Straightjacket Fits blowing The Jesus and Mary Chain off the stage at Sammy’s in 1988

That was a highlight for me as well. We passed the JaMC van on the road the next morning as they headed to the airport. We slowed down alongside them and gawped at them but they looked as listless and bored then as they had the night before.

My FN moment was "managing" The Strangeloves for a weekend in 1991. They were Rex Bourke (Dellburgoes), Tane Tokona (David Kilgour & the Heavy Eights), Noel Ward (David Kilgour, Pop Art Toasters etc.) and Tom Mahon at the time.

I'd seen them play a shambolic but brilliant set at Sammy's once and raved about it in an issue of Garage 'zine. Maybe on the strength of that they thought I'd be a good contact to help out when they wanted to play in Invercargill where I lived at the time. They set up an all age show on a Friday (nobody came) and played the Glengarry tavern on the Saturday. Rex had told me said David Kilgour was going to come down and open for them. I passed all this info on to the music editor at the local newspaper and he organised some publicity and the pub ad.

Somehow the overzealous paper guy got his wires crossed and the Saturday ad was for "Two Top Bands from Dunedin - The Clean and The Strangeloves"! To make matters worse David pulled out (if he was ever in...you never know with Rex...).

There was a good crowd (funny that) and despite the sign on the door apologising for the Clean stuff-up no-one walked away (apart from 3 tossers from a local band who demanded their money back after watching most of the set and declaring the strangeloves "unprofessional"!). They played a great set of their trademark lowbrow Beatlesque jangling pop tunes.

I looked after the door for them and took a few hundred dollars. At the after-gig party I handed Rex the money and he looked stunned and muttered something about not usually getting much of the door takings... He asked me if I wanted to look after all their gigs. A bit impractical and the stress of one weekend with The Strangeloves was enough for me. One of the photos I took while they were down for that weekend is on the inner sleeve of the album - still one of my favourite FN albums today - not sure why they missed out on a slot on the FN box (along with The Puddle) though... (another) one of life's little mysteries...