Only a prawn in Cleethorpes

Not many bands came to Grimsby to play when I was growing up. If you wanted to go and see some of your favourite bands you either had to sneak across the Humber Bridge to The Adelphi, or get on this horrendous huge black bus with Mick Jagger lips on the side (honest) run by a company called Solid Entertainments, which would whisk you off to Nottingham or Sheffield, or, if you were feeling really saucy, London.

And so imagine our delight when Cud announced they were going to come and play a show at the Beachcomber in Cleethorpes. It was 1989, I was thin, and my Dad was going to let me go to the gig. Well, he had no choice... Times were good.

I'd taped Cud's first Peel session the previous year and had played it relentlessly. Their debut album, When in Rome Kill Me is a masterpiece of scratchy, sometimes noisy pop music, and it had become a firm favourite. It still is, in fact. To say I was excited about seeing Cud just a few miles from my house was an understatement.

And yet I remember absolutely bugger all about the show itself. I remember the week leading up to it, and I remember me and my friend enthusing about the gig afterwards. But I don't recall a single moment. Ho-hum.

Anyway, yesterday I came across their first, superior Peel session on the Perfumed Garden blog. You can download it here.

Cud went really, really shit in the early 1990s. They sort of followed The Soup Dragons into the world of baggy, only more belatedly. Which was a shame. Whatever - here's some live footage of Cud at the peak of their powers.