Summer 1984: I had relocated to Rhyl and upgraded my life to a truly luxurious bedsit at the ripe old age of 17. It had all the charm you’d expect — questionable smells, mysterious stains, and a décor best described as “landlord chipwood.” Still, I’d acquired a new gang of friends and a girlfriend, so obviously life was going brilliantly. We were a united front of punks and psychobillies, heroically keeping hairspray and cheap lager manufacturers in business.
Rhyl, culturally speaking, was not exactly bursting at the seams with gigs. Entertainment options were mostly limited to the arcades, the wind, and bad drugs. So when we stumbled across a band called Ocean Rane playing on the bandstand on the Prom, it felt like we’d discovered the local Glastonbury.
They looked impossibly young and painfully nervous — the kind of nervous that makes you want to clap before they’ve even started, just to be kind. Naturally, it later turned out they were actually older than me, which was both insulting and confusing. Their sound struck me as slightly moddish, which in our leather-clad, hairsprayed worldview was practically experimental jazz.
Still, for one glorious windswept afternoon, the Rhyl seafront had a soundtrack — and we had something to do that didn’t involve loitering with intent. A cultural high point, by local standards.
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