Jonn Penney pays tribute to Peter Kirkham

Peter Kirkham. The name ring a bell? No? He had a major influence on the career path of a certain fledgling indie rocker in the early 90s,

.

He must've been a manager or an agent, someone who spotted a bit of potential and nurtured me expertly into the singer of an internationally acclaimed band . . . nope.

Then perhaps he's a visionary record producer who gently tickled the band's sound until he'd milked every last drop of sonic excellence out of us . . . wrong again.

Ok, so maybe he was a serious press magnate who turned a bunch of Black Country oiks into a serious record-selling proposition? Afraid not.

I met Pete when I was trying to convince the state that I had something to offer for the benefits that they were throwing at me.

Enterprise Allowance was a benefit you could claim while you attempted to start yourself off in business and, while I was still stinging from bad A Level results and coming to terms with the fact that I'd missed out on drama school because I'd spent too much time on a band with the most ridiculous name in the land, I passed myself off as a start-up 'merchandise' company called 'Grebo Garb' and got myself the generous £50 a month to keep my Dad happy.

I had to look like I was serious, so I sourced a few suppliers from whom I would be able to get my imaginary orders, and I even ended up getting a couple of jobs done for bands. It was while I was looking for a screen printing company who would be willing to take on a job as small as my paltry little order demanded that I came across a company called PAK Manufacturing, based in a factory unit in little-known Brockmoor near what is now Merry Hill.

Pete was incredibly helpful and charged a pittance just to help me out. I was a total stranger and probably looked like a bit of freak to him at the time too, but all the same he couldn't help enough.

As time passed and the band started finding our feet, Pete became our sole supplier responsible for printing every one of the squillions of designs that we created – the merchandise that to many critics defined us as a band.

We were indeed (in)famous for our less than gentile sense of style and shirts tended to shout at you from a distance, giving the impression that there were a multitude more of them adorning the indie youth of the nation than there really were. We would set Pete challenges to try to make our shirts different to everyone else's. Pete experimented with puff-inks to give our prints a spongy textured feel – he'd have to over print and over print again to get them just so.

Then there was the phosphorescent ink he found that made the back of a thousand shirts glow in the dark at our halcyon gigs. Seven times he had to reprint those shirts, into the night and throw it in a van to deliver them personally to wherever we happened to be playing.

Peter Kirkham was not very 'rock n roll', in fact he was what a lot of people would have called a 'normal' bloke, but to me that was his strength. Like so many unsung characters behind the scenes of the music industry Pete just didn't have time for anything other than getting the job done and we'd all be utterly scuppered without his kind.

Never heard of Peter Kirkham, eh? You have now.

Thanks for everything Pete, and rest in peace my friend.