[Roll Your Own Life] The Music That Shaped Me (Part 8)

All About Eve - All About Eve (1988)

Following on from the previous entry of The Sisters of Mercy's Floodland, I was really going goth. So very goth. Never dyed my hair black or did the eyeliner (guy-liner) but I listened to the music and wore black, and was pretty miserable most of the time.

One of my loves was All About Eve. I loved that album. I bought the vinyl, bought the cool 12" remixes of the singles that came in boxed sets with posters of the band, and it was the first CD I bought when that new-fangled technology made its way into our home.

It was a beautiful marriage of ethereal vocals, haunting melancholy and rock guitars.

I remember my mother commenting - "She's really pretty and has a lovely voice, why does she always sound so sad?"

Like The Reptile House, All About Eve had their fan club - Eden - and I subscribed straight away. I found a pen-friend through it (that I have long since lost contact with - sorry Jill), and won a competition to get tickets and a backstage pass to an All About Eve concert. I had the choice of any from their next tour, and I picked York...

November 12th 1991. York Barbican. I went with my (then) girlfriend, drove to York and parked in a multi-storey car park near the Barbican and picked up my backstage passes. The concert was awesome, part of the tour for the Eve's album Touched By Jesus. The lights failed for about five minutes in the middle of it, and the band didn't even stop - just kept playing in the pitch darkness until the lights were restored. Absolutely loved it.

After the gig, we headed to the backstage bit, and being the social dork that I was, I just seemed to be star-struck and confused by it all. In the backstage area there were about twenty of us hanging around with the band. We just kinda stood there and looked confused. I wasn't really brave enough to talk to anyone, but I think that was a bit obvious because I remember some of the band (definitely Mark Price and Andy Cousin) striking up a conversation with us. I was at art college in Hull (as was my then girlfriend) and I remember Mark Price saying about being at art college and doing graphic design. They were cool, took my cd booklet for Touched By Jesus and made sure that all of the band (including Julianne Regan who I was too nervous to talk to) signed it. Still one of my prized possessions.

We could have hung around with them longer, and they seemed disappointed when I said we had to leave (mostly as if I didn't get my car out of the car park by midnight it would be locked in until six in the morning). They were genuinely welcoming and great, and I had to go home. Dufus.

Anyway, we went home. Fantastic concert, and I still love their albums. I got dumped about three months later, which lead me to the next album on my list...