basically the militia & other tour following adopted them as their own. i saw more gigs on that tour than any other tour -around 8 or 9- and although i didnt really like their watered down music their politics seemed ok & you could tell they really felt appreciated and a part of the whole vibe. during the tour ' levelling the land' l-p was released and went into the uk charts at no. 10 or something.Swinnow wrote: ↑01 Aug 2021, 19:08What happened during that tour? From memory, I think Ms Swinnow and I saw the tour in Leeds and Manca. I have an inkling that they did not do Bradford that time around despite us just having moved a bit west towards that fine city.eastmidswhizzkid wrote: ↑01 Aug 2021, 13:47 *spits in the dirt at the name.
i remeber the 1990 impurity tour even if they dont. fukcing ingrates
before that they were complete unknowns with literally a handful of followers. it was the NMA fans who mostly bought that album and gave them a massive leg-up both commercially and confiidence wise as a live act. And you could tell that -at the time- they appreciated that fact. fast forward umpty-tump years and i saw an innterview where they were asked about the early years and how they made it so big so quickly and to hear them tell it was a god given right that they were entitled to & wasnt it obvious they deserved it all?
never mentioned New Model Army or the scruffy ne'er-do-wells who followed them....unhappily for the lead singer he wandered onto the new age travellers field at Glastonbury around 2000 where we (amongst many others) had our free-party techno sound system. i recognised him and said "youre the guy out of the levellers aint you?" to which he smugly admitted he was, assuming the air of a rock star about to be fawned over. i asked him why he didnt mention the breaking tour with NMA, or the enormous leg-up they got from "us" (though not me)1 and was it because they had since sold out politically and commercially.
he replied with something like "we have always been anarchists" which made me laugh out loud & tell him in no uncertain terms that he was in a field full of political terrorists who may disagree but i wanted to pin him down to that NMA tour. "we supported them once -on the way up" was the general gist of his pitch with a big dollop of "the militia were scary thugs who didnt like us and we were glad to progress to the sort of audience who think the same as us & adore us & wash frequently."
I told him he had 5 miutes to get off our turtf or we would rob him. basically.
