The New Adelphi Club - fondly remembered
I used to live 22 walking paces from the Adelphi front door, which was just about near enough.
For a couple of years, while Death By Milkfloat were in residence at number 69 DeGrey Street, the Adelphi was less a music venue and more an extension of our front room. Taking a pint home was never a problem, and empty glasses would slowly pile up in our kitchen until a mixture of guilt and lack of space drove us to return them to Paul - no need for an explanation.
As a venue the Adelphi was ramshackle and idiosyncratic. In the early days the crumbling interior and inadequate PA just didn't seem to matter. What the Adelphi lacked in style it more than made up for in atmosphere and passion. As the years passed and the walls changed from green to brown and back to green again (via Sally's strange multi-coloured murals) the PA got better and the Adelphi's reputation soared.
I feel almost privileged to have seen the bands I did in that brief spell between 1986 and 1992. And mostly for no more than two pounds a pop! Everyone who became anyone seemed to pass through the Adelphi doors at that time, and I experienced live music at it's very best. The La's first visit was unbelievable and their elongated version of "Looking Glass" remains fresh in my mind to this day. My Bloody Valentine were epic and soared with their sonic experimentation. Pulp played in silver space suits with Jarvis in a wheelchair, and The Happy Mondays smoked so much blow on stage that I remain amazed to this day that humans can actually abuse themselves like that and still play guitars - all be it only just!
In fact, so much talent passed through the doors of the Adelphi that if you weren't careful you could become blasé, if not darn-right cynical. I lost count of the number of times I went to the Queens Hotel for a pint in preference to listening to Clint Boon playing that bloody organ as The Inspiral Carpets came back time and time again. I similarly ran a mile every time I saw one of those big yellow Radiohead posters plastered in the back room - god they were dreary. But I suppose best of all was watching Oasis from over the bar and muttering to a friend that "they're just a bloomin' pub rock band - they'll never get anywhere". Amazing how sometimes you can be so right, yet so wrong in the same sentence!
Death By Milkfloat played their first and last gigs at the Adelphi, and a whole load in between. We were part of a local bands scene that fostered a genuine sense of community and co-operation. For a while at least, bands turned out to support fellow bands, contacts as well as van drivers were shared, and encouragement rather than rivalry was promoted. So, we had the twisted humour of the Gargoyles and the manic Northern Soul of 3-Action; the Jam inspired pop of Pink Noise and the ridiculous keyboard driven nonsense that was John the Monkey. There were many others as well - all different, but all driven by a sense of purpose that wouldn't have been possible without the existence of the Adelphi and the encouragement of Paul Jackson.
If, in a way, we were all hanging onto the coat-tails of the Housemartins in 1988, then that wasn't because any of us sounded like them (Death By Milkfloat couldn't sound any less like them!), but because they were unashamedly from Hull, and that made you feel good that you were also from that oft maligned outreach of the British Isles. It was great to be in a band and great to have a community and venue in which to be seen and heard.
When all's said and done, everyone who's ever been in a band has craved some kind of fame in one way or another. Which is fine, so long as when international megastardom inevitably passes you by you're prepared to set your sights just a little lower. Local celebrity can take many forms: be it your debut single being played to an audience of twelve on late night radio, a ten line write up in the evening paper or the grudging applause from the Electricity Board engineer stood at the bar who was forced to admit that your live performance wasn't actually that bad.
For me though, nothing beats that point of local recognition when people start appropriating your bands name as your pseudo-surname. It was difficult with Death By Milkfloat, but as the angry eighties cross-faded into the laid back nineties it wasn't unusual to find yourself in the company of such lumineries as Eddie Gargoyle, Gary Action and (best of all) Chris Von Trapp! All propping up the bar or playing pool in the small, smokey, back room of the New Adelphi Club, DeGrey Street, Hull.
