My Exciting Life In ROCK (part 1): 20/1/99 - The Bull & Gate

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Whenever I go off and do a gig there's always a little voice in the back of my head saying "HEY! What if there's A&R Men and REVIEWERS and RADIO PEOPLE there? Eh? This could be THE BIG NIGHT!" This voice then it goes on to stick a crudely drawn picture of me into the bit in every Beatles film ever where Brian Epstein first goes to see them and, if left unaccompanied, will soon have me arguing with myself on the rooftop in Let It Be. My brain, it is a BIG Beatles fan.

The gigs pretty much never work out like that (apart from the arguing with myself bit) but this time it actually DID, for LO! later on that night I met the Broadcaster And Writer Mr Steve Lamacq. He didn't actually SEE my gig or anything - as usual I'd turned up to find the promoter saying "You don't mind going on first do you, it's only you and the guitar isn't it?" and thus played to my traditional audience of The Other Bands - but that didn't matter, it was Steve Lamacq! Off the RADIO!

We'd actually been in contact shortly before then. He used to write a column for The Melody Maker and one week was MUSING on gigs with low attendances, claiming with amazement to have recently seen a band playing to "only" twenty people. Twenty people! To me, that would be a STADIUM GIG, but apparently there is a whole LIFESTYLE available which involves only ever going to see gigs with LOADS more people there. The column went on to wonder whether anybody had ever seen a band play to even LESS people...

As we know, I'd recently played to about as few people as you possibly can (i.e. NONE), so wrote in to tell him about it, including a copy of a BOOKLET I'd recently written, detailing some of the exploits of my old band Voon. I'd made about twenty of them, forseeing all our old FANS wanting copies, but had forgotten that me never actually HAD any, so there were plenty spare.

A couple of weeks later I was walking to work reading the music press as I went - there were no real music internet sites back then, so every Wednesday i was SO KEEN to get the VITAL MUSIC NEWS as quickly as possible that i risked TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS by reading as i walked - when i turned to Mr Lamacq's page and saw a big picture of the band SUEDE. "Oh well," i thought, "looks like he's not going to mention me", then realised it was TWO seperate articles, the SECOND one, unaccompanied by a picture but actually LONGER, was all about ME!

I could hardly believe it, but there it was - big CHUNKS of my booklet quoted in full! This, it seemed, was my big chance, surely NOW Mr Big from Big Records would be on the phone, DEMANDING my signature? Surely THIS would get promoters across the nation excited about my music? It's a huge article in Melody Maker!

It was DAYS before I realised that while it was indeed a huge article in Melody Maker, it was a huge article about how nobody ever wanted to come and see me. Ah. Maybe that's not the best way to attract record companies or promoters then? Still, it was a contact with Mr Steve Lamacq, so when I saw him weeks later across the bar of The Bull & Gate I summoned up all my courage and went over to say hello.

My courage lasted approximately three steps, then FEAR set in, and I just sort of WAVED. "Er... Excuse me?" i said - ROCK AND ROLL - "I've got a tape here". He was very polite, thanked me for it, and then i RAN AWAY to the back bar, there to DRINK and prepare for the inevitable offer of a SESSION.

It took him a while, but six years later me and The Validators DID do a session for him, though he never mentioned whether this was because of that tape or not. Now I come to think of it, the next time I saw him he didn't seem to recall our first meeting AT ALL. It seems ridiculous - i was that drunk, nervous bloke in a pub who gave him a demo tape - how could he possibly not remember me?

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