Mark (00:00)
Welcome to prog and progeny our third episode of our podcast with me, Mark Kelly and Tallulah Kelly. Hi, Tallulah. You never call me Mark.

Tallulah (00:08)
Hi Mark.

You said I need to be more professional this episode, so here I am.

Mark (00:14)
Okay, can call me Mark then.

Tallulah (00:27)
How was, er, Port Zealand?

Mark (00:29)
Port Zealand was amazing. We had a fantastic time. It's really hard to explain to people who've never been there how special it is really. Yeah, it was just a great weekend. The weather was fine, always seems to be. I know you've been there a few times, haven't you? But a long time ago now, when we talked about this, when you went over that barrier on your bike, bad parenting. We did a, for the people that weren't there, sorry about that, because it was

Tallulah (00:47)
We talked about it, yeah, in the last...

Yeah.

Mark (00:59)
Probably the last one I say probably because certainly we thought it was the last one But while we were there Lucy spoke to the Center parks people I should explain the reason why the weekends were going to come to an end was because where we construct the tent that we have all the Performances in is a car park and they're planning to build solar panels Above the car parking spaces and so that would be impossible to have a tent there anymore So that's why it was coming to an end. They've now said

head office has gone quiet on the plans for the solar panels, so it's possible that they still won't have done it within two years, and in which case we can come back. So watch this space, you never know. Yeah, yeah, it's kind of, because everybody was...

Tallulah (01:39)
That's good.

Final, final, was like kind of sad that I wasn't there.

Mark (01:46)
Yeah, so you never know, might get another chance and all those people who couldn't make it might get another chance. Yeah, we played the whole of the Marble album on the first night and we played the whole of the Afraid of Sunlight album on the second night. And then on the third night, we did a set from 1990, which was essentially the season's end album plus a bunch of really old songs from prior to Steve Hogarth joining the band, including Script for a Jester's Tear, which is the title track of our first album, Tallulah, just letting you know in case.

Tallulah (02:14)
Did you play my favorite cannibal surf, Did you? god!

Mark (02:16)
We did play Cannibal Surfer. Did you?

Yeah, yeah, because that's part of the Afraid of Sunlight album. and yeah, we had grown men in tears. There wasn't a dry seat in the house. was literally, people were just literally crying because I think it's, I mean, I'm not saying... seat? Yeah, a dry eye, that's what I meant to say. Yeah, I've got a good joke for you actually, Surfer. Okay. Three guys go for a job at the FBI and...

Tallulah (02:37)
I'm wetting them.

Mark (02:45)
the head of the FBI says, we need to test your commitment to the job. So I want you to take this gun and go into the next room and your wife's in there. I want you to shoot her. And the first guy's horrified. He's like, I can't do that. He said, I don't need the job that badly. I'm leaving. The second guy says the same thing too. And he's kind of undecided, but in the end he thinks on balance that he shouldn't kill his wife for this job. The third guy thinks, I desperately need this job. So he takes the gun, goes next door and you hear.

Bang, bang, bang, and then you hear a lot of crashing and banging around and the guy comes out and he says, somebody put blanks in the gun so I had to kill her with the chair.

Tallulah (03:23)
That is actually funny, because lot of your jokes aren't actually funny.

Mark (03:27)
Okay,

thank you. So yeah, back to Port Zealand. So yeah, it was great. was really good. The only slight fly in the ointment was I had, people probably know that I had an incident in 2012 where I lost a lot of hearing in my left ear suddenly overnight and then same thing happened again in 2019 with my right ear but the hearing came back and then just the two days before Port Zealand we were actually there and I woke up in the morning with horrible ringing and my right ear was badly...

not working. By the first show, it was kind of back somewhat, so I could hear not too well, but kind of well enough, I think. And by the Sunday night, it was kind of back to normal. So fingers crossed, that's all it was. I don't know. I mean, it's just this sudden hearing loss thing for no reason. I mean, I was really well behaved. I went to bed early. I think I had one glass of wine on the night that it happened.

So I'm not sure, but if anybody's out there who's a ENT specialist or knows a good ENT specialist who can shed some light on what the cause of this is, or anyway, hopefully I'll be fine. We do.

Tallulah (04:36)
We have an email address.

We want questions, suggestions, anything.

Mark (04:42)
Just write to us, we're lonely. Troll us, yeah. So the email address is progamprojony.gmail.com.

Tallulah (04:50)
And you can also comment on Spotify and on our Instagram account. I'm wondering if we should expand our social media presence maybe to Twitter slash X.

Mark (05:01)
Yeah, a few months back I deleted my Twitter account. I refused to call it X. Stupid name. Goodbye to my 15,000 followers that I had, which could have been quite useful now to promote this podcast.

Tallulah (05:12)
And then I reminded him that he is a major shareholder in Musk since he owns a Tesla.

Mark (05:17)
Yeah, and to my shame, I admit that I, before Christmas, before this whole doge thing and all the rest of it, if anybody follows politics in America, will realize that the world's gone mad. Yeah, before all that happened, I did actually buy a Tesla, for all the right reasons, because I'm, not because I want to support Elon Musk because he's a twat, but because I thought an electric car was a good idea and apparently they are, I like the car. Anyway, let's not get too much into politics.

We're trying to be more professional and do the things that people do with podcasts, which is mentioned that you should hit like and subscribe. If people want to send in links to their music, somebody suggested that. Tallulah would love that and we'll be brutally honest. So if you're not sure if it's any good, don't do it.

Tallulah (05:52)
and have a bit more structure.

I would love that.

you

you

Chapter three of... What's it called again? It's such a long title.

Mark (06:25)
It's just

called my bookie wookie. No, it's not going to that. It's called... shit, I can't remember. Something about marathons, music and... This adventure's marathons and something. Meridian. Anyway, chapter three.

Tallulah (06:27)
My book- I'm dead.

Yeah. Misadventure.

I think it's my favourite chapter so far. Although it should come with a trigger warning. There's not many children who get to read about the time their parents lost their virginity.

Mark (06:46)
Mine too, actually.

There's always something, isn't there?

Tallulah (06:59)
Despite that, it is my favourite chapter.

Mark (07:02)
Well actually

I was obsessed with rock, well I was obsessed with music and progressive rock music to the exclusion of all else which is why as you'll find out in the chapter at the end of this podcast that I don't actually move on to sex or drugs until I'm almost in my 20s believe it or not. I know if somebody as good-looking as me to expect it would happen much sooner right?

Tallulah (07:23)
I'm gonna start off with talking about this party that you threw with Mike.

Mark (07:27)
As I

mentioned in the previous chapter, he was at this school called Campion, boys grammar school, and I don't know how it happened, but everybody in his year and probably the year above and below found out about this party that he was throwing. I think it was for his 17th birthday, and it was the only party we ever had actually. My parents...

Tallulah (07:48)
It's not surprising considering the guest list included prostitutes apparently.

Mark (07:52)
They were on the guest list. They were what's known as gatecrashers, I think. But there was people destroying stuff outside the building as well. The chaos wasn't confined to our home. Yeah, it was like a masonet. were on the third and fourth floor of this building. people were uprooting trees, apparently, outside. Why? I don't know, because they were like crazy drunk teenagers. Wearing bin bags. Yeah, because punk had literally just started.

Tallulah (07:56)
Ha ha!

Was this when you lived in a flat?

wearing bin bags.

Mark (08:22)
For those that aren't as old as me, in 1976, in the summer of 76, I believe, there was an incident that happened, actually. I don't really talk about much in the book. Actually, at very start of the chapter, I mention it, which is when there was an evening program called Today, and it was hosted by a guy called Bill Grundy. This ruined his career, by the way. People say he was drunk, but they got the Sex Pistols to appear. Nobody had heard of them before. They were brand new EMI signing.

And apparently the story was that Queen were meant to appear, but Freddie Mercury had problems with his teeth and he had to go and see a dentist. So they canceled at the last minute and EMI suggested the sex pistols. And when they came on, they were clearly drunk and apparently he was too. And he kind of goaded them and said, oh, you know, do something outrageous. Oh, and Susie Sue from Susie and the Banshees was there with them standing at the back. And she was, she was about 19 years old.

And she said to Bill Grundy, I've always wanted to meet you. And he said, meet me afterwards or something like that. And then Steve Jones from the Sex Pistol said, you dirty bastard, you dirty fucker. What a fucking rotter. This went out live on day 10 on TV. This was the first time anybody had ever sworn on TV.

Tallulah (09:29)
Ha ha ha

Bye!

Yeah, so prostitutes at the party, you didn't realise they were prostitutes though because they weren't wearing red shoes? Yeah.

Mark (09:43)
Well, you know, that's what my granddad always said. Read shoes is a sign of a prostitute. But yeah, I just remember there were two sort of what seemed to me to be middle-aged women. They were probably in their 20s, sat on the stairs mostly. They raided my brother's room and stole all the money that he'd collected to pay for the beer that my dad had. So I had to bail him out by lending him some money from my safe.

Tallulah (09:59)
Yes, yes.

That's very nice of you. You go to art college and then you became a roof tiler.

Mark (10:09)
So

I went back home and thought I better get some work, mainly to try and raise some money to buy keyboards. That's all I wanted. I was obsessed with it. But I also knew I had to do something a bit more than just being a band, because it was more of a hobby. I had a number of jobs, culminating in a job at a double glazing.

Tallulah (10:29)
This is my favourite story.

Mark (10:31)
Yeah, so I was working in this double glazing factory and I had done that sort of work before in the summers when I was at school because it paid well but it was horrible work. It was a lot of young people there and they were all complaining about the conditions and the fact they only got a 10 minute tea break and there was nowhere to wash your hands and I'm just like, guys, just go on strike. You know, made sense to me. Anyway, didn't think much of it. I thought, stop whinging, go on strike.

Tallulah (10:56)
No, you said that you tried to organise.

Mark (10:59)
Well, I kind of in that sort of way basically suggesting that they could all walk out and then get the conditions improved. Yeah. And the next day I was hauled into the the manager's office and he basically just gave me my P45 for non-British people. That means your slip of paper they give you when you're fired. And told me to leave by the side door and I was like, fuck that. And I marched through the factory and basically said, I'm being fired.

and they had chance to come out and go on strike. Workers unite, that sort of shit. And everybody just stared at their shoes and ignored me. So I was like, well, fuck you lot, and left. And I was kind of scared that when I went home, my dad would be annoyed that I got fired. But he was really proud of

Tallulah (11:45)
The Chip of the Old Communist Block. That is the chapter title. And then you join Chemical Alice.

Mark (11:54)
Chemical Alice, yes. I think the clue's in the name of what went on with that band. Having been relatively clean living and a nice boy up until that point, as I'm sure you can tell, we had this rehearsal place, not to start with, but Dave, the guitarist, found a rehearsal place, which was great, we loved it. mean, one of the biggest problems bands have is finding somewhere to rehearse that's available.

Tallulah (12:19)
It's

like a storage unit,

Mark (12:21)
Yeah,

was like the railway line that goes through Bromford station is quite high up and there's like these like brick-built arches that are really tall and quite big underneath and they basically put a wooden front on it and turn it into a lock-up. It was great and we could store our equipment there and we could rehearse there. We used to go there and rehearse a lot and kind of take drugs a little bit I suppose. We had like a mirror ball in the middle of the room and then people would smoke dope. So, but yeah, magic mushrooms and the odds.

trip of acid was probably on the menu. But to be honest, by the time I, my time at Chemical Alice came to me, I was kind of fed up with the whole drug thing as part of the reason why I thought I'd leave and try and find, and when I saw Merulion, I'll get to that in the next chapter, but when I saw Merulion, was like thinking, they're more professional. Yeah, Chemical Alice's music, whilst I was trying to get them to be more organized and, and you know, write songs and arrangements, mainly, mainly wanted to just jam.

Tallulah (13:06)
enough direction.

Mark (13:18)
you know, just like, you know.

Tallulah (13:19)
Jam out. I

like the fact you talk about that you take magic mushrooms quite a lot and you go foraging for them but because there's no internet you have no clue what you're looking for. It's really dangerous, really really dangerous. But then you say that you go to the library to research.

Mark (13:30)
That was so dangerous.

I like the library, know, that was me and Dave. We went to see Hawkwind play, I can't remember where it was, but I remember we ate all these mushrooms, which are an assorted bunch of different mushrooms, could have easily killed us, I suppose. It was off our tits for God knows how long. I mixed in with the bad ones, I'm sure, yeah. All the ones that were harmless because I survived. Yeah, I've got to ask what we were thinking, just crazy.

Tallulah (13:53)
So you clearly did find the right ones.

I think we should listen to some Chemical Alice music. Really? Yeah.

Mark (14:10)
Mmm, you sure? Yes. I don't want to subject people to that. I want people to listen to the podcast, not to switch it on.

Tallulah (14:15)
I want to listen to it.

Mark (14:18)
Okay, I'm going to play you a little bit of the keyboard solo out of one of the songs because it kind of shows what I was going to bring to Meridian in the early days with my... People called it the Widdly Widdly style, you know. But yeah, have a listen to this.

Tallulah (14:59)
Did you know what that reminds me of? For anyone who's familiar with the TV program Friends, have you seen this episode when Ross gets out his keyboards and he plays his jab? You should think of my work as wordless sound poems. When you listen to that now, do you feel nostalgia, pride, cringe?

Mark (15:24)
sense of embarrassment.

Okay, it definitely hasn't stood the test of time. It wasn't great at the time and it didn't get better with age like a good wine. It's like a bad wine. Apologies to any members of Chem and Colitis out there that are listening to this. We were doing quite well locally in the Romford area. We built up a little bit of a following. We went into a recording studio in Cambridge called Space Ward Studios. It was the very first proper studio that I went to.

And I was so excited to be in a recording studio. I think we only had one day.

Tallulah (15:57)
Yeah, it's fun. And we're in one right now.

Mark (16:01)
We

are. There was like a culture around all this stuff to do. There was like these hippie bands like Here and Now and

And then there was like the main event of the year was the Stonehenge Free Festival. I read online this morning, some people wrote about it, and this guy sums it up. says, it had the feel of a medieval encampment. There was so much going on, stages on every corner, stalls and people providing weird tripping environments. It was like an activity camp for trippers, although it did degenerate into a drug dealers convention towards the end. I think I was.

Tallulah (16:33)
Were you a hippie then? Yeah.

you wear wavy garms? Cuff-tags. Yeah.

Mark (16:40)
Yeah.

We did that Stonehenge Free Festival in the summer of 81. Anyway, by the end of the summer, I was getting fed up with the whole thing. But we built up a little following locally, playing in a couple of venues, mainly the Electric Stadium in Chadwell Heath, which was not a stadium, it was a pub. It was kind of just a pub. The Greyhound Pub. But we used to play there. We got a support slot and then we got a headline slot. We had a really avid following of like few hundred people that would come and see us everywhere. And then one day,

Merillian supported us.

Tallulah (17:12)
But you're missing a... You were going to join another band in the meantime.

Mark (17:16)
Yeah, in my desire to leave all that drug taking behind, I was looking around to see what else was going on and there was a couple of guys at a band that they were going to call it Splitgrass, a guy called Mike Caswell who became a session guitarist years later. And his friend, I can't remember his friend's name. I got invited for an interview by a local fanzine and I was all excited because they wanted to interview me. So I turned up for this interview in the pub and Chemical Alice were there and Mike and his mate were there and...

first question out of the interviewer's mouth was, so have you told Chemical Alice you're going to leave them to join Splitcrust?

Tallulah (17:50)
That's not good. Have you ever been done dirty by a journalist like that since?

Mark (17:55)
No, no, no. the only bad experience I think we had with journalists, well wasn't even a bad experience, it just kind of opened my eyes to how inaccurate journalism is.

Tallulah (18:09)
I

bloody hate journalists. It's not like I want to be one.

Mark (18:13)
And I think I talk about that later on in the book, but in the 1980s.

Tallulah (18:15)
I think

it's changing. One of my lecturers said that it used to be the thing that you'd go on camera and you'd have to and they'd just say make them cry, it's good content make them cry. Now they don't do that.

Mark (18:25)
Okay, but they do tend to embellish stories and there was a horrible story. They called it the Vicarage Rapist. A gang broke into a vicarage and raped the vicar's daughter in front of him and they didn't know who it was and they were trying to find out. We were on tour in America at the time, this was 86 I think. The newspapers started running these stories about how one of the rapists, they identified that he had some tattoos on.

Tallulah (18:29)
Yeah.

Mark (18:49)
the knuckles of one of his hands, said M-A-R, and he had a web tattooed on his hand near his thumb, and somebody said a web is the name of a Meridian song, and M-A-R's first three letters are Meridian, and they thought, maybe the guy's a Meridian fan.

Tallulah (19:04)
I thought they were going to say M-A-R

Mark (19:08)
Thank you. I was on tour in America. had a solid alibi. And then of course we have a sort of assassin. They were just like completely making... And the police contacted us and said, look, we know it's nothing to do with Merillium, but we want these stories to run because it might actually jog somebody's memory. Somebody might see those stories and think they know who this person is by the tattoo. they were kind of OK with the fact that they were just spreading all this shit. But it didn't do us any good because then there was a...

Tallulah (19:17)
Yeah, that's crazy.

Mark (19:38)
published shortly afterwards about satanic music and we got featured in it because of that.

Tallulah (19:45)
my god. Yeah. That is crazy story. I've never even told that.

Mark (19:48)
No. On the subject of just before we leave Stonehenge and the whole drug fest that was Chemical Alice back in 1981, I have to say that I was lucky and so were most of the people that I was associated with that we didn't end up being casualties of this because there was a guy we used to call him Far Out Phil. He was a lovely guy but he was clearly fried. His brain was destroyed by acid. I mean the guy was just...

Mostly not there really. So, you know, just say no.

Tallulah (20:22)
I'm

just saying. yeah. If I'm asking for a friend, what advice would you give? Okay, your chemical Alice days are getting over. You're having an affair with one of the band. Well, she's an ex of the band members. Yeah, that was I was going to ask if that's ever happened since, but I feel like that would encourage salacious gossip. then Marillion enter. Bam.

Mark (20:29)
Just say no. Tallulah.

That's right, so that kind of...

That's not

Tallulah (20:51)
but they're supporting you.

Mark (20:53)
Yes, because they were quite ambitious. It doesn't sound like it's support and chemical alice, but they were from Aylesbury and they came all the way to Chadwell Heath, crossing through London, the other side of London. We were east London, they were kind of west of London. So was a good three hours even to get to Chadwell. Well, ambitious in the sense that they were willing to drive, you know, three, four hours to do a support slot in a dodgy pub in east London, you know.

Tallulah (21:09)
Is that ambitious?

Ambitious or desperate?

Mark (21:19)
No, no, think it was they were driven. Yeah, driven to be successful and end. No, no. Well, we would, but not far and, you know, members of the band all had jobs except me. So, you know, it was kind of like it was a whole and it was a hobby to me, too, to be fair. It's not like I was thinking, this is this is going to be successful. I'd already decided I was going back to college and I went back to college.

Tallulah (21:24)
And Kamakalaas weren't. We did not travel for gigs.

Hobby.

Mark (21:47)
in the September of 81 to study electronics thinking I was going to end up doing something to do with electronics.

Tallulah (21:53)
Yeah. How did that decision come about to leave Kamakallala to join Merillian? I'll tell you. Okay, that's in the fourth chapter. Right. Now we're going to... I've been looking on Spotify and we've got quite a few comments on our first episode especially. So we're to talk about that. Sturt, I don't know if that's meant to be Stuart, said, I've seen Fontaine's DC three times. Perhaps you said a track off the first album might have elicited a different response. Brilliant band, almost as good as your dad's.

Mark (21:59)
tell you that next time.

yeah, funnily enough, I actually know their manager, Ian McAndrew, who...

Tallulah (22:28)
No

way, can you get tickets? they're playing they're playing in Finsbury Park. Are they?

Mark (22:35)
I'll message him. Well, he managed Travis when I played with them back in 2005. I'll contact Ian and see if I can get Tallulah to...

Tallulah (22:40)
Hmm.

Wangle, really?

It's the benefit of having a dad in a rock band. I'd also quite like to Elbow.

Mark (22:51)
and I know their manager too, so yeah. Phil, if you're listening, get us some tickets for Elbow.

Tallulah (22:54)
They're also playing in some way.

Cheers Phil. Someone said that they did the park run in Port Zealand.

Mark (23:04)
Parkrun was fun. Markrun actually it was called.

Tallulah (23:07)
No, really? Yeah.

Mark (23:09)
was great,

was so sweet. Fraser Marshall, he organised it because Mike Hunter and I both do park runs. Mike's obsessed with these park runs. Although he slept in and didn't make it to the mark run. Yeah, was like hundreds of people turned up. It was great. And I started at the back and kind of tried to catch up with people and say hi and encourage them on and all the way.

Tallulah (23:21)
no.

What was your time? Did you strive for it?

Mark (23:34)
I did Strava it but I forgot to turn it off at the end so it was like 30 minutes or something but I think I did it in about 26 or something. was fairly slow on purpose.

Tallulah (23:42)
We ran a half marathon together in October.

Mark (23:46)
Shush.

Tallulah (23:48)
It was awful. Both injured, limping across. I actually beat dad because he was injured.

Mark (23:55)
so

bad. I literally started off, we were together and then Tallulah was getting annoyed with me.

Tallulah (24:01)
I had a chest infection. I didn't think I was going to be able to do it. I was squeezing.

Mark (24:04)
Weezing right and

And eventually after about half an hour I suppose she said that just you've just annoying me just run on because I'm you're trying to push me to go too fast And I'm feeling like I have to try and keep up with you. Yeah, you just left me Yeah, so I'm like, okay and off I went and I'm like charging off down the road on my own I'm thinking what the hell am I doing? I'll just stop and wait for to lose. So after about ten minutes I waited and eventually she caught me up and it was I

Tallulah (24:31)
Eventually. Thanks.

Mark (24:33)
And so then we thought, let's just run together. can go at your...

Tallulah (24:37)
Well, no, I think your exact words were, even if I really tried, I'm not going to beat my best time now, so I may as well stay with you.

Mark (24:44)
Something like that, yeah. So kind of you. Anyway, not because it was your fault, just because I was completely undertrained and much older than I was when I had a PB.

Tallulah (24:47)
You're so good. Anyway.

I

mean running 13 miles at 62, 63, 64 in April. Pretty impressive.

Mark (25:01)
in less than a month,

Thank you. We ran along together for a while and then I started to get a pain in my leg and ended up having to basically walk limp the rest of the way until Ula left me behind.

Tallulah (25:14)
I said I'm really sorry dad but if I don't keep running I'm not gonna finish. I was running behind a man who was carrying a dryer on his back. Wow. And that was slow.

Mark (25:26)
done marathons

before it's really disheartening to be overtaken by somebody dressed as a ten-foot beer bottle.

Tallulah (25:30)
He had a full

dryer, as in a clothes dryer, on his back and I was running behind him.

Mark (25:36)
Yeah, but clothes dries aren't as heavy as washing machines.

Tallulah (25:40)
Someone said, good to hear Tallulah, didn't she feature as a baby on one of the early Merillian videos?

Mark (25:47)
Well actually no, was Freya that featured as a baby on He Knows You Know. She was a few weeks old. In 1983.

Tallulah (25:53)
Yeah

Before we go, I was going to ask you about the upcoming gigs.

Mark (25:59)
We've just come back from Port Zealand, which was lovely as I said earlier, and I'm off to, well, we're off to Montreal on Tuesday.

Tallulah (26:07)
Not me.

I wasn't invited. He invited my sister to Paris. I said, amazing, can I come? No, there's no room on the bus.

Mark (26:12)
I invited Delilah to power.

I'm sorry.

Tallulah (26:22)
I'm kidding. That did happen, but it's fine. Alright.

Mark (26:26)
My poddy buddy. I see enough of you.

Yeah, Montreal, looking forward to that. Although it's only two nights by the time you hear this. We literally wouldn't have just got back from Montreal.

Tallulah (26:38)
Can you give us a set list teaser?

Mark (26:40)
It's gonna be a bit of a mixture, it'll still mostly be the Marbles album on the first night. But the second night, I think we're gonna veer more towards the 90s setlist, which seems to be more popular. Mainly because we don't play those songs very much. Well, like that song, Script for a Gesture, too, that I mentioned, the last time we played that was about 15 years ago, before Paul Zeeland.

Tallulah (26:56)
Thanks for that.

Mark (27:03)
And before that, probably 15 years before that. I mean we used to do it in the early days with Steve and then we kind of stopped playing it because it's very old. Yeah, well I'm just hoping that people will send us some questions, the things that we can answer. Give us some really difficult questions.

Tallulah (27:11)
Yeah.

Yeah, because I'm fed up of coming up with them. Thank you for listening. This was Prog and Progeny with Tallulah.