History

Before 2018, Renaldo & The Loaf only ever graced a stage once, in 1980, for a 20-minute improvisation:

Brian, “We did it to promote the local LP South Specific which we had 3 tracks on. We were one of 4 bands to play, a rock band, a punk band, a ‘pop’ band and us. Each band had it’s fans/friends there…there were a lot of heavy looking punks and skinheads in the audience which worried us a bit.

“Our music was very much constructed in a studio so we knew we couldn’t play our recorded songs live, so we decided to do an improvisation which was often a starting point in making our songs at that time. So we set up a long-delay tape system using two Akai decks we had – the idea was borrowed from Brian Eno. The machines were separated by about one metre, the sound was recorded on the first deck and played back on the second then fed back to the first and so on. This produced a long echo which repeated and decayed slowly. We went on first and did a 20 minute piece. When we decided to stop, the music carried on by itself so I had to tell the audience we’d finished…which itself carried on repeating. I doubt if anyone there would have heard anything like it before but it was well received…even the punks applauded. So that was that.

“We almost played another show in 1985. We were asked by Doublevision (Sheffield-based label closely associated with Cabaret Voltaire) if we could do a live presentation at a theatre in London to support a showing of Residents videos they were planning. We worked with some guys from the Portsmouth School of Art to design a stage set and planned to do 4 songs to a backing tape with me singing live…Dave was going to construct a loop tape live on stage which would play out at the end. We were planning to do ‘Hambu Hodo’, ‘The Elbow Is Taboo’, ‘Like Some Kous-Kous Western’ and one more that I can’t remember. One of the guys at the Art School knew Neneh Cherry and she agreed to dance for us with two other women….this was just before she became well-known. Needless to say this all never happened as the theatre was a new building and couldn’t get it’s fire safety license in time so the show was cancelled…..I think one small advert appeared in NME for it.”

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