My Exciting Life In ROCK (part 1): 14/9/01 - Think Tank, Leeds

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Traditionally HISTORY is taught on The Great Man theory - we learn about the likes of Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Churchill and so on as a route into the great events of the time. Many modern historians, however, think that this is inherently PATERNALISTIC, CLASS-BIASED and DECADENT - true history, they say, is the story of the movement of ordinary men and women, THEIR lives and how they effected, and were in turn effected themselves, by movements in population, changes in industrial technology and...

Oh I'm sorry, I LAPSED INTO A COMA for a moment just then. This theory of History, in my experience is a) all well and good but b) INSANELY BORING, and I say this as someone who has completed not one but TWO year long courses about The Agrarian Revolution. Aah, The Agrarian Revolution! It's like The Industrial Revolution except without the THRILLS, HILARITY and INSANE GLAMOUR! After a year of Crop Rotation Analysis one YEARNS for the BERZERKER EXCITEMENT of The Spinning Jenny and The Growth Of Cities.

HOWEVER, I DO think, now and again, if properly applied, there is space for these sort of stories, as a bit of LOCAL COLOUR, if you will. For instance, it's at least VAGUELY interesting to know what your fellow human is up to at times of Great National Consequence, if only to see whether the media reports of the time were TRUTH or PROPAGANDA, and in that vein I would like to tell you what it was like for me and MINE during 9/11. We know what our gallant leaders were up to, we've seen the films and conspiracy theories about what happened on the plane, but what, future historians will ask, was happening in Central Leicester?

The answer is fascinating in its simplicity: We were CRAPPING ourselves.

To be fair, I was talking to people who, like me, had grown up during the height of the Cold War, when we fully expected to be VAPOURISED before reaching the age of consent. The FACT that we'd had ten years of RELAXATION meant that, once the possibility arose again of NOT living to retirement age, we got ourselves in a bit of a TIZZY. It wasn't helped by the fact that THE INTERWEB appeared to have gone into a state of utter DERANGEMENT and crashed, or by the telephone calls I was getting from my Oldest Mate From Home (Peterborough, near at least 3 US Air Bases) who was in an even WORSE state. "WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!" was his first, sober, comment on the situation. His second was "AAARGGGHH!!!"

A few days later, with no nuclear warheads spotted but things still looking a bit bleak I wondered really whether I ought to go and play the gig I'd got booked. Was it not a little tasteless to go out for fun and rock and roll good times when the world had suddenly changed for the worse so DRASTICALLY? As mentioned previously, I had recently embarked on a RELATIONSHIP and so was able to DISCUSS the matter with my young lady, and we agreed that if we DIDN'T go to the gig then, frankly, The Terrorists Have Won, and so off to Leeds we went.

The fact that I STILL haven't received a medal for this HEROISM has not, I have to tell you, gone unnoticed.

We arrived to find the promoters in an even more heightened state of alert that the rest of the country, as it was the first time they'd ever DONE a live gig - the NIGHT was a regular discotheque, but they were planning to branch out. Unfortunately this meant they had yet to work out some of the BASICS of Live Performance, like if someone is singing AND playing guitar then they will be using BOTH hands on the guitar, and so will need a microphone stand. It's surprising how often people forget that, but in THIS case we had a ready solution: right in the centre of the tiny stage was a MASSIVE iron pillar, holding the building up, so we gaffer taped the microphone to it. Gaffer tape isn't really the BEST adhesive for the situation, and so the whole apparatus tended to shift about during the set, giving me the appearance of a plump man doing YOGA as I struggled to align my mouth with the microphone.

The whole gig, in fact, was slightly odd. I tried to ACKNOWLEDGE EVENTS with a MINI-SPEECH at the start, saying how important it was, when the likes of Al Qaeda AND the US Government were trying to turn the world into a place of HATE, VIOLENCE and GREED, to come together for lovely daft drunken FUN. I understand both George W AND Osama were shaken by this statement.

Shockingly, despite my Mandela-like DIPLOMACY I still got heckled. Now, I am EQUIVOCAL about Heckling. It CAN be a really good thing - when someone makes a Witty Remark or Humorous Observation it can really enhance the evening, allowing The Performer to acknowledge their own foolishness yet BUILD upon the remarks to make things even better. When it WORKS it is a brilliant example of the potential synergy between performer and audience. However, most of the time it is EITHER a drunken twat who doesn't like the fact that someone else is getting some attention OR someone well meaning who's thought of something humorous but either says it too quietly and gets slightly flustered and takes FAR too long to get to the point and tails off into mumbling embarrassment. THIS time it was more the latter than the former, as a crowd of people who'd come for the disco were INEXPLICABLY slightly annoyed to find that they were first forced to watch a fat bloke wriggling around whilst shouting at a large metal pillar, like a POLE DANCER in WEEBLETOWN. "Play some Belle & Sebastian!" they shouted.

Just in front of them were a clutch of PALS who felt they had to be supportive of ME whilst simultaneously acknowledging the heckler's good taste in music and so, just as I was about to say something WITHERINGLY ELEGANT and HILARIOUS (honest) they shouted back "Go HOME and listen to your good music!" Because, they implied, that's not what you'll get here.

It was a LITTLE deflating. Afterwards we watched Ricky Spontane, the other band, MANFULLY deal with the situation through leaping around and Good Times, before giving my aforesaid Romantic Partner her first GLIMPSE of the Proper Indie Disco, a gathering she had been unaware of before. "Why isn't anybody dancing?" she asked. "Er... that IS them dancing" I replied.

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