My Exciting Life in ROCK (part 2): 11/6/2004 - The Grapes, Sheffield

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This was a night of Behaving Like A Proper Grown-Up Band... mostly. The Properness got going right from the start in that we were HEADLINING - not just going on last, no, but Actually Properly Headlining, with our name the biggest on the posters and EVERYTHING!

Said posters were pretty DARN exciting, advertising as they did support from Peter Green and James Taylor. Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac and James Taylor of... er... James Taylor? Well, no, not really, just a chap called James Taylor (who I don't think realised he had a slightly more famous name sake) and the Pete Green who was THEN known also as Pete From The Regulars and is now of course known as THE Pete Green, all-round acoustic troubadour, songsmith, and owner of a Corporate Juggernaut. I recently played a gig with him where somebody DID ask if he was Peter Green from Fleetwood Mac - you'd think that'd happen ALL the time, but apparently not.

Anyway, the Proper Headline Band finished their Proper Headline Band Soundcheck (first!) and then Tim and Emma went off to their HOTEL. Hotel! Get them! Nowadays of course I am a regular visitor to the Ibis's and Travelodges of this world - when they say "Have you stayed with us before?" I chuckle KNOWLEDAGEBLY, raising an eyebrow as if to say "Look upon me, I am a MAN OF THE ROAD! No, not a Gentleman Of The Road, that's Grandparents' Polite for TRAMP. I mean I ROCK... can I have my key card now please? There is a complimentary tea bag with my name on it upstairs" - but in 2004 we were all JUST getting used to the idea that maybe spending 30 quid or so on a ROOM for the night might be WORTH it for the ability it gave us to drink BEER.

With the Pattisons savouring their Complimentary Shortcake Biscuits the rest of us retired to the downstairs bar to sample some BEER and had a fully fledged DISCUSSION about Promotional Opportunities, Television Ventures and Recording Plans. Man alive, it was like being on a MAJOR LABEL or something! All right, it all occurred in a pub and nobody took our ideas into the secretarial pool to have them typed and faxed to offices in other territories, but STILL. To celebrate these momentous discussions (I've no idea what we agreed, but I'm sure it MUST have been momentous) we went off to DINE, enjoying the traditional Band TEA of Chips And Cheese. I LOVE Chips and Cheese, although I was a little alarmed this time by the fact that the chap in the chippy took my bag of chips off to a SECRET PLACE round the back to put the cheese on. This is NEVER a good sign - when Bar Staff do it with your PINT it is a WARNING, and it carries across to all such items. The cheese did not seem to have spent a lot of time in the company of ANY dairy animals, though I suspect it might have been used to cushion boxes of electrical equipment in transit.

As I mentioned a little while ago, at this time Tim had JUST taken over responsibility for SETLISTS. He has since FLOURISHED in this position, though the early days did see some difficulties in aligning his desire to play ENTIRELY DIFFERENT SETS every night with my desire to play something we had a chance of getting to the END of without completely messing up. On this evening we stumbled on a startling solution - Frankie suggested we start NOT with the usual "Things'll Be Different"/"The Symbol Of Our Nation" combo, which we'd been starting ALL gigs with since they were released as the first two songs on Rolling Stone's Album Of The Year (no, I don't intend to stop going on about it any time soon), but with a DIFFERENT song! This seemed to completely SATE Tim's desire for new stuff, and amazingly it DID make it feel like we were playing a different set to normal.

Never let it be said that these posts are not a MINE of ROCK TIPS: keep your drummer happy by starting with a different song every now and again!

It kicked off a GRATE set where, towards the end, I looked out and realised that not only had most people there come here SPECIFICALLY to see us, but that they were DANCING and SINGING ALONG! It was FANTASTIC - whenever that happens it's a MASSIVE thrill, and it NEVER happens enough for us to get even VAGUELY blasé about it. Not by a long stretch. Such was the GOOD VIBE that it led to ENCORES, which this time featured our TRADITIONAL (well, it would have been if we'd DONE many) encore choice of "Fat Was A Feminist Issue". This was our big AVANT JAZZ song which featured me eschewing guitar in order to do BEAT poetry, and so it always led to some LARKING ABOUT. This time there was a lot of STAGE BUSINESS about the fact that I had consistently and repeatedly MOCKED Mr F A Machine over the years for his tendency to go on LUNATIC DIETS. I particularly remember the time he decided to ONLY eat potatoes for a week. Or was it NOT eat potatoes? Possibly both, one after the other. Anyway, with that in mind you can imagine his DELIGHT when I'd told him earlier in the evening that I'd recently tried the Two Bowls Of Special K Diet. This HAPPY BANTER led on to what I think is my favourite EVER heckle, when someone interrupted my discussion of DIETING by shouting "No, you've lost quite a bit of weight". THANK YOU!

It was a brilliant night, the edge being only SLIGHTLY taken off it by the fact that Tom and I had a 90 minute drive back to HIS house, so I only got a few hours sleep before having to get up at 7am next day in order to catch the train I'd pre-booked. It's experiences like THAT that led me to come around to thinking that maybe, just maybe, a hotel room is WORTH it. Especially if you get a cooked breakfast!

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