Memories of live music nights at York’s Spotted Cow in 1980s

ANOTHER ordinary cold wet weekday evening in the late 80s, and once again I found myself behind my mixing desk at the Spotted Cow in Barbican Rd, ready to engineer the sound for another boring University band.

The “ Cow” as it was called, wasn’t exactly York’s premier music venue, with its dated 70s curtains, tired seating, and a carpet that you stuck to as you tried to cross it through years of spilt beer impregnating the fibres, but it was where countless local bands had cut their teeth before moving on to bigger things.

And it had “atmosphere” – the stage so close to the audience that you could almost touch the bands, so heavy with smoke that you didn’t need a fog machine to augment the light show, and so small you had to dance where you stood when it was full.

Always the poor relation to The Winning Post, The Arts Centre, The Oval Ball and Fibbers, the Spotted Cow was nevertheless the York equivalent of Liverpool’s Cavern and it promoted every type and style of band from folk duos to six-piece thrash metal .

Spotted Cow in Barbican Road in 1982. Press photo

But – back to that cold wet evening. I’d been providing sound and lighting for local bands for about a year, with a small PA set-up and a home-made lighting rig using domestic light switches which would have horrified any Health & Safety inspector!

But I was cheap, usually working two or three weeknights and the occasional weekends. Bigger bands in bigger venues tended to use JSS PA Hire, and we had an easy relationship – top quality bands used their pro equipment and engineers and I took small jobs at the Cow which on weeknights usually consisted of University bands trying to be REM or “experimental“ in a local venue.

Rob Wilson performing at The Spotted Cow in York. Photo supplied

All the groups tended to be the same, now and again there were some good bands and although I always gave them the best sound I could, each one blurred into another with monotonous regularity.

Except tonight. I’d set up the band in the usual way and it was an easy mix, just a standard line-up of drums, bass, guitar and vocal. Strangely they didn’t want to soundcheck, their only request being that all the lights were off when they came onstage apart from my spotlights picking out the singer. I settled in for another tedious evening as the Cow began to fill up.

The new cabaret room in the Spotted Cow in Barbican Road in 1982.Press photo

At 9pm I doused all the lights and waited. There was the usual expectant hush. Then the band appeared on stage, all dressed head to toe in full surgeon’s gowns, with caps and masks, all bloodstained. The lead singer was carrying what appeared to be a severed head!

It was dripping with fake blood, and as he arrived at the drum kit he jammed the head onto an empty tom-tom spike causing the rest of the blood to cascade down over the kit. I flooded the stage with light as they launched into their set, loud powerful fast rock very much in the style of Green Day, and having got over their shock, the packed audience were immediately on their feet dancing and applauding. The name of the band escapes me, but it was one of the best gigs at the Cow I’d ever done.

York in 1997 – The Royal Dragon Cantonese Restaurant, Barbican Road, York. (former Spotted Cow).

Although small, the Spotted Cow gained a well-deserved reputation as one of the best York venues to see bands and, for a 30-year heyday beginning in the 1970s, hosted amazing and sometimes controversial live music with the best bands in the city performing.

And many people and musicians have fond (and not so fond ) memories of their gigs there even in the early days. Here are some recollections, staring with Paul Acton, as quoted in Something In The Air by Van Wilson…

Paul Acton: “ My father was a jazz musician. At the Spotted Cow it was fantastic. You could never get the band started, but you could never get them off once throwing-out time would come along. There’d be people sat in the other bar waiting for the music room to open so that they could get a seat and by half time you couldn’t find a square foot of floor space. It was absolutely packed out and they stood in the corridor, up on the stairs, shouting and screaming. I’ve never known anything like it.”

Tony and Carol Stilgoe in The Spotted Cow in Barbican Road in 1982. Press photo

He added. “ One night I had my amplifier catch fire in the Spotted Cow and the band carried on playing in the best Titanic tradition. There was smoke coming off it! The band carried on for a bit but you could tell there was something missing…”

Paul Butler remembers: “One time, my band (Rugged Aardvarks – a jolly busking band) had been booked to play the Spotted Cow by the manager of another band. He had never heard us play and for some reason thought we were a death metal band (like the headliners).

“Consequently we ended up playing our light-hearted skiffle set to a room full of death metal fans. No one clapped, cheered or even booed between songs. They just stared, quietly and angrily throughout the whole experience. I’ve never wanted to get off a stage more than I did that night at the Spotted Cow. “

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Paul Duckett recalled: “I was at a couple of gigs where we were told to leave by the owner and a 70s lewd comic. One punk gig was cut short after the singer did something rather naughty and the manager got on stage and said right, that’s enough!

“The Village Idiots (band) got kicked out at an early gig after someone phoned the fire brigade, and we got barred for various other nefarious practices and had to perform under a fake name to get booked again.”

And this from Christopher Dale: “Ruby Tuesday’s first gig was there in September 1985, and we played there a lot over the following three years. The funniest memory was probably due to the fact that the Spotted Cow was next to a taxi rank back then and when the guitarist Chris Styles went to play a solo his wireless receiver picked up the taxi rank and broadcast that instead of his solo..!”

Rugged Aardvarks performing at The Spotted Cow in York. Photo supplied

There’s a distinct lack of these types of small, intimate, venues now, although I am aware that there is a fund-raising campaign to try to restart them.

The Spotted Cow was special though – each night it played host to a who’s who of York musicians both onstage and in the audience, and great music was guaranteed for all.

It is now a Chinese restaurant, but you can go for a meal, sit at a table, shut your eyes and relieve those heady days.

The beer was cheap, the smoke was thick, your ears rang from the deafening PA, and your shoes stuck to the carpet, but when you came out you knew you’d had another good night at “ The Cow”.

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