The third piece completed for “The Lincolnshire Suite” was the track “Something to Learn” a tribute to all the fantastic markets in market towns across Lincolnshire.

The market place was the hub of many of the small towns around Lincolnshire, including my own town of Gainsborough.

As a child I loved the hustle and bustle of the market on market day, stalls filled the square and stallholders shouting and selling their wares is a fond memory. Gainsborough had a thriving market back in the 70s and early 80s with a market place flanked by the old Town Hall building. In the late 90s the market declined as the new development of Marshall’s Yard shifted the focus of the town, but it’s still there now, although it’s a pale shadow of its former self.

The town had been a very successful industrial hub in the late 1800s / early 1900s with large factories for manufacturing companies Marshall’s and Rose’s dominating the town centre. The large town hall building is testament to this success. The postcard above was produced in the early 1900s by W.F. Belton, a company who were still on the go when I was a child. My auntie Pat worked there in their little stationary shop attached to the printworks, and mum and me often used to pop in for a chat after school.

By the time I was a child the town hall had moved to a fairly brutalist new build on the other side of town, which most people were glad to see demolished a few years ago.

The old town hall was still used as a venue however, and I remember various events held there as a child, the local library decamped to the building for a while too, presumably while renovations were taking place on their own building.

In later years the hall upstairs became a night club and a late night destination for drinkers as the indie disco there was very good, I spent many a late night there. We also played there a couple of times as Children Of A Lesser Groove, where once a legendary moment occurred…

My memory of when it was is a bit misty, but it would have been 89/90 as I was still at art college in Lincoln, we played as an early incarnation of the band (a six piece!) and the event must have been some sort of town council organised thing as the Town Crier was in attendance. He was quite an egotistical larger than life chap, as you’d expect, and as we sound checked he yelled at us “Will you be quiiiiiiet!” In his best Brian Blessed style voice. This just caused us all to collapse in hysterics as Fozz our drummer shouted back “You can talk!!!”. I guess you had to be there. I can still hear his voice now. But either way a genuinely funny moment that’s stayed with me all my life.

As a teenager the market became important as it housed JT’s Record Stall. He was there every Saturday without fail and I picked up so many great records that really did shape my teenage years, lots of punk singles of course, all a quid or a quid fifty. And lots of pretty diverse albums, I certainly remember getting my first set of Pink Floyd albums from him, he’d saved them for me and I picked one a week up for quite a while. Back then no one really bothered about “first pressings” etc. we were just happy to own the albums. I sadly loaned them to someone later and never got them back!

They were lovely people who looked after their customers and I had a good relationship with John the owner and his two sons after becoming a regular. Later in life when I helped my friend Ian with record fairs around the country I’d encounter them again on that circuit and it was always nice to have a catch up and I often gave John a hand loading in and out especially if he was on his own at the fair.

This is why I chose the image of a teenager looking at a record for the cover of this release. My conversations with John also inspired the title of the song as I learned so much about music from him with my weekly visits to his stall.

Also worth a mention is the regular Record Fair that used to run in a small hall in the town. Those Saturdays were a double whammy of records for me!

The organiser of those fairs Vinnie* is still a close friend all these years on, and again through visiting that fair as a teenager I learned so much about bands and records through chatting to him and the other stall holders. It really did inspire me to collect records myself and immerse myself in music.

Without that my life path would have been very different.

Another place that flavoured this track was our local auctioneers, I’m sure every small town had the equivalent. We had a company called Platt and Lobley, who held a weekly auction on Tuesdays where anyone could put an auction lot in. They had a covered metal barn type building adjacent to a concreted area and there were always bargains to be had if you stuck it lucky!

As a teenager I realised I could make some extra money for records by selling some of my old things, so promptly got rid of old bikes, toys and other bits and bobs and also made the decision (a bad decision with hindsight!) to sell my old Action Man and Star Wars toys in two separate lots, which made a fair chunk of money.

As with all men of a certain age, I regret this IMMENSELY now and wish I still had them all!

The track itself came together quite easily, when I started writing this piece I used some of the Ableton generative tools to come up with a melody and developed some other elements of my own around this. The lovely bass sound came from the Akai Jura plug-in and added some nice bottom end to the tracks. It came together quite quickly and I really love the almost early morning feel of that first bit, the track feels to me like the opening of the market and then builds as it gets busy before dropping back down at the end of the day.

Here’s an early version live from Planet Q, my studio:

To find the voices I looked again through the promotional video for Lincolnshire and found a nice chunk of audio and visual content based around Louth market. Another familiar place for me as a child and a town we often visited. I didn’t need encouragement to go there for two reasons:

CASTALINE MODEL SHOP

This was an absolute treasure trove to the keen teenage modelmaker I was, half the shop was models and the other half fishing gear (hence the name). They also stocked Games Workshop and Citadel miniatures which in the 80s was a rarity, so ticked two of my collecting boxes!

It really was like a Time Machine and I visited many times over the years and always found something old and out of print to take home, proper treasure. It closed its doors for the final time a few years ago and is much missed.

BOYES

My first experience of the legendary Boyes was their Louth store. I remember it being a converted old department store and it had a few floors and was quite maze like. Mum used to like going up the the first floor which had fabric off cuts and wool etc and was often a bit like a jumble sale with all sorts piled up on the tables to rummage through. I was left to look at the toy department on the same floor and would come away with a new toy or two depending how much pocket money I had.

As a keen Action Man fan I remember one occasion very well, and this is partly why the Louth shop had such an impact on me. I’d have been around ten I think when we dropped in. I went to look at the toys and they had these weird kind of Action Man style toys but they were smaller in scale and called Madelman.

I’d never seen them before but they looked very cool and there was a range of Cowboy and Indian sets for them that were really unusual. I spent my pocket money on some and I think mum and dad might have bought me a couple of other bits too as they were cheap. After that I wanted to go to Louth a lot to buy more, but sadly they only had them in for a short while and soon sold out. I realise now it was probably a clearance line they bought in bulk but I’d never seen them at any other Boyes we went too. Again I wish I’d kept them all (especially seeing how rare they are now!) but they too went the way of the Platt and Lobley Auction with the Action Man stuff!

The final part of the song focused on Hubbard’s Hill a beautiful area of natural beauty on the outskirts of Louth and a place still visited by families today. I have fond memories of running wild through its greenery, and here’s a picture of me with annotations by my Dad from 1982.

As I began to play the song live I once again assembled a performance video which took footage of the market at Louth and Hubbards hill and synced it to the correct moments in the song. The Hubbard’s Hill footage is particularly evocative as that’s exactly how I remember it, full of families relaxing and having fun in nature. Here’s the video:

So that’s song number three complete… on to the next one!

* Vinnie is a bit of a Lincoln legend as bass player of the band Suburban Toys who have been around since the 80s. He’s also collected huge amounts of Lincoln/Linclonshire based music and is really knowledgeable on the Lincoln scene over the years.