“Almost anywhere can be a place to have live music”

What Steven asked Kevin Younger, aka Mr Unswitchable and Clive Shite, musician in The High Span, Hand of Stabs and Minimus.

Kevin Younger has been organising music events in Medway for a number of years at the Rochester Social Club, as well as performing in some of Medway’s most acclaimed bands. Ahead of the release of The High Span’s second album, Steven met Kevin at Rams 12 Degrees to discuss Mr Unswitchable, music fanzines and psychogeography-inspired music.

Kevin Younger.

Are you known by any other names?
Over the years, I’ve had a few pseudonyms. I was in, for a while, the band Armitage Shanks. In that jokey sort of Kenny Everett’s, it’s not punk rock names, it’s from that period. And I was called Clive Shite. They’re all vaguely toilet-related.

Was there any particular reason you had that name?
Not really, no. I was a very latecomer to the band. The band had gone for years and years, and had their pseudonyms, I just joined in for that. I used to do a fanzine years ago, probably back in the late 80s. And my pseudonym for that was Captain Standish. Also, sometimes Captain Rex Standish. That was back in the 80s.

Is there any origin for that name?
Well, the Captain Standish thing was a little in-joke. Apparently that’s a Victorian euphemism for a stiffy.

What was the fanzine about?
It was around the time of my first band, The Train Set, back in ‘85, about 40 years ago. We did a fanzine called Gotham City Off-Ramp. That was done with me and my buddy Dominic. We were both in The Train Set. We did two or three issues of that. It wasn’t really very good. It was a fun sort of thing to do. We interviewed bands that came to Medway, and I went to London to interview bands, like BMX Bandits. I did some interviews with The Dentists, Swinging Time, Billy (Childish), various other things along those lines.

What instruments do you play?
Right, I am in various bands. I’ve played guitar, bass and keyboard. I can’t play the drums. I’ve tried.

What was the first instrument?
Guitar, I guess. When I was a kid, I did piano lessons, which I didn’t really enjoy. I liked fiddling around and playing things by ear, but I didn’t really enjoy the rigours of musical theory. As soon as I could give that up, I gave it up and then, as is usually the case, maybe six or seven years later, I wanted to be in a band and have a guitar and those sorts of things. I guess I was at school with a lot of people who were involved in the music scene. That’s how I got involved initially. The year above me had Ian Smith, from the Dentists, who I was quite good with and John Gawne who was in the middle version of the Milkshakes, the later version of The Milkshakes, and a couple of years above me was The Prisoners. As soon as I reached pub age, people were inviting me to gigs at all the venues that we had back then. The Crown, the MIC Club, Nags Head, and there were a few others, some of which have long gone now. That was my first entry into the local music scene and lucky. Just at that moment, it was a vibrant, exciting local scene. The Milkshakes were a really thrilling, exciting live act. We had that raw Hamburg Beatles meets the Clash vibe, which was about as exciting as you could get in the mid-80s. Other bands played. There were lots of bands around here at the time.
Look at old copies of the Chatham Standard or the Evening Post, they always had a gig guide. There’d be at least two gigs on every night of the week. Even Mondays and Tuesdays, you could go and see a band and somewhere they’d be playing. Lots of clashes, you couldn’t choose who you’d go and see. It was an exciting time. There weren’t a lot of synthesiser bands or that retro thing which people still either champion or decry. Medway music was already a big thing, because that was where the excitement came from, that raw, primitive music and although you turned on the radio, you’d be hearing something Flock of Seagulls or Japan or something like that. There weren’t that many bands around here that were sort of trying to hit that sort of clean-cut synth pop kind of thing. It was an old-fashioned sort of Oxfam tweed jackets and rolled-up cigarettes sort of vibe.

What bands are you currently performing with?
The main I’m doing now is The High Span. Which is a band of my songs. I’m writing pretty much mostly, a few cover versions in there. I’ve got this, I guess a seam of songs, that I’m mining my way through, the stuff that has been in my mind for a while, of little fragments of tunes and things like that. Having a band, you can actually make them into actual songs and actual records now. I was in London for quite a long period. I lived in London from about ‘86 to probably well into the 2000s. It was a bit of a weird, different thing, trying to have a band in London and then at various times I was having to go to London to rehearse in bands, when I did move back out here. I was really keen to have a band that was based around here and lucky enough to find some great people locally, some of whom I’d known for years, like Mark Aiken who’s the bass player in this band. Jimmy Moore, who’s the drummer, I met on a minibus at the old Hopper festival. We originally cooked up the idea to do The High Span. I said I was looking to do a band locally, and that was in the garden of the King’s Head in Upnor. It was raining we hid in the little Wendy House fibreglass boot in the garden. There was half a dozen of us in there with our beers, coming up with this idea. That’d be a few years ago now. We got the band together just before covid. Then obviously covid hit. Then, after things started coming back together again, managed to get the records together. We’ve got an EP and an album with Spinout Nuggets, and we’ve got another album almost ready to go with Spinout, hopefully by the end of this year or early in the next year.

How would you describe Minimus?
I don’t know, Minimus, that’s another kettle of fish. Minimus was an offshoot of an idea I had, or I think I was involved with in London, which was improvising. I used to see quite a lot of improvising musicians in London, London musicians’ collective type things. That came about after Hand of Stabs. Hand of Stabs was a totally improvised trio, which was myself, Jim Hill and Chris de Coulon Berthoud. I’m a barely capable, self-trained musician. Chris wouldn’t claim to be a musician at all. Jim is a naturally gifted polymath, great percussionist. Between the three of us, we had three different prongs to bring to it, and we did a few things that were Medway-based, site-specific things. We would actually go to Cobham Woods or Grain Fort and perform in the open air. Give people a map reference to come and find it, and a few people would trek out with their phones and find us making improvised music inspired by the place we found ourselves in. We did a thing called Month of Sundays, which was literally that. A month of Sunday gigs in, think it was four different locations, and then each time we played, we tried to bring something of the psychogeography, something of the location into the music that we were playing in. I’m getting to Minimus, that was Hand of Stabs.
Minimus was inspired by a thing I was also involved in in London called Scaledown. You can see the relationship there. That was a very small venue in the west end of London. The idea there was that they encourage people who normally played in bigger bands or played in bigger venues to bring a small version of themselves and play a short set, 15 minutes in a small, cramped pub. We thought that might work nicely in Medway. What we ended up with at the Good Intent, which is no longer there, in John Street in Rochester, was a Sunday afternoon open desk. Basically, a mixing desk. Roy Smith had his mixing desk in there, and people would come in, plug any instrument in, or microphone, we provided some instruments for people to play with, had children, passers-by, and also serious improvising musicians would come in, and then someone would start tinkering with something and that would turn into a little 15 minute or 20 minute abstract piece. We recorded a lot of those, and that was Minimus. But with the loss of the Good Intent, we haven’t really found a new home for that. We’ve done one or two at the 12 Degrees in the basement, Minimus Lounge, where we’ve gone away from that, come one, come all. Instead of being everyone joining thing, actually making more small performances, Scaledown. But yes, that was Minimus. It’s on a hiatus at the moment, as is Hand of Stabs, and Jim Hill emigrated to Australia. He’s now in Melbourne. Chris and I do occasional things as a duo called Waxen Knot. But in some ways, I think we both agree that we’ve always missed our third wheel on that one. It worked well with the three of us as Hand of Stabs.

You also host music nights?
Just trying to encourage that scene, hopefully. A few places we’ve done it. We’ve had gigs at the Nag’s Head, done some things at the 12 Degrees, got some of those coming up soon. The Working Men’s Club, which used to be the Corporation Club. Some people called it the Bin Men’s Club. That’s still surviving along the newly developed bit near the railway station. It’s a lovely little space, and it’s a very quiet club. It’s got an ageing membership, like most working men’s clubs. We’re trying to encourage people to join there. Probably not making it a full-time venue, but at least bringing some money and life into those clubs.