My Exciting Life In ROCK (part 1): 16/10/1997 - The Victoria Inn, Derby

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Hello, i am MJ Hibbett and I am going to THRUST upon you some of the more thrilling / noteworthy / stupid (delete as appropriate) incidents from My Exciting Life In ROCK, and I thought I'd start with one from just over 10 years ago, in the quaint medieval town of Derby.

It was October 1997 and the world was a very different place - Britpop and Tony Blair still seemed like a good idea, the death of Princess Diana was on the front of all newspapers, not just the Daily Express, and people would still ring each other up on their home phones to say "Did you get my email?"

Some things, however, were the same then as they are today, and have been since the dawn of time - for example, Local Bands. All bands are local somewhere, but there's a special kind of local band who deserve the capitalisation - they've always got too many members, they always think they're FANTASTIC, they always play jazz funk (even if they're pretending to be Pete Doherty or Nirvana, underneath it all they're jazz funk), they always bring a crowd of people with them who've never been to a gig before, and they're always BLOODY AWFUL.

On this occasion WISE HEADS who were organising the gig (my friend Rob) had seen what was coming and told the Local Band that, really, THEY should be headlining. This is always a brilliant thing to tell Local Bands as, not being the sort of people who actually GO to gigs, think this means that a) everyone has recognised their immense genius and wishes to recognise it and b) they'll have the biggest crowd, JUST LIKE IN THE COMMITMENTS. What it ACTUALLY means is that the other bands want to either go home or to another pub and not have to listen to their ghastly slap bass/pony-tailed bollocks.

Unfortunately it also means that the Local Band get to soundcheck first, and so take YEARS to do it just in case Mr Big from Big Records happens to drop in to The Victoria Inn, Derby on a Thursday night looking for hot new acts with the Right Attitude and a Crisp New Sound, also JAZZ FUNK. THUS the band who were meant to be headlining, but were actually going on FIRST instead, got a very brief line-check and did a shortened set to allow me time to get on, which I was just about to do when I ran into Local Band Bass Player, who said "Yeah, look, we want to do a 90 minute set, so I don't think there's going to be time for you to play. Sorry mate." He expected me to say "Of course - why, your JAZZ FUNK escapades are worth it, go ahead!" instead of which i turned and looked at the Venue Manager, who had seen MANY of these TYPES, who said "No, you'll do 40 minutes and that's that."

They didn't like this, so I thought I'd better get on quick to get on with it, and things started off pretty well - one BRILLIANT thing about playing with Local Bands is that, as I say, their friends have pretty much never been to a gig, and so are impressed by EVERYTHING. You know how it is when your Auntie goes to see a West End Musical and comes back saying "The lights were brilliant! The seats were amazing! The programme was luxurious"? It's like THAT - except that your Auntie DOESN'T take a Rival Performance Cast along with her, who get INCREASINLY irate that the glory which should be THEIRS is shared out. HA! The best thing about this is that it's ALWAYS the lead singer's girlfriend who starts to DANCE - ALWAYS!

Fed up with me gyrating their ladies they took to HECKLING and when that resulted NOT in me running off in tears but instead altering the words of songs to include a) their names b) rude words, they decided instead to start setting up. At first I didn't mind this, we were all a bit rushed so if they wanted to start assembling their HUGE SCAFFOLDING OF DRUMS quietly behind me, I didn't mind. I didn't even mind THAT much when their drummer started joining in, as he at least had a sense of rhythm, but when the bass player got going i had to say WORDS. RUDE WORDS.

"That's your last one mate!" said the singer. "No it's not", i said. "This is my SINGLE!" It's a measure of how very very long ago this all was that, in those days, having a single out was SOMETHING AMAZING. This was way way before any kind of popular internet, so to GET a record you HAD to go into a record shop and buy it, which meant that to put one out you had to find a Proper (ish) record company to do it for you. The fact that I'd managed this and the Local Band HADN'T threw them into apoplexy, especially when I added "... which is more than any of these [flipping] [chaps] will ever be able to say."

EVERYONE in the room - including girlfriends - LARFED and cheered, I did my song with ADDED SWEARING, and SWANNED offstage to Not Entirely Ironic calls for an encore. It was BRILLIANT, and we all spent a very happy HOUR sitting in the main pub drinking the BEER and slagging off the other band... who were jazz funking away to about three people next door.

Once they'd finished the bass player came in IRATELY and tried to make SMART CONVERSATION with us. We started off being polite, but he kept saying "Hur! Yeah, that's because you're shit, i expect!" and "Shut it, four eyes" and things of that ILK, so UNPLEASANT WORDS followed. I don't really like this sort of thing, I must say - as Michael Jagger correctly pointed out, it IS only Rock and Roll and, honestly, away from the tomfoolery of the stage there's no need for Language. Things came to a very unpleasant head when Ann, singer in the first band, got up to go to the toilet and The Bass Player followed her, calling her all SORTS of rude things.

Dave The Drummer, her boyfriend, said "Could you stop that now please?" to which the Bass Player replied "Or what? Are you going to hit me? Hit me then, come on, right here."

He proffered his chin and Dave, understandably, WALLOPED him, sending him FLYING across the mosh pit. IT! WAS! AMAZING!

And also terrible. Violence is a bad thing.

... but also AMAZING! COR! He completed DECKED him, it was BRILLIANT! At this point EVERYBODY in Derby formed an orderly queue to apologise to me, a visitor from Leicester, for this terrible display. Coachloads of old ladies, grocers and school children arrived to join in the mortification while i stood there grinning like a LOON thinking "WOW! This NEVER happens in The Princess Charlotte!"

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