Melanie Berman
Melanie Berman was a student at Sunderland University in the 80's. She was an active member of the punk scene in the North East at the time. Melanie, along with her friends, were regulars on a tv programme called 'The Tube' and remembers going to after parties and soaking in the music scene.
I was a student at Sunderland Polytechnic University from 1981 – 1984, from Leicester. It was a depressing time in Thatcher’s Britain - high unemployment, Falklands War, Miners strikes, Nelson Mandela still in prison.
"It was all so grey and depressing… but a heady time for youth, music and creativity."
No one had any money and we were all searching to bond with members of our ‘tribe’, so students and local punks/arty types mixed seamlessly and made friends for life. We regularly danced the night away at the Wearmouth Hall’s punk gigs. The gigs were DJ’d by legendary local lad Tommy Hair. There were other DJs too like Heroes, Annabelles, the KU Club, the Drum Club, Newcastle Riverside, Mayfair, Rockshots and many more. The Bunker Collective, still on Stockton Road, was founded with Alan Christie, who still curates the rich creative musical archive and supports new local artists to this day. I remember bands such as Dub Warriors, Patrick and Qua amongst many more.
Each Friday afternoon a few of us, who had passed auditions to be weekly audience members of the cutting edge new Channel 4 programme ‘The Tube’, skived lectures and hopped onto the Metro to Tyne Tees studios to hang out with the stars. We would dance and pose on TV while getting free access to performances from the widest variety of acts. It was presented by Paula Yates, Leslie Ash, and Jools Holland. Sometimes, after the programme finished, we would get to mix with the acts at the pub over the road from the studio. If not, we would hop back on the metro and continue our Friday night back through Sunderland.
The Ivy pub was at the bottom of my road and a regular hangout. It was a pleasure to return there in March 2020 with my partner's band Longtooth and Wasterman, supporting my good friend Gary Roberts’s band Slalom D. After 36 years away the memories came flooding back!
*Photographs supplied by Melanie Berman