Coil, Conway Hall, 2002



The first time I got punched in the face was in 1988. Ben was determined to get Jamie to man up so he arranged a fight after school between the two biggest pussies in the third year. We both ambled disinterestedly towards home, Ben following behind trying to gee us up. After twenty minutes of studiously ignoring the twat, Jamie snapped and punched me on the cheek out of obligation. I was a bit shocked and I cried. Ben left for his mum's house bitterly disappointed at this display of manhood while Jamie and I carried on walking up Sandridge Road 10 metres apart in awkward homoerotic silence. This wouldn't be the last time I would be punched in the face or spat at.


I couldn't attend the conference on megaliths and psychogeography because I had a shift at the bookshop and no-one wanted to swap, so I just made it to the Conway Hall for the evening performance by Coil. Balance was sat at the bar with Peter, evidently pretty pissed. He'd grown an expansive beard since his last London show at the South Bank. I think they might've already moved to Weston Super Mare by this point but I'm not sure. Nonetheless, it was easy in retrospect to see the tension between them and the tragic narrative that would soon play out. 


Wolfy came and did press for ReR once a week, as a sideline from music production and writing concert reviews for the Sunday Times. He was fifteen years my senior, tall, skinny, always wore a black Faust t-shirt (the one with the X-Ray fist) and had a shock of curly black and grey hair on top of his jovial-despite-himself face. I thought of him as my own Lou Reed. Despite my love for Faust, Magma and my tolerance for Henry Cow I desperately hated working in that windowless basement in Thornton Heath and Lou's visits, when we puzzled over how we were going to sell Kampec Dolores to the masses, were the highlight of my working week. Nick who did the mail order had converted to Orthodox Catholicism and to be honest wasn't much fun. It was almost two years since I finished working there but I still relished seeing Wolfy at gigs. He was uncharacteristically excited - not at the prospect of seeing Coil, about whom he was indifferent but because he'd just got back from Australia having met his very own Laurie Anderson online. He showed me a photo of them skinnydipping beneath a waterfall so perfect that it could appear on a Windows log-in page, both looking ecstatic at having found eachother. 


We gossiped at the real-ale bar while Mount Vernon Astral Temple did something cosmic in the other room and Wolfy wanted me to explain to him why Coil were such a big deal. He thought their magickal shtick was corny and I struggled to convince him otherwise despite my best efforts as a true believer.


The stage was illuminated with minimal, cyclical projections that seemed to depict an endless self-devouring caterpillar made of overlayed pixellated circles and animated with MS Paint. Illuminated in purple light there were two white conical hats on either side of the stage, and Sleazy and Thighpaulsandra were presumably somewhere near the back with some big synthesizers. Being over six foot Wolfy would've had a better clue than me what was going on. 


Cyclical electronic tones and very _kosmische_ melodies collided hypnotically, both ecstatic and with an undertone of sinister intent. The twin KKK hats slowly undulated and circled, performing a peculiar ritualistic dance like some kind of druidic rite reimagined by the Pet Shop Boys.


It's easy to project back onto the past what you know now, but it was evident that Balance was wrestling with some demons - free associating around one of the songs from 'Astral Disaster' his words were freed from what sometimes sounded like contrived wordplay on their records and attained their own absurd and convulsive poetry "I'm not a fucking rabbit!" he implored the universe. Wolfy's scepticism had melted away and he looked rapt.


I would only see Wolfy one more time after this show, when I popped by Thornton Heath to buy some CDs at staff discount and have a catch up. Things were still going well with the Aussie bird and they were going to meet up soon in London. It'd be the last time I'd see him before his untimely death from a brain aneurism a few months later. The universe is unspeakably cruel.

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