Tales From The Conference League : Hey Hey 16K

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As I mentioned last month, our song "Hey Hey 16K" led to all sorts of adventures, largely because of a flash animation video that was made for it by Rob Manuel. One Wednesday, about a year after the song had first been released, he put the video up on his website, b3ta.com, and by the following Monday we were the fifth most popular site on the entire internet. Suddenly we were famous!

Soon I was getting emails from all over the world, was featured in television programmes, and had requests for permission to do cover versions from, amongst others, a troupe of Canadian Mounted Policemen and a class from a Norwegian infant school who wanted to sing it for their class project. I spent most of the following month answering emails and nipping to the post office to send off CDs to our new fans. It was like being MASSIVELY famous, but only amongst a very specific group of people. Millions had heard our music and knew my name but there was little chance of me ever meeting any of them - the sort of people who like songs celebrating the home computing boom of the early 1980s tend not to be the sort of people who go out to gigs much or, indeed, at all.

The only time it made any difference to gig attendance was a few months later, when me and The Validators played at a Retro Gaming convention. As soon as we walked in I felt more famous than I've ever felt in my life - people stopped and stared, some began singing our song, and one man even threw himself at my feet! It was being held on the outskirts of Manchester at a Working Mens' Club containing 500 geeks and the happiest landlord in Britain. "It's fantastic!" he told us later, "They're polite and friendly, there's been no trouble at all, and they're drinking me dry!"

Once we got to the stage we began to suspect something was amiss about the soundman. He seemed very unsure of himself and stared fixedly at the desk throughout the soundcheck, refusing to look up at us even when we stopped playing altogether. It turned out that he'd just bought the PA system that week and had never used one before.

It would have been nice if he'd had more idea what he was up to, but I suspect we still would have died on our arses for most of the set. Starting off with "Hey Hey 16K" was a good idea but the rest of our songs didn't seem to chime with most of the audience. As one enraged forum member said next day, "I fail to see the relevance of a day out at a Gay Pride Festival to 8 bit computing", and to be fair he did have a point. Luckily we decided to try and salvage things by finishing with another rendition of "Hey Hey 16K", at which point a crowd gathered at the front of the stage to boisterously sing along, taking over altogether for the coda. We finished to massive applause and were (gently) MOBBED as we left the stage. Two huge queues formed at our merchandising stand - one to buy t-shirts and one to have their photograph taken with me! A lot of pictures were taken of me looking confused, trying to act like a Rock Star with a big silly grin on my face - it was brilliant!

I went round the room handing out flyers for our webpage - a five minute job which took nearly 20 due to people GRABBING me for massive hugs. Someone asked me to sign the case of his original Commodore 64 SIDI chip (I don't know either) which was produced reverentially from an inside pocket. "Do you carry that around with you everywhere you go?" I joked. "Of course!" he replied, surprised to be asked such a stupid question. The Validators also got in on the action - rather sweetly the queue for Emma's autograph stood several feet away from her, sheepishly nervous about talking to a girl.

Four days later everything would be back to normal, with me playing in a pub in South London to five people, four of whom were the main band who just wanted me to get off so that they could play, but it took a good while for the feeling of ROCK FAME to wear off. If that's what it's like all the time for Proper Real Live Rock Stars then they've got no reason at all to moan about it - being in a room full of people who (mostly) think you're GRATE is lovely!

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