Blog: Gigs Of The Past - Malcfest

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Today's gig nominally took place in Catford in September 2005, but in my heart it happened in Lewisham. For LO! this was Malcfest, an event run by Mr Malcolm Gayner who was a huge part of (what I always thought of as) The Kooba Scene, based around the pioneering internet radio station and gigs at The Fox & Firkin in Lewisham. There was a whole heap of wonderful bands who gigged there and got played on Kooba, and all SORTS of larks and hijinks emerged from it. It was a huge part of my life back then, and introduced me to a truckload of DELIGHTFUL people.

So, even though this took place in the back yard of Malcolm's house in Catford I always think of it as Lewisham - have a look and see what part of South London it strikes you as:

The first thing you might notice, apart from my hairiness and bright t-shirt, is that my voice sounds like it's being piped in from miles away. The reason for this is that Malcolm had a MASSIVE PA system which everythig was being played in from, and he took the audio recording from that. The PA system was in the front room of the house with all the doors shut, so you could vaguely hear it outside but not much. I think the idea was that some people were in the front room GROOVING (NB bands supplying GROOVE were playing later) but there was also some idea that by shutting the doors it made everything louder without upsetting the neighbours too much. I didn't understand it at the time and I don't really now! I do remember it being a fun afternoon though - I have always enjoyed a back yard gig, especially when there is Performers' Beer provided, and I think there was a barbecue too.

This gig was near the start of my decade of constant gigging, around the point when I'd developed an "Uberset" of songs which I knew I could play anywhere and usually get a good reaction from the extremely varied types of crowds I was playing to - nowadays we would call this a set of "Guaranteed Bangers". The only "problem" I had with this was that these songs came from all over the place within my OUVRE, so when people asked to buy a CD at the end of the show (as they sometimes did) it was difficult to recommend something, and the recorded versions of the songs would be very different to those they'd just seen me do solo.

Thinking back, this was a nice problem to have, and what I should have done was just give away extra CDs or something. What I DID do however was record the entire set on the appropriately titled The Uberset album. I originally intended to record it totally live at this gig, which is why I mention it, but as you can see from the video I very quickly made far too many mistakes, probably due to being nervous about recording it, so gave up on that idea and just had a nice time instead, returning a few weeks later to record the actual album.

It was a lovely, if rather busy, time, though I wish I hadn't been quite so enthusiastic about pressing copies of this album - I've still got bloody loads of copies left!

posted 4/5/2021 by MJ Hibbett

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