My Exciting Life in ROCK (part 2): 22/6/2004 - The Attik, Leicester

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One of the (many, obviously) GRATE things about The Validators is the FACT that we keep on SURGING FORWARD. We don't go back, we don't return to the site of past victories and we don't get stuck in a rut, it is always the THRILL OF THE NEW for us!

Some people might suggest that this is because venues very rarely ask us to COME back, and indeed often explicitly suggest that we NEVER DO, but that would be a shocking misrepresentation of the truth. We just like playing new places... especially for people who've never put us on before.

THUS, when we DO go back to somewhere we've been before it can be a bit of a shock, and this was VERY much the case when we played our one and only gig at The Attik. None of us had ever actually played there before, but Tim and I had spent MANY MANY nights drinking within its walls during the giddy days of Britpop, when it was pretty much the ONLY bar in Leicester that was open after eleven o'clock. The very IDEA that a city the size of Leicester would only have ONE reasonable bar in the city centre available for Legal Late Night Drinks (so long as you ordered a "meal" of garlic bread to go with it) seems BIZARRE now, but that's how it was in those days. There was none of your late night licences back then, if you wanted BEER after the STRICT closing time of eleven o'clock it was either The Attik or a noisy, expensive nightclub down by the bus station. You probably had to take your Ration Coupons with you.

When we arrived we found that being SOBER in this room felt VERY strange, as did being there at half past six. "Why on EARTH do we have to be there so EARLY?" I asked myself on the way up to Leicester on the train. Surely USUALLY we'd not get to the pub until 7.30pm, and then NEVER soundcheck until at LEAST 8.00pm, but just lately we'd been arriving earlier and earlier. It took me several HOURS to realise that this was because for most of our illustrious career in ROCK we had been the SUPPORT act, and usually First On at that. At this point we were just beginning to move up the running order to second support and occasionally, as on this evening, The Headline Act, which meant getting there RIDICULOUSLY early, standing around while everything got set up, and then going to another pub to try and NOT drink GALLONS of BOOZE while whiling away the HOURS until SHOWTIME.

It took us a LONG time to get used to it, and even now we BAULK when told we have to get to venues before Eastenders starts.

The extra soundcheck time did give us an opportunity to try out ROCK INNOVATION. At recent gigs Mr F A Machine had been making "remarks" from the rear of the stage. These would generally be AMUSING, but I always felt that it was a little ALIENATING for the audience. When I go and see a band it's GRATE when they talk to US and make JOKES, but conversely a bit ANNOYING when they stand around talking to EACH OTHER, giggling at private jokes. For this reason I suggested implementing the REMARK-O-PHONE, a dedicated microphone placed at the rear of the stage for Frankie, or any other passing Validator, to utilise for making HUMOROUS REMARKS in the gaps between the songs for the edification of all present. I thought this would be the BEGINNING of a beautiful future full of HILARITY and INTERACTION, as well as the END to jokes unheard by the paying punter.

I was half-right - the presence of amplification caused Frankie to CLAM UP ENTIRELY. That wasn't what I expected at all - INDEED, I spent most of the gig turning to him saying "GO ON! Say something amusing NOW! BE HILARIOUS!" I was being INCREDIBLY SUPPORTIVE, I can't understand why it didn't work.

What DID work, however, was the gig itself, leading to not one but TWO encores, and only the FIRST of these was artificially generated (by me shoving Tom back onto the stage so that people would think we were coming back on anyway), the second was actually REQUESTED!

Clearly, we had come a long long way since those heady days of the Blur/Oasis conflict, although I must admit the evening did end on one slight disappointment. Sat around afterwards, drinking until WAY past our bedtimes, I was shocked to discover one thing at least had changed for the worse. There was NO garlic bread!

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