Many a night at the Gemini in Hartlepool were spent 'dancing' to 'She Sells Sanctuary' - the first few notes of the opening riff were all we needed to take to the floor. Not a pretty sight I'm sure but we had a great time nonetheless. Sometimes too good. On one particular occasion a lad called Big Dave - he was tall and called Dave so the name was pretty accurate if not imaginative - had drank too many bottles of 20:20 and was a bit worse for it. During one of our trips to the dance floor he started wobbling becoming increasingly unstable. He then started to fall backwards - his head quickly approaching to floor as he fell. Realising his predicament, but being unable to do anything about it, he reached for his spectacles, removed them, calmly folded them and popped then into his shirt pocket. THUMP! He hit the floor. It all appeared to happen in slow motion.
Nights at the Gemini became less frequent until we stopped going altogether. It has closed now and been bulldozed to make way for a shopping centre, or something like that, but to me it will always be there; sticky carpets, stale odours, dark but grubby paintwork but top tunes and top nights out.
Back to 'Love'. Surely The Cult's finest moment, catching them before their american rock tendencies came to the fore. Billy Duffy's guitar playing has never sounded better and Ian Astbury's voice matches the slightly gothic tones perfectly. Check out 'Big Neon Glitter' and 'Love'. Fab.
As the misty Scottish mountains pass by as I head south on the train, with 'Love' playing on my stereo I am in the unique position of having one foot in the mountains and the other on a small dance-floor in Hartlepool. I must be the luckiest person on the planet.
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