Panorama In Black
1982 - 1984
Listening to the definitive Panorama In
Black C90 compilation tape Going For A Song (sales - about 400)
in the car not so long ago, I realised
something. This band, with a respectable distance of years for
self-assessment between us, was fucking excellent!
We were, as the local paper put it "A curious and unlikely looking group on first appearance" that managed to "fuse together into an intensely powerful and promising unit". That was the nitty-gritty, but there was much more behind the scenes...
After The Retarded had split, I spent a bit of time doing not very much, due in part to having smashed my guitar to smithereens in a very expressive fit of pique one evening at a party at my flat in Clarkson Street, but mostly because I'd had a major operation on my knee which was, by now preventing me from walking more than about 50 feet without quite excruciating pain. It turned out that I had something called Osgood-Schlatter's Disease and (wait for it) Osteochondritis Dissecans, which basically meant that the knee joint wasn't getting any blood for some reason, resulting in dried out and dead bone areas and bits of cartilage floating about in the joint. All of which made using my right leg a bit of a trial.
So there I was, with the prospect of 6 months on crutches and absolutely nothing to do. Mind you, there were still trips to watch gigs, I particularly remember a night at The Lyceum spent trying to control the full length wooden crutches on a floor alternately awash with beer and urine - but that's another story.
I somehow conned my brother Dick into "lending" me the money to buy a Gibson SG and a Marshall 100w amp with the classic 4 x 12 angled speaker cab (with Celestion speakers made just across town at the Ditton works, dontcha know), in order that my recovery could be made more bearable with frequent trips into the damp cellar at Clarkson Street, to flick the switch on the Marshall and wait for the smell and sound of those gorgeous valves warming up to inspire me into something useful.
Before long I was being joined by Dave Meecham, or Dave Maahes as he preferred to be known. Dave was an ex-Adicts roadie who I think was attracted to the punk scene mainly because he simply didn't fit in anywhere else. The Ipswich punky set were relatively non-judgemental about clothing and lifestyle choices, so anyone who was considered a bit odd elsewhere could fit in and flourish in that environment. Dave was seen by some as odd, but only ever by those who didn't take the trouble to understand. To me he was the original 'behemoth of the bass', and a man who had the courage to avoid the clichés in life. While the rest of us toed the rock 'n' roll line and ingested as many mind-altering substances as we possibly could, I'm certain that in all the time I knew him, I only once saw Dave take a toke on a joint, which he didn't appear to enjoy. His NHS specs, framed by a rambling and eternally unfashionable frizz of hair, his Marc Bolan and Pink Panther tee-shirts, but most of all his throaty, rumbling and unrelenting attack of a bass style made him an interesting prospect as a band-mate, and we made a pact to do something with originality, a step forward from punk into territories unknown - and as time went on and the band developed, occasionally we made it there.
Spencer Callaghan, previously the singer of The Retarded, had unfortunately spent a bit of time 'on holiday with the Queen', but was ejected from whichever red-brick crime learning centre he was detained in with the idea that there would be a band called 'Panorama In Black' and that he would be involved in it. He'd written the song of the same name whilst inside, a bleak vision of modern life, describing the breakdown of society and hoping for a brighter, more libertarian future - an Anarchist anthem really. I'd read some bizarre Italian political tracts and was ready for some high energy sounds with more of a message than "Let's all get pissed and swear at the government without actually doing anything about them". Dave was ready for anything out of the ordinary.
Soon, we were practising in the basement, no drummer as yet, but writing the set which we knew needed something special driving it along. The first drummer to catch our collective eye was Tom Withers (although you may know him as Tommy Stupid), who I would guess was about 14 at the time. He dropped a tape through my door which was recordings of him, on his own, demonstrating various drumming styles, from funk to full-on thrash. It was all excellent. I played the tape to the other two and they agreed that the lad certainly had what it took....but.....well......he was just so bloody young! The fact of the matter was that due to his tender years, Tommy wouldn't have been allowed in to most of the places that we were hoping to play, so with some regret we turned him down. He of course went on to form The Stupids with some success, and is now doing something in America involving Drum 'n' Bass (or whatever it's mutated into now).
Then one day, larger than life, Estuary Essex boy Jimmy Harding reappeared in my life. I'd been in the same year as him at Ipswich Prep School. When I slipped off to the state school, he stayed on and abused his privilege by dying his hair pink, twatting the headmaster and getting himself expelled. We'd never really seen eye-to-eye at school, but his drumming was tribal and aggressive enough, and my guitaring was splintered and jerky enough for us both to give our friendship another go.
Meanwhile I went through 5 hours of daily physiotherapy at Heath Road Hospital to ensure that when I was finally allowed to put my right foot on the floor again, I would have something more than a hairy withered stick to keep me upright. It seemed like years at the time, but in retrospect the 6 months went quite quickly and my complete rehabilitation coincided with the band being ready to take our new noise to the streets.
Our first gig was at The Albion Mills in Ipswich, to a packed house that were clearly looking for a new 'thing'. When I say "packed" I mean "packed". The cellar of this long-demolished pub could safely hold around 50 people, with a bit of a squeeze that is. I don't know how many people were in there at any one time, but we sold around 120 tickets on the door. They all appeared to be in at the same time from where I was standing. The air was visibly thick and humid, and the sweat condensated and instantly dripped from the ceiling, further drenching the crowd with their own, but now combined, juices.
We had married old-style Stooges and MC5
hard rock leanings with modern influences such as Killing Joke
& the Banshees, without forgetting the Pistols and the Stranglers. The result
was a solid wall of thrumming power, with contrasting ska/reggae leanings and
spacy effects-laden guitar intros to accentuate the main assault of each song. It's fair
to say that we took the fucking roof off. There'd been quite good advance
publicity locally, so there was a mixture of curious onlookers, the usual punk
suspects as well as bikers and inquisitive Goths, the latter presumably attracted by the dark
name and imagery.
Within about 5 minutes, they were all thrashing about together and we knew there
and then that we'd
hit upon something special.
Click the poster (left) for more about the first gig...or more accurately the party afterwards.
Gigs in Chelmsford and Harwich (a 'Peace Circus' - in a field, very wet) followed before a string of Ipswich gigs for which a new phenomenon arrived, namely Rant Poetry. the thing to do around '81/'82 was have a punk band supported by a punk poet (or vice-versa), and we found ourselves on the bill with the likes of Seething Wells (now plain old Steven Wells, sometime NME journalist and an all-round nice guy that made me a cup of tea in the morning after crashing out on my sofa one night...although he did describe the lyrics to 'English Rose' by The Jam, which I'd carefully typed out and stuck amongst the myriad of posters in the living room, as 'crap'). We also shared a stage with Attila the Stockbroker, a refreshingly funny poet from Harlow, who had spent a bit of time working in the City before coming to his senses and doing something for himself. He's still doing his thing about the place. I haven't seen him for ages myself, but I was pleased to hear he's still doing it. Mancunian ranter Ginger John was someone I'd struck up a pen pal friendship with via a convoluted route involving the Stiff Little Fingers fan club, and he was a sort of 'manager' for PIB in the early days. He ended up staying on my living room floor for quite some time - before vanishing, allegedly with some money belonging to a friend of mine (John did write and apologise for his hasty departure).
Another notable night was a gig at a sort of bar/recreational outhouse in Long Street, at Suffolk College (which now includes the word 'University' somewhere in its name....ho hum). This show was another where all manner of people turned up and got friendlily manic for the night. We were amazed to see the smoothly flicked side-partings of a handful of a breed usually known as 'Garys' mashing it up with all the spikeys, dreadlocks, ashen faces and unreconstructed hippies. It was all rather amazing. Perhaps, on reflection, the unusual unity was effected by the fact that everyone had taken the same acid....I'm not sure.
We almost took up residency in The Albion Mills around Xmas 1982, with 3 gigs in 9 days including Boxing Day and New Year's Eve. Two trips up to Bradford and Leeds as some sort of East Anglian punk package with The Adicts were certainly an education. At a beautifully run-down club in the arse-end of Bradford, the proprietor appeared with a 3 foot machete to back up the security people, who up until that point had failed miserably to keep 200 boogie-crazed punkers off the stage during The Adicts' set. Strangely, any misdemeanours that had been occurring up to then rapidly ceased. I suppose invading the stage is worth it if all you get is a cuff around the ear from a semi-friendly bouncer, but it's not worth losing a limb over.
One of the trips to West Yorkshire involved an introduction to the inhalation of 'poppers' or 'rush', or to give it its medical name - Amyl Nitrite. If you haven't tried it, it's a clear liquid, mostly used to revive heart attack victims or clean tape machine heads. It works like this....users get a very brief but intense head-rush, caused very literally by a sudden rush of blood through the heart and brain. Blood vessels dilate, resulting in a flushed face and neck. Time slows down. The effects fade around 2 to 5 minutes after use, but a tiny bottle can last 6 people about 3 days without spillage (avoid getting it on your skin by the way, you may receive a nasty burn). Due to its many and varied uses, including for its capacity to relax the rectal muscles, which for fairly obvious reasons is popular amongst the gay community, it's fairly easily available, and possession isn't (I don't think) illegal. It's uniformly bloody awful, too. Basically my experience of it was that my brain seemed to swell up so much that it would burst out of my skull, and my heart raced away at such a rate I was gasping for breath and becoming mindful of the idea that any given heart can only beat so many times during a lifetime. Please, please, please never spend a weekend in Leeds with a bottle of amyl, even if the girl sharing it with you is stunningly pretty.
Having survived all this northern
debauchery, we continued to gig at any Ipswich pub that would have us, The
Albion Mills (several more times), The Running Buck, The Old Times...and then
more interesting venues started to present themselves. 
A new innovation in Suffolk in the early eighties (pre-dating the raves of more recent years by a sizeable epoch) was the 'Firedance', named after a Killing Joke song/album of the same name.
Basically, everyone went to a
field.....and then suddenly generators appeared,
awnings were strung to protect a bare earth 'stage' from any malevolent weather occurrences,
fires were lit and everyone proceeded to have a damn good time (except the
landowner, presumably). No-one ever seemed to know who'd organised it all, the
reason being that everyone had organised it all. Someone
found the site, someone else suggested a date, still further people thought
about advertising flyers, food, drink, electricity, access. Somehow, money never
changed hands, no-one had to pay or got paid. Very organic, very leaderless and
a whole lot of fun! The venue used more than once was at Stutton Point, known
with no small irony as The Stutton Superbowl. It was a hole in the ground
about 20 feet deep, with a 150-foot diameter. About right for a comfortable
150-200 bodies. People pitched tents at the outer rim of the bowl, brought gas
stoves for cooking and enormous quantities of whatever they fancied to keep
themselves stupefied for the night. This was the natural place for
Panorama In Black. Here, for one night, everyone escaped the hum-drum town life
and got
into the earthy scenery around them - you could stroll along the muddy,
rock-strewn shoreline in the summer
moonlight - and some small, new and seemingly more natural society popped its head up for an
instant. Utopia perhaps.....the full, dirty, smoke-ridden reality of it, and so much more appealing
than the cash-led, superstar orgies that the original 'Free Festivals' had
become. It was, to paraphrase, local anarchy for
local people! It was also
the most monumentally good laugh, and I hope I never 
lose the memory. And I hope
the farmer left scratching his head at some minimal crop-damage and some
scorch-marks the following day didn't suffer too much, if at all.
Back in concretesville, we started to pick up support slots with the 'name' bands of the day - The Subhumans, UK Subs, New Model Army, and GBH, at bigger halls in Norwich, Lowestoft, Sudbury...even Leiston. The Gala Ballroom in Norwich was a particular favourite - a nice size and well supported with around 400-600 people normally coming along. It was in the dressing room at The Gala that I found myself nattering to Justin, head honcho of the newly popular New Model Army, about the possibility of me lending them my recent obscure-relative-inheritance-windfall of £2,500. I needed new musical gear myself, so after a bit of thought I turned down the offer to help NMA march onwards, despite the promise of a good return on the investment. I think it was about 3 months later that they (controversially) signed to EMI and could no doubt have been quite generous had they needed to pay me back. Still, I got some nice effects pedals and stuff with the money.
The absolute best night from a punk-rocking-history-vibe angle was the gig at the 100 Club with The Adicts. London!!!!! The 100 Club!!!! Where Sid Vicious played his first gig!!!! Where the Sex Pistols, The Damned, Eater and The Suburban Studs played!!!! The whole snot-throwing, swearing, attitude-laden lot of them!!!! Punk fucking history man!........Imagine my disappointment when I found a down-at-heel jazz club in a dingy cellar on the dirtiest street in the western world. The club was run by the nicest couple in punk history, the doddery but sorted Ron & Nanda. In the 60s, they had run the blues-rock club at The Manor Ballroom in little old Ippo, quite the proper little circuit venue in its time, and one of many that had its Sex Pistols Anarchy Tour gig nixed by a local council...yeah, thanks for that guys. Anyway, the 100 Club!!!!!!! Treading the boards did give one a little tingle, I must admit, but it was clearly 7 years too late to be the real thing. All of which didn't stop us going back 3 weeks later to take the stage before The Angelic Upstarts on a memorable evening when Spencer had been unable to come after being arrested for something-or-other, and I, having never sung for the band before, had to quickly learn all the words and take as much Bolivian courage as possible to get me through what would otherwise have been a terrifying experience. It all went rather well according to Mick the bus driver, but then he was the one supplying the powder and had ingested quite a bit himself. But I sang at the 100 Club - yay!
The other memorable moment of the evening was a rather over-excited, very straight-laced looking Japanese tourist (cameras and all) during The Angelic Upstarts' set. He had clearly seen all the documentaries about 1977, and knew that the most fun any punk singer could have at a gig was to have things thrown at him, repeatedly; interspersed with a bit of spit landing on his face. Mensi, large, brick, shit, house Mensi, who was the singer in question on the night - had other ideas, and launched himself off the 18" wooden blocks known as 'the stage' and pummelled seven shades of shit out of the poor guy - who, when he'd recovered and dusted himself down, was genuinely confused as to why he'd attracted this intensely violent outburst. His female companion was a little wiser 'though, and shepherded him away before anything else happened. I genuinely felt very sorry for the poor man - he clearly wanted to join in, but like me, had arrived almost a decade too late.
Somewhere around here (early 1984) we acquired a second guitarist, Guy Ebbs. He'd been stolen locally from another excellent, but perhaps more traditional, punk band called The Sustained. The new dual-guitar attack filled out the sound and gave me license to mess about with more fiddly bits, using the recently-acquired effects pedals to try and make some spacey keyboard-type sounds. All more fuel for the trip. Guy had everything it took to fit in - a good, eclectic taste in music, a Marshall stack which he knew how to use and a deep love of altered states of consciousness.
In an interesting synchronicity, our next night out after the second 100 Club show was at Ron & Nanda's old gaff, The Manor Ballroom, back at home. This was PIB's first gig here. Sometime towards the end of The Retarded days, it had ceased to be a welcoming place for punk nights out after two consecutive gigs involving fisticuffs. A gig by The Wall ended abruptly when some out-of-towners got rowdy with the locals. The next gig at The Manor was a tense stand-off between some of the re-emerging Mod/Skinhead crossover (again not locals) and the more traditional crowd. I can't remember exactly what happened but there was a lot of blood inside and outside the venue, which presumably had to fade away before the likes of us got in again.
So, we found ourselves at our old stamping ground, on a bill with From Eden (some of whom eventually ended up in The Wonderstuff and Pop Will Eat Itself) and Company of Strangers, a valiant but youthful attempt at being a bit like The Jam led by local chap Stephen Constable (who will pop up again later!) . Stephen's lot had basically organised the thing in conjunction with the latest worthy Borough initiative, Ipswich Arts Week (Rock Section), which is probably how we got away with playing there. We were playing last, presumably because no-one would have had any hearing left to appreciate the other two, less abrasively-toned bands if we'd gone on any earlier. It was a blast to play The Manor again, only spoilt (strangely enough) by the proper stage at the end of the hall instead of the tiny alcove that used to do the job halfway along the side! The local paper's review is telling, referring to PIB thusly "...the initial excitement was lost by the numbing effect of the barrage of aggressive tracks". We all thought that was tremendously funny, and decided that the reviewer clearly hadn't taken enough drugs.
And then suddenly, on June 22nd 1984, we
found ourselves playing our last gig. 
Jimmy
Harding thought the whole thing needed to be much more light-hearted and wanted
to get pissed a lot more, all of which I was diametrically against. I wanted the
whole thing to be 'political' and deadly serious, and didn't much care for booze
(alcohol was a government-licensed plot to keep the people from revolution).
Spencer was due to go up before the beak again, prospects not good. I'd also
taken to calling myself Bane, not sure where that came from......and was
experimenting with some new, more exploratory stuff on a new 4-track 'Portastudio',
courtesy of HP. This solo twiddling didn't interfere with the band, but was an
interesting diversion nonetheless.
What had started out as a quite earnest attempt to change the face of local music (amongst other things) by force had slipped into the merry-go-round of performances of songs in front of appreciative, if not totally understanding, smashed people. That's no-one's fault of course. I mean, did it really matter that people didn't 'get' the whole package? We couldn't have explained it to ourselves! In retrospect the original aims were met in some respects, we did unite people, we certainly pushed a boundary here and there......but it was always doomed. We never did really change anything, but I hope we influenced something.
The swansong was, fittingly, at Murrayside Youth Club, at a club night I'd started running called Nightmares. This was a punk night open to small bands from all over the South-East, held in the compact bar of the club, with room for no more than about 60 people (allegedly!). Melvin, the bass player from The Adicts was the barman. It was that cool! It was packed out on the night in question, and we recorded the whole thing on my 4-track studio for posterity. The live recording of that night forms the basis of the tape mentioned right at the beginning of this section. Despite the fact that myself and the other Jimmy were barely communicating any more, despite the fact that I thought at the time we had played extremely badly, and was immensely unsatisfied by this big cheerio, despite the fact that Guy had enormous trouble remembering which song he was playing and despite Dave's fearsome bad mood on the night - it's a hell of a tape. It captures the band very well; raw, thumping and almost joyous. The only other live recording I have heard like it is MC5's Kick Out The Jams, which is enough for me, musically at least.
We did straggle back together again for an impromptu set at a 'Firedance', but all of us except for Dave were so out of it, it was just embarrassing. We couldn't even find Spencer at first and went on without him. He finally emerged from somewhere in the undergrowth, attempting to shake off whatever stupor had previously held him in its grip. We trolled half-heartedly through some of our previously strident and powerful numbers, and proceeded to murder Iggy Pop's 'The Passenger". Shit, pure shit. There never was another Firedance.
The original four-piece did reform for one very special night of nostalgia in 1990, but that's another story.........
Other People Speak!! - Contributions from people who were there and had something to add. More welcome - email me.
Notable Lyrics -
From "City of Dreams" - Dave Maahes, c. 1982
I can't reach the city of dreams,
a place I want to be to take it easy,
I can't reach the people I need,
no safe harbour that I can see.
Pictured left and right are two CDs that I've put together for the hell of it, basically they're the recordings mentioned at the beginning of this page, plus some other bits and pieces.
If you fancy getting hold of them, go here - http://www.songsfromthebluehouse.com/CDs.htm and scroll down to the bottom of the page. Ex band members can have them for nothing, obviously...I don't know where you all are though!
Music Index Bloody Fingers Cyclo-Hexane The Retarded Panorama In Black Bane As Is mk. 1 The Adicts