My Exciting Life In ROCK (part 1): 23/10/1997 - Warrington

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I don't want us to get off on the wrong foot with all of this - my last entry may have led you to believe that My Exciting Life In ROCK has been a whirlygig of excitement, violence, sexual tension and TRIUMPH. To my great regret, this is not entirely true - the next batch of gigs I did were MISERABLE.

I mentioned last time that I'd just put out a single, which WAS true, although it also featured John Sims (a band from Leicester and NOT The Master) and two London bands, so technically it was a SPLIT. It felt like a Solo Single to me though, and it certainly sounded like it when I told EVERYONE I KNEW.

In order to promote the single Sean Fortuna Pop (for it was he) had booked us a string of gigs, the next of which was in Warrington. Looking back, maybe the fact that neither the London bands NOR Sean himself had decided to come along should have tipped us off, but me and the John Sims lot were too EXCITED at the prospect of going on a SINGLE PROMOTION TOUR to notice, so we piled into a bunch of cars and set off on the long drive north to Warrington. We were ON THE ROAD!

At that time Chris Evans was somehow seen as a Good Thing, so when we got to his home town we were surprised by the lack of pop stars and media personalities, and the excess of chip wrappers, vomit, and fighting - it would have been at least understandable if we'd arrived at midnight on a Saturday, but less so at tea-time on a Thursday.

The venue was an absolutely massive old coaching hotel with one tiny little pub still functioning in the bottom left hand corner and the rest of the building abandoned to spiders and cardboard boxes. The cars began to look like The Mystery Machine, and I felt a sudden urge for Scooby Snacks.

We climbed up several flights of stairs and suddenly found ourselves in an old fashioned ballroom, at the distant end of which we were going to be playing. We hiked through a drizzle of falling plaster to the stage, did our soundchecks, and were escorted to another, darker, floor where our dressing rooms were. Being new to all this we swanked about for a bit saying "Ooh, i'm in my dressing room" until we realised that there was no bar, or lighting, or people, just a faintly haunted odour, and so went back downstairs to find that the audience had arrived.

They were all about 13. OK, maybe some of them were 14, but basically it was Schoolkids On The Piss, and the entire building was PACKED with young teenagers snogging, drinking, pubescing, playing tig, snogging, smoking, being sick, and snogging. It was like being a Supply Teacher roped in to a field trip, you couldn't go round a corner without surprising two YOUTHS dribbling spit down each other's front, and i lost count of the amount of Spookily Deserted Staircases I fell down having tripped over writhing tots, grappling with trainer bras.

The gig itself was VERY exciting for the first ten minutes, as The Kids all ran in to watch, with boys all down one side of the room and girls on the other, but then they realised that there was SNOGGING and under-age drinking to do, so left us alone to carry on with our old people's duties.

We dutifully finished off our sets and applauded each other before dragging ourselves to the cars to go home. As we were getting in there was a fight right in front of our bonnet, and rather than being scary it was strangely reassuring to see some other people old enough to vote.

OK, that one had fighting in too, but I promise the next one won't!

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