My Exciting Life in ROCK (part 2): 2/11/2003 - The Maze, Nottingham

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It's funny the things that can make a good gig go GRATE. This evening could well have been a disaster, as several factors accumulated which could have put me in a GRUMP. Firstly it was in Nottingham which, with all due respect to the MANY really nice people who live there and also to the SEVERAL really good gigs I've done there, is NOT my favourite city in the world.

This is because I lived in LEICESTER for 14 years, where a dislike of Nottingham is added to the WATER. It's not just the fact that Nottingham got the main BBC studio and so is marked on the weather map MUCH more often than certain other cities of equal size and importance in the are (IT REALLY IS), nor that East Midlands airport got renamed as Nottingham Airport, despite being IN Derbyshire and much NEARER to Leicester. No, it's MOSTLY just the way Nottingham SWANKS about so much - when you get to Leicester station you see a modest little sign saying "Leicester: A City Full Of Surprises" whereas Nottingham station says "Nottingham: THE BEST CITY IN THE WORLD."

Basically, Nottingham is the Midlands' answer to MANCHESTER - it thinks its God's Gift, none of the neighbouring cities like it and... well, let's just say that the fact it has an ARMED MUGGER as its historic figurehead is NO ACCIDENT and leave it at that shall we?

Add to THAT the fact that I was playing the gig on a SUNDAY, and so had had to STRUGGLE with Sunday Public Transport to GET there - a subject which, I feel, I have covered sufficiently already - and you'd be forgiven for thinking I'd be in a FOUL mood. You would, however, be incorrect. A couple of days before we'd been to see John Otway, which would cheer ANYBODY up, the NIGHT before I'd played a pretty good, if uneventful, gig in Birmingham, and that afternoon I had been PROFESSIONALLY COMPLEMENTED on my DANCING. We'd recently started going to DANCING CLASSES and the Dance Instructor had come over to me afterwards and said I was "really quite good".

Some might suggest she was simply surprised that a man of my GIRTH (at the time I was SEVERAL stones heavier even than I am now, and was getting through THREE sweat-drenched t-shirts at each 90 minutes session), but I prefer to think she had recognised a fellow purveyor of PURE BALLETIC JOY. Hey, it's thinking like THAT that enables me to spend five hours on a "re-timed" train without going BERZERK.

My happiness was only added to by the venue itself, which was the IDEAL gig pub. It had a CLEAN (i.e. NOT stinking of piss, fags, bleach and sweat) and capacious backstage area, the PA was GOOD and manned by a skilled AND friendly soundman, the venue itself was cosy and, best of all, it was all attached to a PROPER REAL-ALE PUB! OK, I admit it, everything else pretty much paled into comparison with that last bit. Gig venues are generally fairly ill-served with BEER, indeed most of the WORST pints I have ever had have been served in venues (the BASS from a JUG in the Vic, Derby! The pint that smelt of POO in Glasgow!), as they seem to think that, if people are IN, they will stay and drink whatever they're given. It always seems FOOLISH to me - if, for example, the beer in The Charlotte, Leicester, was even VAGUELY drinkable I'm sure people would STAY and drink it rather than RUNNING (not walking, RUNNING) to the brilliant Criterion round the corner to get something decent down their neck between sets.

With all this JOY going on the gig itself pretty much SURRENDERED to happiness and I had a WHALE of a time. Yes, I forgot the words to a couple of songs (see above: BEER) but there was audience participation of previously unheard of levels, much BANTER, and I discovered TWO important FACTS that would help me in future gigs: firstly, if you introduce "Boom Shake The Room" as such BEFORE playing it, people will start joining in MUCH earlier, and secondly, going round the room WAVING CDs at least alerts people to the fact that you have some to sell, and may even persuade some of them to make purchases.

Unfortunately all this ROCK ACTION in quick succession was to lead to me having to spend most of the next week in bed SICK, as lack of sleep and EXCESS of SWEAT and BOOZE had led to me getting a rather nasty INFECTION, but I was not to know this at the time. At the time all I knew was that gigs in nice venues with proper beer are GRATE, WHEREVER you end up playing them!

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