Testimonial 51
 
As a 14 year old fat boy my life was pointless and rotund. However a chance viewing of The Tube one Friday evening was to destroy everything. The goon faced presenter announced the next video was by The Cardiacs and called Tarred and Feathered. In a few minutes my view of reality was inverted and my life made/ruined. The most insane and greatest thing I had ever seen. Pence was spent and pence is still being spent on this wonderful band and it’s extended family. Their obscurity is confusing as to me they are the only band that matters. So throw the tabernacle doors wide open and salute Tim Smith. You made me a laughing stock at school and unable to have a conversation with anyone about music for which I am eternally grateful
 
Lee Threlfall
 
 
Testimonial 52

I watched Ultravox in Poole in late 1986 and returned - after having to pee in a bottle on the back of the coach - to Portsmouth. To a friends house who mentionned a better band he had until now kept to himself. He showed me the Seaside Treats Video on a crackly black and white telly. I just had to see them. As luck had it they were in the Marquee before long so we: me G and T, took the train and got there. The old Marquee was situated amid strip clubs, peep shows sex shops and the like. Just before they played i managed to buy a copy of their white album - well the live in Reading one. I managed to get all of them - even mike who did the lights to sign:

Tim Quy
Tim
Jim
Dominic
Sarah
Mr William D Drake
Miss Swift
Even the consultant.

The show itself. My first mosh pit/ loving pond. The anticipation: JIM JIM JIM Who is this Jim? And what makes him so special?, I pondered. They arrived onstage wearing the old band outfits with caked on face makeup. The bomb had dropped and I knew I would never be able to listen to the same music again. I was converted. Guitar seemingly played at random - though on scrutiny it was a miasma of complexity I had never witnessed before. As was the drums. Sax. People fell over. We helped them up. People all knew the words - complicated though they were - all around had circus clowned facial expressions. Pretty soon I was doing the same. Jim was humiliated and we all took his side. And before I knew where I was, I was on a tube: sweaty, bruised and covered in confetti from the cannon at the end. Songs sticking in my little head at the time were: Whole World Window (is that what www. stands for on the internet?) and RES.

Every visitor to my room was treated to the video - none understood or liked it. This was later a wheat from the chaff test. It still works to this very day. I pity NME for its blanket off message attitude to this extremely fine bunch of musicians - past and present. Timing alone is worth a million Grammys (and Grannys!). In spite of being ignored for all these years I am so thankful to that friend - long and lost now - for removing Ultravox from my mind and replacing them with Timmy’s grinny face.

Mesha Banerjee
Senior Practitioner
  
 
Testimonial 53
  
 
. . . I first saw Cardiacs in the early 80’s and thought they were crap. I then met Tim & Sarah in the Kingston Mill Pub and still thought they were crap.

Over 150 gigs later and I still think they are crap, see you on the November 2005 tour . . . .

Jason Chinnery

Testimonial 54

My story is similar to testimonial 40. As a 15 year old I too went to Hammy Odeon with my mate Andy to see Marillion. Too young to get served at the bar, and with interest waining in the main act (tickets had been bought waaaaaaaaaaaaay in advance) we sat down to watch the support, of whom we knew nothing, and cared even less.

I must say what I saw that night was astonishing, and was one of those moments in my life where my musical tastes could never be the same. The music Cardiacs played was nothing like anything I had heard before. The music was different, the kind of music that was awkward in some cases and anthemic in others. At the end, Tim used a light at his feet to project a 50 foot shadow of himself against the white backdrop which was astonishing. I was hooked.

Several weeks later Andy & I came across The Seaside tape at Beggers Banquet in Kingston, (which I still play to this day, but has the strength of tissue paper). We wrote to the address on the back and got a really nice letter back from Sarah enclosing a leaf and a shirt collar. How funny. She explained that Fish really liked the band and that is how they got the unlikely support slot. For all his other faults at least the man had taste!

We didn’t see them again until a year later at the Fetcham Riverside, at which point two became three as Clem came along. The three of us went to all the Riverside (incidently riding by pushbikes to each show, a round trip of about 30 miles!) and Marquee shows for the next year or so, and loved it. The 10th July 96 gig at the Marquee was a triumph; it was so hot, all three of us wrung our shirts out at the end. Imagine that. We used to get to these shows early and would often talk to the band in the bar. On one occasion, I tripped up the marillion keyboard player as he walked by with Fish to see the show. What a claim to fame!

What I liked most was that the band put on a show, the finale with the flowers and confetti was always something else. My ears are fucked nowadays, probably the confetti cannons!

A few months later at tech college (Nescot), my one and only active role as part of the NUS committee was to suggest that they booked the band to come and play. Again the gig was brilliant, the highlight for me being hit on the head by Tim’s guitar as I was pushed off stage. I also bought a vinyl copy of the rude bootleg (no 16 said the number stamp). Clem’s band The Hunger. This gig was a double-edged sword, as from this point on the band were no longer ‘our’ secret. All of a sudden everyone we knew talked about the band. I saw them a couple of times in the year after the Nescot show, but life took a different course. Others went off to see the band in Amsterdam but I left the band behind.

Apart from a Simon Mayo (YES Simon Mayo!) Radio 1 session from 1988, our paths never crossed again until I saw them with Andy in Brighton in about 1990, when they had a bloke with curly black hair on guitar. The show was okay but not like the old days.

Saw them again in Brighton with Chumbawumba in about 95, again sadly a shadow of their former selves.

That was that, until I discovered the internet and this…

Chris (aged 36)

Testimonial 55

Hard to say what Cardiacs mean to me. The best band I’ve ever heard? Yeah.probably. The most personally meaningful band I’ve ever heard? Definitely. I’ve been more moved, stirred out of the half-sleep that passes for existence and found myself nodding in agreement more with their inspired music/lyrics than those from anyone else. Aside from Tim Smith, who is the central driving force of the band, I have my friend Lee to thank for this. I would never have heard them without his choice to share the records - his thoughts are actually given here as number 51. I really owe him for taking the time.

In point of fact, a comment he once made about Cardiacs says a lot more than I ever could. "When I listen to them it’s chaos.until it all comes together and suddenly there’s a light that fills the room." Well said that man.

Cardiacs are about life, death, passion, the stupidity of being an adult, the horror of seeing how the world truly is, the belief that it could be better, the love of dark shadowy attic rooms, the things you find in forgotten family photo albums, the childhood that you lose and the understanding you resultantly gain. They are also about being English, being human, loving the summertime and grasping melancholy with both hands. I cannot get through a day without giving some part of it to playing one of their CD’s, or one from their affectionate friends. Along with Coil I will take them to the grave with me.

Jon Howard