My Exciting Life in ROCK (part 2): 16/9/2004 - The Victoria, London

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This was an evening KRAZILY full of incident, which began with a trip to THE PUB.

No, I know that's not really an amazingly unusual occurrence, but it IS what happened. After several BEERS with my various brothers, who at that time all lived in London, I went back to work. Clearly I am INCREDIBLY DILIGENT and felt the need to do even MORE work than the work I'd already done... also I was expecting a phone call.

The call came from Raw Talent, a BBC radio show that broadcasts New Music, Local Bands and That Sort Of BBC Thing all over Yorkshire. I was meant to be chatting about my forthcoming TOUR, which would include Sheffield AND Hull, but I ended up talking about all SORTS of things, very possibly influenced by the aforementioned BEER. I really LIKE being on the radio, I always get the feeling that, at that moment, it is ME broadcasting - the whole of BBC Yorkshire was taken up with beaming MY thoughts out to the helpless locals from a little outpost in a basement in Bloomsbury. It's GRATE!

As soon as THAT was over I had to WHIP across town to Mornington Crescent, where I had a GIG. After years of listening to "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue" as a student and BEYOND I was surprised when I found out that Mornington Crescent is an actual real place, and not exactly THRILLED when I discovered that it's really a slightly less smelly version of CAMDEN. Still, the pub was quite nice and quite full of people so, as I was quite drunk, I was quite NERVOUS.

I didn't have long to feel that way as my LATENESS meant I was on pretty much as soon as I got there, and things did NOT start well. There'd not been time for a soundcheck, which normally (WHISPER IT) doesn't really matter, as with a SOLO ARTISTE it's usually just a chance to make sure everything actually WORKS. Here, however, the room was just a room above a pub rather than a working gig venue (it had been booked at short notice to give a visiting Jeff From The Butterflies Of Love a London gig while he was here) so there was no proper SYSTEM in place - the guitar was going through an amp turned up WAY too loud, and the vocal PA appeared to be the pub's inbuilt one for playing tapes through.

This all meant that my first song was a blurred mess of horrible sounding guitars and inaudible vocals. My NERVES grew, AMPLIFIED by my paranoid fear that I was going to forget ALL the words, and after a panicky adjustment of equipment I tried again with my second song, "Hey Hey 16K". I quickly realised this was a STUPID idea - "Hey Hey 16K" is technically my HIT, but only within a strictly defined demographic. For most people, especially YOUNGER people, it's a slightly strange LIST of things which they're unfamiliar with, and that's precisely how it went down. DOOM. FEAR! It was all going wrong!

Then a lone voice called out to me from the wilderness: "Why are you bothering with the PA?" said the voice, "It's not really helping". The Voice was RIGHT - it wasn't a big room or anything, surely I could BELLOW without it? I put the microphone to one side, unplugged the guitar, and SUDDENLY everything was DIFFERENT.

I glanced at the setlist and realised that I should HANG the "new material" and do THE UBERSET, my collection of pretty much (most of the time anyway) GUARANTEED Crowd Pleasers. I did "Billy Jones Is Dead", and it sounded really good! Playing without a PA suddenly had LOADS of advantage. I could be heard clearly! I could dance around! I could control volume by moving CLOSER to the audience! And, most of all, being unamplified meant that people FELT I was more THERE - a human being in the same room as them, rather than a SHOW they could ignore and talk over. My dears I was practically BRECHTIAN in my shattering of the ILLUSORY TRANSPARENT WALL that is denoted by the microphone stand.

It was LOVELY, it made everything much COSIER and much more FUN, and I ROCKED through the rest of the UBERSET having a WHALE of a time. Even the people sitting at the back who, in my usual paranoid way, I had CONVINCED myself absolutely HATED me, turned round and sang along LUSTILY with "Boom Shake The Room" at the end.

I'd never done a gig like this before, but MY GOODNESS I would be doing them a LOT in the future and would eventually run my own sort-of CLUB night, "Totally Acoustic" in a similar room in another pub.

To top it all, Jeff From The Butterflies Of Love even did a COVER of one of my songs later on - OK, he only got through the first couple of lines of "Work's All Right (if it's a proper job)", but it's the thought that counts!

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