agency and that bastion of punk rock, City Slang records, were all total public schoolboy toffs, even complaining about their b&b accomodation as "dead common", not to mention the IPC types who turned up in force, laughing extremely nervously as we verbally abused them while they waltzed in to shouts of "corporate whore" and the like (It’s been war ever since seven of the fuckers waltzed into Vertigo Club at the Beachcomber declaring "We are The Melody Maker! We don’t have to pay! And These Are Our Friends!", pointing to a long line of people, all the time brushing off our complaints, demands for money and finally adding insult to injury by giving a few coppers when asked for at least a donation.) Charge the fuckers full price - it’s the only way!

After the NY Loose eye opener came our last gig for a very long time, the doomed Prick Decay show at the art gallery. The less said the better really; more money was lost, beer was stolen, a studio broken into. By the time the two main bands turned up at half past ten, the night had descended into chaos and was all over. All Vertigo could do was be the middlemen between the "middle class wankers" (gallery management) and "those fucking tossers" (prick decay and various eastbourners), splitting up fights, calming people down, throwing people out, checking cut lips and watching scared people leave. That’s not what promoting is about. Foremost in our minds is to always be good hosts, and when the crowd gets hurt, those involved get thrown out. In retrospect, walking up to prick decay, shouting obscenities at jase and pulling the plug out from under their noses was pretty fucking satisfying. Andy called it the most punk rock gig he’d ever seen in his life, quite a compliment coming from the man whose bass player stormed offstage at Action Painting!’s Vertigo gig to smack a heckler. Anway, that knocked enough wind out of us to take a nice long break from promoting, so more recently we’ve been top notch helicopter-hopping DJ’s... well, not really, but the not-exactly-Vertigo but very-close-cohort and fellow South Coast Pop Art Experimentalist Jim Tonic got flown over to Europe to spin his thing on a tour of Belgium and the Netherlands. Steve Narkotic is resident DJ alongside Jim at all Metronome’s gigs and both Steve and Mark have been have been playing at Illuminanti’s gigs (mAKE-UP, Gold Blade, Astroman, etc), and we all help out at other nights. Mark teamed up with Matt (Lure Luxx/Elective Amputtees) for a hardcore scratching set at the Melting Vinyl zine festival, at which Vertigo ably assited the Club Piao! catering team; top bagels they were too - we were all stuffed after that one!

So that’s the Vertigo round up for this year. Two sad losses we’d like to mention - the first that of Vibrasonic, who have split due to genuine musical differences, wanting to take things in opposing directions. Last we heard, Vic was in the West Indies playing bongos and traditional instruments with native villagers in grass huts, high as a kite on the local lysergic plant life, and Simon was about to start a psyche band or something. Lets hope they do something again soon, not to mention getting paid the royalties which are being held back by their label. Secondly, Vertigo has lost its pace setting publishing God, Grand Royal editor, Bob Mack. He was the slackest of the slack and a great writer with it; his article about Microsoft in The Guardian really was the shit. We used to judge our own publishing irregularity ("next month, for sure.... it’ll be out next month, yeah...") safe in the knowledge that the bastion of slack, Grand Royal, would be out even later. The departure of this genius has resulted not only a drop in quality of said magazine but also, get this, in two issues of Grand Royal in almost as many months! What the fuck’s going on there?! So we’re now forced to find someone else to judge our own crapness by. Bob Mack, Where You At? Anyway, it’s time to sign off ‘til next year. Until then, look out for the Vertigo Sound System out and about the clubs of Brighton, and check out the Christmas extravaganza as we team up with, hopefully, Melting Vinyl and Sound of Jazz To Come for a night of live music, Djing, visuals and intoxication on a massive scale. to all who’ve brought and read vertigo and come to any of the nights, thanks for the support and the help. enjoy this issue.