Tom  plays ‘Saturn 5′ at The CAT Club gathering No 57.

The CAT Club (Classic Album Tuesdays) is a vinyl record listening club and meets once a fortnight to play and discuss classic records.

Tom presented Dr Feelgood’s Down By The Jetty as his album of choice for the gathering; the first album Tom bought and his all-time favourite record.

Tom talking to David White on BBC Radio Cornwall (17:08) Recorded 16 April 2013.

In 2011 I was ejected from Inspiral Carpets, a band for whom I had sung, composed and recorded with over a twenty-two year period. I had joined the Inspirals in February 1989, four months after their first lead-singer, Stephen Holt, had left. I hit the ground running by helping to promote the band’s first 2 EPs, Plane Crash and Trainsurfing, which Holt had supplied the vocals to. We then recorded the Life album, which reached No. 2 in the UK charts in April 1990, kept off the No. 1 spot by a heavily TV-advertised compilation by The Carpenters.

In 2013 my ex-bandmates and EMI Records re-issued the debut album Life in an extended format (imaginatively titled Life: Extended Edition), encompassing the songs from the original album plus pre-Hingley tracks taken from the band’s 1988 John Peel session and the two EPs: Plane Crash and Trainsurfing. The repackaged album also includes a DVD of our seminal gig at Manchester’s GMEX centre, 21790.

Relations between my former bandmates and myself had become so poor that the reissue was put together without my involvement (and without me even knowing about it until it was announced publicly), despite my contribution to the original material i.e., lead vocals and co-writer on the Life album and accompanying live performance DVD.

The new record credits the 13 original album songs as having been sung by me. There are then a further 13 extra tracks sung by Stephen Holt, which were not originally on the (1990 release) Life album, and do not therefore represent material from the era of that record. With this in mind, this album isn’t so much Life: Extended Edition as Life: Re-imagined.

No serious claims towards the inclusion of the pre-Life tracks on the basis of them being collectable for the completist record buying fan stand much scrutiny, with the majority of the Holt-era tracks having already received an airing on the 2003 Cool As…  compilation disc, Rare As… Plus, to my ears, mixing material from the two different vocalists makes for a messy, incoherent feel and sound to the record. Given that Stephen Holt returned to the band after I was ejected, it seems to me that Life: Extended is an attempt to re-invent the album to suggest greater involvement by the departed Holt. I’m not for one second suggesting that Holt didn’t play an important part in the early days of the band, but this didn’t stretch to the Life album, which is why you won’t find mention of him in the original album sleeve notes.

The genuine highpoint of this reissue, and worthy due to its relation to the Life album, is surely the 21790 DVD – spectacular footage recorded during our triumphant hometown gig at the GMEX in July 1990. This performance is stunning and it signifies what Inspiral Carpets represented when I was one fifth of that classic line-up: romantic, drawn on a big scale, explosive, punk driven and inspired. The songs that I wrote, and that the other members wrote for me as their vocalist and muse, were made successful by all five members, through our individual and collective contributions.

In the early days, Inspiral Carpets were a good band who were on the gigging circuit, had built up a following and – like me before I joined them – recorded a Peel session, but the truth is they/we only became that mad pop mongrel, mixing the Garage elements with the Romance of soaring scales of ‘This is How It Feels’ when I was brought into the fold. And that’s not, by any means, to take all of the credit for our commercial success, but to recognise the five of us that were in the band when it enjoyed its heyday.

There is a footnote in the artwork for Life: Extended Edition stating that the line-up of the band features Stephen Holt, but no mention of myself – whilst this may be true of the current time, it’s certainly not true of the Life album line-up. With this in mind, I can’t help but feel that my former bandmates have gone some way to consciously airbrush me out of the band’s long, medium and recent history.

There is an image in Milan Kundura’s novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting where a Communist leader is airbrushed out of a propaganda photo after falling out of favour with the men in charge. Ironically his hat, which he passed to his friend, still remained in the photograph for posterity:

 In February 1948, the Communist leader Klement Gottwald stepped out on the balcony of a Baroque palace in Prague to harangue hundreds of thousands of citizens massed in Old Town Square. That was a great turning point in the history of Bohemia. A fateful moment of the kind that occurs only once or twice a millennium.

Gottwald was flanked by his comrades, with Clementis standing close to him. It was snowing and cold, and Gottwald was bareheaded. Bursting with solicitude, Clementis took off his fur hat and set it on Gottwald’s head.

The propaganda section made hundreds of thousands of copies of the photograph taken on the balcony where Gottwald, in a fur hat and surrounded by his comrades, spoke to the people. On that balcony the history of Communist Bohemia began. Every child knew that photograph, from seeing it on posters and in schoolbooks and museums.

 Four years later, Clementis was charged with treason and hanged. The propaganda section immediately made him vanish from history and, of course, from all photographs. Ever since, Gottwald has been alone on the balcony. Where Clementis stood, there is only the bare palace wall. Nothing remains of Clementis but the fur hat on Gottwald’s head.

 With this in mind, I feel like I’ve left my hat on the Inspirals tour bus!

Tom Hingley

THE homely surroundings of The Fulford Arms on a Saturday evening was the perfect setting for former Inspiral Carpets frontman Tom Hingley’s solo acoustic show.

It may have been sub-zero outside but Tom, with only a guitar, a beard and a largely appreciative audience, managed to create a very cosy glow.

In a preview I wrote for the gig last week I told fans not to expect too much from the Inspiral Carpets’ back catalogue.

I was proved wrong right from the outset when Tom took the brave decision to open up with guaranteed crowd pleaser Saturn Five, followed by This Is How it Feels and three other Inspiral classics.

The power of the performance comes from Hingley’s voice, which appears to have increased in range over the years and is startlingly acrobatic.

That’s not to take anything away from his guitar playing – indeed his ability to bash out some of the dirtiest delta blues this side of Salford was the biggest revelation of the night and served as tempting showcase to his last solo album, Thames Valley Delta Blues.

Hingley put on a non-stop show of almost two hours, engaging his audience and leaving everyone wondering what he would pull out of the bag for his next trick.

As a massive Inspiral Carpets fan, I was thrilled when, after the show, the man himself took a seat next to my fianceé and I and, without coaxing, gave us his views on everything from UKIP to the modern music industry and even spilled the beans on his ups and downs with his former Inspiral bandmates. Why can’t all gigs be like this?

Review written by Richard Catton for The York Press

An illustrated reading from Carpet Burns. Mark E Smith finds himself in confrontational situations with Elvis Costello, Clint Boon, Anita Doth and Gillian Taylforth at the recording of his one and only Top of the Pops appearence, with Inspiral Carpets.

Part One

Part Two

An interview with Tom in Dunfermline Press, 21 Feb 2013.

Trailer for Tom’s appearence on Pat Sharp’s Time Warp show on Vintage TV.

Tom’s book about his life as the singer of the Oldham 5 piece is a real eye-opener, and takes you on a real rollercoaster of the ups and downs of being in a band at the heart of the Manchester music scene.

Setting the backdrop at the very beginning of his Oxford based childhood, brought up by his strict, and unemotional father it sets out that whereas Tom was always the middle class Southerner, the other lads in the Inspirals were Northern and working class.

The autobiography traces his early days with Too Much Texas up until he auditioned (beating Noel Gallagher to the prize) for our favourite garage band.

The Inspirals set up their own label, Cow Records , and also signed to Mute in 1989, and this book tells the tale of their early days, peaking with playing Manchester’s Gmex in 1990 and playing all over the world.

Tom entices the reader with humorous tales, such as their spat with the Happy Mondays who called them ‘Clueless knobheads’, their many drunken pranks and also heartfelt moments such as when Tom gave free tickets to sold out shows to eager fans.

One of the highlights of this book are the origins of the awesome songs they wrote. Who knew the sprightly ‘Caravan’ was all about Nazi Death Marches that concentration camp inmates were subjected to?

Tom honestly opens his diary to all on tours of the U.S, Germany, Belgium, Spain and other European countries which made interesting  and detailed reading of the minutae of life on the road, right down to the meals they ate in different cities and different characters they met along the way.

Not shy in exposing the gritty reality of being in a band, Tom writes of problems they had with their manager’s  extravagant spending sprees, the intricate difficulties they had with the taxman, and when it all started going pear-shaped after Mute dropped them along the same time they had no publishing contract either.

The last few pages when Tom parted company with the band are written particularly emotively and leave a lump in the throat but ever the survivor, Tom bounces back with new band the Lovers.

A memorable frontmen, a great singer, and now an accomplished author.

Review by Wendy Gabriel for Inspiral Carpets Appreciation Society.