Dec 9 1990

Whipping Boy, House Of Byron, The Grown Ups

Attic

Benefit for Rape Crisis Centre

The Therapy?? gig in the Attic was absolutely packed. You could sense at this time that there was a buzz around the band. People who were rarely at gigs came out to this one. The Attic wore its title well. Situated upstairs in the small WHITE HORSE INN it could fit 30 people comfortably and 100 people very uncomfortably. All Health + Safety regulations went out the window the day Therapy? played there. Lenny was very worried that his pub would be closed down but still continued to serve  beer. This gig, along with the other 4 in the series provided something completely different to a normal Sunday afternoon in the lead up to Christmas.

The Whipping Boy played the following week and almost drew an equally good crowd. It is ironic that both Whipping Boy and Therapy? then went on to sign major label record deals. We had  decided that ‘Hope’ would not work with a band on a major record label. My main reason for wanting ‘Hope’ to go down this road was in reaction to the way that record
labels went about their business and how they were linked into other businesses (namely the Arms trade). I also felt that the music business has enough people working  for it and if a band subscribes to the business they have the option of utilising that machinery. If Hope’ could stay outside the machine as much as possible we could show people inside and outside bands that there was an alternative. So major label bands were turned down and not approached. It wasn’t a snub or a judgement. It was just something we wished to do. It also left us open for contradiction – something people were only too willing to point out.

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