The Curse Of Voon: 1993-1994

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REALLY LOVE YOUR GIRLFRIEND

(January/February 1993, 43 Walton Street, Leicester)

The recording of "Interesting" was a difficult time, as the three of us had moved into a house together, were going to the pub together, and recording and playing gigs together. We thought it'd be like the Monkees, but soon realised that they only had to live like that for half an hour a week. We became prone to massive camp arguments backstage about cleaning the hairs out of the bath, which didn't do much for our Hard Men of Rock image. It also seemed to cloud our judgement, as this song was left off the finished tape because we didn't think it was very good.

HOW VOON IS NOW

IT'S A MESSAGE FROM ANOTHER WORLD

CHARMING

DAY TRIPPER/DAY CARE CENTRE

(10th June 1993, The Magazine, Leicester)

It's strange that this is the only live recording of the me, Neil and Simon line-up, but I guess we were too busy playing the wrong venues, pissing people off and arguing in the kitchen about teabags to remember to tape anything. These four songs are a fairly good representation of the material played during this era - political, hard hitting and upfront, confronting and dealing with the issues that mattered, capturing the hearts and minds of The Kids.

Oh, all right, all the other songs were still about pilchards, 100 year old ten foot ducks, people we didn't like and girls who didn't fancy me. We'd have many backstage discussions about why people refused to take us seriously, then go on wearing gold lame blouses (me) or cut off army trousers, a t-shirt with "FUCK OFF" tippexed on it, and a fishing hat (Neil) and try to stick huge lumps of polystyrene on each other's heads while singing about Pylons. The public are so fickle.

This gig was a support to a band called "Litany of Fear", who lived up to their name by being a long boring list of unpleasantness. Their audience hated us, and we ended in the traditional manner by trying to clear the pub with "Day Care Centre". But we didn't care! We were going to be famous! Two of our songs were on a compilation from Tea Records. There were loads of local bands on it apart from us, including Prolapse and Cornershop. One of these bands has just toured America for the millionth time, another is working with David Byrne, and another is being written about in an A5 pamphlet. Can you guess, dear reader, which is which?

RUNAWAY

ALL TOO MUCH

(October 7th 1993, Newt and Cucumber, Northampton)

Things got so grim between the three of us that Neil ended up leaving, to "settle down and become an electrician", he claimed at the time. He didn't do either of these things, but did form a new band with ex-guitarist Jamie. Strange that. Saddened but not put off, I went round the venues, rehearsal rooms and music shops putting up "Guitarist wanted" posters. I couldn't understand it - I always saw loads of "guitarist seeks band" adverts, and ours clearly stated "Prestigious Local Band VOON", but not a single person ever rang. I wonder why?

Anyway, we thus had no choice but to force Chris to join, which was achieved by moaning at him for weeks on end until he gave in. Chris could do that Real Singing thing, which was a bit of a novelty for us, and we truly believed that this would be the beginning of the end for crap gigs where we were too drunk to play, that nobody ever came to anyway.

As you can hear from the tape. this was not to be.

DEEP SPACE DIPPY

(Late 1993, 148 Mere Road, Leicester)

By now I was sharing a flat with Si in a rather dodgier area of Leicester than before - one night the local TV news did a piece about "Child Prostitution Gang Violence Drugs Hell!" and we jumped up and down excitedly saying "Look! It's our house on the telly!" The area seemed to be a haven for cat rustlers, as everywhere I went I saw Lost Cat posters, one of which, entitled "Have you seen Dippy?" particularly inspired me.

Well, "Inspired" is probably the wrong word - I can't believe I ever thought that this song was a good idea. People reading early drafts of this story have complained that it is engineered to pander to my vanity, designed to show me up as Great and Cool. I offer the inclusion of this song as my defence. Still, it does feature Chris doing his Grown Up Singing, David Bowie-esque backing vocals, singing "Oo oo, Deep Space Dippy" far more earnestly than perhaps it warrants.

BOOM SHAKE THE ROOM

(25th November 1993, The Magazine, Leicester)

And still we gigged. My songs about girls not fancying me were fighting for space with Chris's ones about dead Grecian philosophers, but this Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince cover was the one everybody liked. It was meant to be an attempt to reverse the trend of indie bands going all poppy and dancey, by turning a poppy dancey song into an indie dirge. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and, strangely, it still does.

PROLAPSE, PO AND CORNERSHOP

HERE'S LOOKING AT EUCLID

STAY DEAD ELVIS

(February 1994, Stayfree Studios, Leicester)

Around this time I embarked on my glittering career in academia, which involved getting a proper full-time job and, for reasons best know to the Inland Revenue, a lovely big tax refund. Seemed odd, but for £200 I was happy to go along with it. Many people advised me on all sorts of sensible and worthwhile ways to invest the windfall, and after careful minutes of contemplation, and a good night down the pub, I decided to blow the lot by sending Voon into a Proper Studio.

We had a brilliant time. We'd all read "The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions", so spent most of our time saying "Hmm, it's a bit toppy. Could we bounce that down with flange in the monitors on foldback please?" It was very hard to be even a little bit cool about it, and during the mixing Chris and I had to take it in turns to run out of the room, so that we could hop up and down and squeak with the sheer thrill of it all. Simon missed it, because he was going through his Chasing Women (and, by and large, catching up with them) phase. What a fool! He missed the setting the bass levels just for the sake of having sex!! Mad!!!

When we first entered the studio we were terrified to discover that the engineer was Kev Reverb, a ten foot tall cowboy with sunglasses, dressed all in black and possessing a voice like The Voice Of DOOM. Our fears grew when we entered his little mixing room, and found it to be a shrine to Elvis Presley. We quaked with terror at the thought of what he'd do when we came to recording "Stay Dead Elvis", but all he did was laugh (mind you, when he laughed local whales would look up and think "What the hell was that?") and reveal himself to be a truly lovely chap. He did most of the mixing for free and gave us lifts home on nights when we stayed especially late. He was great.

These, then, are the songs left off the resulting "How Voon is Now" tape. We didn't think they were very good, which is silly really as it had never stopped us before. Looking back though, perhaps concealing "Prolapse, Po and Cornershop" from the public was a bit of a blessing.

BE WITH YOU

(8th September 1994, Y Theatre, Leicester)

Unfortunately the fun was not to last - we all started to develop these things that you earth people call "lives", and all of a sudden singing about girls who don't fancy me in empty pubs and being rude to people didn't seem quite as important as it used to. Thus it was decided (largely by me, I must admit) that this would be our last gig. It was quite a good one to go out on - it was part of a long-running battle of the bands competition on local cable TV. As I say on the tape, people were very impressed when I told them that Voon's farewell performance was to be televised, until they discovered it was only cable. About 10% of Leicester can get the community station, but only about 0.005% watch it, and those are the people who are actually on it.

Still, it was a great night. Simon couldn't make it because he had to rehearse for one of his many stints at the Edinburgh festival, so it was left to me and Chris to get very very pissed, be interviewed by a dreadful old hag (who's chat-up line was "Mmm, I do like Alternative music. Have you heard of a band called REM?") and generally piss people off. I asked one of the organisers who the much-touted touted celebrity judges were to be. "We've got the editor of Future Music, the local Musician's Union Rep, and Rick Astley's producer." I asked, in a concerned way, why the celebrities hadn't been able to come, but he didn't seem to understand. Waiting in the wings the soundman told me that they got loads of big-names coming down to check it out. "Last week we had the drummer out of Saxon!"

We were the first band, so stood behind the dreadful presenters doing Joey Deacon impersonations while they introduced us, and went on to spend 15 of our allotted 20 minutes slagging off Cable TV. In the dressing room afterwards we found the aforementioned hag trowelling on make-up, saying "I'm too old for all of this." "Yes," I said, "you are." She then turned to a friend and said "This band would do a lot better if they stopped putting themselves down." Chris, in a torrent of abuse and disdain, tried to point out that we weren't, it was everything else that was shit, and it all ended with her storming out shouting "You don't know who my husband is!" Funny woman.

Chris had to leave early, as he'd recently been in receipt of a baby, and I was left alone to witness the very end. There were four bands playing and they normally announced only the winner. This time, however, they also read out the names of the two other bands who came joint second. Can you guess, gentle reader, which band was thus seen to be placed last?

The two people who'd come to see us were shocked and disgusted by this, but they didn't understand. This was the perfect way for Voon to go out, pissing off folk singers, heavy metal soundmen, "local bands" organisers, and all the other fun-destroying idiots we'd always been up against. We never became famous, never changed the world or made any money, but if anyone else has ever had such a good time being liked by so few people in so many awful places, I have yet to meet them.

It was bloody great.

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