17-01-1998 / Melody Maker / My First Gig : this week, Aggi Wright of The Pastels on seeing The Cramps rocking - and shopping

"I remember that the frist gig I wanted to go to was Orange Juice, but my mum wouldn't let me go. But then I was allowed out, and in about 1981 I went to see The Fall and The Cramps. They were on the same bill together, which was really good. It was at Stirling University, and I was about 15 or 16.

I went by myself, because I didn't know anybody who liked guitar music. I was just living in my own world, reading about things in the music papers and listening to John Peel. I guess I was quite sceptical, in a way. I was a real fan of music, but not necessarily of The Cramps and The Fall. My favourite bands were Swell Maps and The Raincoats round about that time.

I stood right down the front, and I can still remember Bryan Gregory kind of leering at me! I could see that he had stiletto shoes on, and that he had cigarettesstuck between the machine heads of his guitar. And Lux Interior... I remember that he threw the microphone up so high that it made a hole in this massively high ceiling. I was impressed by that!

I can remember what I was wearing, actually. I was wearing a really short skirt made out of a curtain, and lots of black eye make-up!

I was so desperate to get out of my close family thing and it was so exciting to go to a concert and see these really weird people and interact with them a bit. I wanted to find like-minded people, and I met a few people from school. It was like, 'Wow! You're a punk as well? I didn't know!', because at school you obviously had to be kind of in disguise.

I got much more into The Cramps later on. At that time I wasn't sure if I really liked them, but after that I thought they were great. I would love to go back and see that actual concert, because I would maybe appreciate it better now.

It was funny the next day, because I was out shopping in Striling and I met all of The Cramps individually. It was totally wild! I said 'hello' to Lux, but he wasn't very chatty.

At that time I was really impressed by women in bands, but the idea of playing a guitar just seemed so hard to me that I never thought I would do any of that. But I felt that there was more chance that I would meet like-minded people through music than any other way. That's turned out to be true through my whole life. I loved buying singles with covers that the band had designed, and feeling that there might be an address on them where you could write to them.

That was how I ended up in The Pastels! I wrote to Swell Maps and some other people who were in bands, and Stephen did at the same time. Eventually someone put me and Stephen in touch because we were two committed Swell Maps fans in Scotland. I met Stephen and played my first Pastels show a week after that. We had Jowe from Swell Maps playing bass at that concert, so it was a really natural thing that has affected my entire life!"