The Spasms World Tour: East Midlands Leg

A True-ish Tale of Punk, Print, and the Surrealist Splebs

It was the summer of 1979, and I was waiting.

Waiting for my A-Level results.
Waiting to find out if I’d be off to university.
Waiting to see what would happen to my dad if I left Old Tupton—just the two of us now, still finding our way around the silence Mum’s death had left behind, neither saying too much about what anything meant.

In that suspended summer, I worked shifts at Clay Cross Works, the pipe foundry founded by George Stephenson himself. Industrial weight. Furnace heat. The air shimmered with the glow of molten metal, and the pipes clicked as they cooled, contracting back into silence. I couldn’t get my sleep rhythm right, which meant I spent more time than I probably should have drifting toward Chengsville.

Chengsville was more idea than address—a state of punk-inflected refuge, built around John’s parents’ kitchen table, the band practice space upstairs, empty biscuit packets, and whatever gear we hadn’t yet broken. John—the Spasms’ bass player, pale, poetic, perpetually making tea and staving off diabetic attacks—was better known to us as Doctor Cheng. It was their band, along with Brian and Pete. But I was invested. Fully.

They’d just put out a single, It Never Happens Like It Does On The Telly, and we all desperately wanted it to mean something. That they were going somewhere. That we all were.

Back then, punk was everywhere—but not here. Or not quite.
Puzzle’s sister had briefly dated the drummer from The Specials.
It might have only been one date, but it made us all feel special.
Local lads the Thompson Twins had left Chesterfield for London.
The Human League, Cabaret Voltaire, Clock DVA—bands we followed religiously—were starting to have cult hits or show up on Top of the Pops.
It felt like everyone around us was on the brink of something.
And we were too.

There was just one problem: no one would book The Spasms.

The phone kept ringing with no’s.
Glenn and Doctor Cheng had spent an entire afternoon calling up venues.
The answer was always the same:
“What other gigs have you got lined up?”

The logic was brutal pub maths.
Gigs meant fans.
Fans meant beer sales.
No gigs meant no fans.
No fans meant no thanks.

That’s when I stepped in.

Two firm gigs, one maybe.
They’d also played a couple in the last fortnight, which, in our version of reality, still counted.
We added two practice nights at Chengsville to make seven.
It wasn’t a tour, exactly—but it could look like one.

We wrote them down.
Real places.
Close enough to be plausible.
Far enough to feel like movement.

I called the New Musical Express.

After a few false starts—mainly the three of us collapsing in fits of laughter—I got through.
A woman answered, patient and professional.
She asked for the band name, the dates, the venues.
She repeated them all back.
I couldn’t believe how official it felt.

And then, just as I was about to hang up with a breathless thank-you, she said:

“…So the charge will be…”

“Wait—I thought tour listings were usually free?” I asked, flustered.

“They are,” she said. “For tours with twenty-five dates or more.”

Twenty-five.

That was the number.
That was the key.

I said thank you and hung up.
Turned back to Glenn and Doctor Cheng, who were still sitting at the kitchen table like kids waiting for bad news.

“They said no,” I told them.
Pause.
“But—I have another idea.”

We started adding names.

First, the near-misses. The venues that had said no—quietly.
They were in.
We figured they’d come around once we looked a bit busier.

That got us to fifteen.

Then came the almost-believers—the ones we imagined might change their minds if they saw the right kind of buzz, in the right kind of font.
We gave them prime spots.
Made them look like early champions.

Twenty.

Then the revenge round.
The ones who’d laughed, or groaned, or just gone quiet.
We gave them second chances. We were generous like that.

Twenty-seven.

That was the tour.

But something still felt off.
Too neat. Too repetitive. Too much of The Spasms.

We needed variety. Texture.
The illusion of a scene.

Enter: Dr. Cheng & the Surrealist Splebs.

A side project we’d invented in a haze of Lucozade and half-read art magazines.
Now fully operational.
On most nights, they opened.
On two, The Spasms opened for them.
Credibility. Mystery.
A suggestion of movement.

I picked up the phone.
Called the NME again.
Then Melody Maker.
Then Sounds.
And finally Record Mirror.

The first three said yes.
The last one—of course—said no.
Their loss, obviously.

And then we waited.

Seven days.
Twice-daily trips to the newsagent.
Sweat-laced anticipation.

And then—there it was.

The Spasms Summer ‘79 Tour.
Printed. Inked. Real.

Every invented date.
Every alias.
Every beautiful lie.

By the time we saw it in print, even we had started to believe it.

We didn’t get any new gigs out of it.
But we got something harder to book: belief.

What we did get were calls from angry landlords.
“You’re not playing here.”
“You never were.”
“Who the hell are the Splebs?”

We apologised. Hung up. Laughed.

Eventually, I did the only honourable thing: retired.
Hung up my imaginary laminate pass.
Fell on my tour manager sword.

It didn’t fix the ache at home.
Didn’t stop me and my dad tiptoeing around the absence that sat in every quiet room.
But for one week—on newsprint and in our heads—we existed.

Maybe that was the point.
To conjure something out of nothing.
To trade silence for sound.
To believe ourselves into being.

Not the gigs.
Not the money.
Not the fame.

Just the fact that for seven days, we were loud enough to drown out the quiet.
And for a little while, Chengsville—just an idea, really—felt like the center of it all.

P.S.
If something in this piece stayed with you—an ache, a laugh, a little jolt of “that’s me”—this is the kind of work I love doing one-on-one.
Whether you’re circling a story, stalled in the middle of one, or just feeling the nudge to start, I offer quiet, grounded support to help you name the thing beneath the thing.