My Exciting Life In ROCK (part 1): 14/6/03 - The Adelphi, Hull

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The way an audience reacts at GIGS differs wildly around the country, but I think you can very roughly say that the further away from the middle you get the easier and quicker it is to get people on your side. For instance, I've always found that Leicester people can be somewhat harsh on bands they've not seen before while in Scotland everyone's pretty friendly and/or forgiving. Audiences in London, of course, will applaud ANY old nonsense.

This latter explains a LOT, I feel, about the sort of rubbish show-off bands who go down well in the media and come to a sticky end as soon as they have to play outside the M25. MANY was the time, when I lived in Leicester, that The Latest Scene Sensation As Endorsed By Melody Maker (young people: ask your Dad) would come and play at The Princess Charlotte and go home in TEARS because the audience had stood in SILENCE, LOOKING at them while they performed their TERRIBLY CLEVER Art-Rock Metatextual Pile Of Old Bollocks. Sebastian spent HOURS in make-up, and the provincial clods never even SMILED!

I think the actual Line Of Little Reaction is a diagonal stretching from Barrow to Bridlington, and the further away in either direction you GET from that line the more VOLUBLE the audience will be. I mention my theory here because this particular gig was one of the closest I've ever played to The Line Of Little Reaction, and was, initially at least, one of the scariest.

The gig was local promoter Mr Eddie Bewsher's birthday. We'd never met this esteemed gentleman before, but had been booked because Tom's sister knew him, had played him our CD, and he'd liked it. Thus Tom drove me NORTH to his hometown, and I got my first taste of The Magic Of Hull. HULL! Where the telephone boxes are painted white! HULL! Nobody EVER goes there by accident, it's not on the way to anywhere! HULL! After a while you realise it is a little bit of the Midlands, inadvertently placed in The North, and therefore LOVELY.

It really is a GRATE place - like STOKE, which I went to the other week, it's the sort of city which Lazy Stupid Southern Comedians will make Lazy Stupid Jokes about, but when you GO there it's lovely. I think the reason it's slagged off so often is that it doesn't make a very good first impression - as we drove round very rough looking, knackered housing estates, searching for the legendary Hull Adelphi I thought "But Tom, why have your brought me HERE?".

Things only got worse when we found the Adelphi itself. The Adelphi is one of those venues everyone's HEARD of (see also the Charlotte, Bull & Gate, York Fibbers etc) but which you'd not necessarily go to unless you had to. Knowing the sort of bands who'd played there in the past, and going by the name, I was expecting some sort of glamorously wasted THEATRE, a grand art deco building perhaps, or maybe a beautiful old cinema?

No. It's a house. Not a theatre, not even a pub, but a HOUSE. We were a bit stunned to be driving down a long terrace, thinking "But there can't be a venue HERE, surely?" to suddenly come across a "car park" ("mud bath") next to a very dilapidated house with the front windows boarded up and a large extension round the back. "This is it" said Tom, nervously. We saw a man run past, chasing a crowd of children with a broomstick. In the distance a feral hound barked. Nobody wanted to be first out of the car.

We bravely got out and knocked hard on the venue door, eventually gaining access to the QUINTESSENTIAL Toilet Venue. When people NAMED this level of gig "The Toilet Circuit" it was surely The Hull Adelphi they were thinking of. It LOOKS a bit like a toilet but it SMELLS VERY VERY VERY much like one. Don't get me wrong, I've had many FANTASTIC nights there, but again, first impressions are not exactly brilliant.

We set up our gear and then headed out to sample one of the many delights of Hull: THE CHIPS. When you are in a Gigging Band you eat a LOT of chips, and the ones in Hull are definitely some of the nicest. Fully fed we headed back to the gig, were introduced to Eddie, and then went on stage to play.

It was SCARIFYING. Throughout most of our set almost EVERYONE in the room COMPLETELY ignored us, and those didn't just GLARED. I got the distinct impression that I had committed some ALMIGHTY faux pas and that everyone was barely containing their RAGE, waiting until we'd finish before MURDERISING us!

We staggered off in almost total silence, and went to find a corner to sit in and get over it. For half an hour nothing happened, then gradually people started to come over to us, to say how much they'd enjoyed it. The trickle became an AVALANCHE and after another hour we had more drinks than we could manage in front of us and were being HUGGED again and again and again, as we started to meet a RANGE of lovely people who we would be seeing a lot MORE of over the following years. As well as the mighty Mr Bewsher himself - who, it turns out, is one of the nicest people you could meet, with a range of Bizarre Yet True Stories to challenge ALL comers - we met Dave The Gardener. I commented on the fact that he was one of the few people left these days who had an Actual Proper Job (he's a Gardener, hence the name). "Yes", he said, "My job is to find beautiful things and make them even more beautiful". I was somewhat impressed.

As the evening drew to a close people started saying "See you in October!" It turned out we'd been RE-BOOKED without even knowing it, and were POWERLESS to resist. Hull, it's GRATE!

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