My Exciting Life in ROCK (part 2): 21/9/2004 - The Adelphi, Hull

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It's a long long way from Edinburgh to Hull, but it has NEVER been longer than the extraordinarily hungover trip we made the morning after our first night on tour. As well as playing cards and making REMARKS, as is traditional when On The Road, we all had shifty looks at Adam's Doctor Who Magazine. Though it still had a FASCINATION for those of us who'd grown up with it, at that time Doctor Who was only really of interest to a very tiny minority of rather intense gentlemen. "Wasn't there something about it coming back?" I asked. "Yes, with Christopher Ecclestone" said Adam. "Sounds interesting", I thought, "But I bet it'll be RUBBISH."

In my defence, I was VERY hungover.

Somewhere near Berwick I got a call from Mr Eddy Bewsher, our promoter in Hull, to tell me not to agree to ANYTHING if we got to the venue before him. Hearing that Jeffrey Lewis had a day free on his UK Tour Paul, the owner of The Adelphi, had unilaterally added him to our bill - not a problem at ALL until he suggested to Eddy that we start the gig at 7.30pm, get all FOUR of the bands Eddy had originally booked (me, Frankie, Adam and locals Cracktown) offstage by 8.45pm, and then leave two hours spare for Mr Lewis. He was a MASSIVE Jeffrey Lewis fan!

"Don't agree to anything" repeated Eddy, "I've got a UNASSAILABLE way of sorting it out."

When we arrived at The Adelphi Gary, who was along with us as second guitarist for Frankie, thought we were MESSING WITH HIS MIND. "There's not a venue down here" he said, as we drove in a taxi down a long long row of ordinary terraced and semi-detached houses. From the outside The Adelphi looks like just one more semi-detached house, albeit one with a HUGE muddy car park in its front garden. Surely THIS couldn't be The Adelphi, LEGEND of the Indie Toilet Circuit?

As we stepped inside and he discovered EXACTLY why The Toilet Circuit is so called: The Adelphi is a brilliant venue, but goodness me, it doesn't half pong a bit. There's the heady mix of toilet cleaner, stale cigarettes (still), body odour and urine that characterises ALL Toilet Circuit establishments, but with an extra slice of acrid TANG that makes The Adelphi UNIQUE. I was round Tim's house once when he opened up his drum cases, having last used them at The Adelphi several months before - the STENCH that engulfed us was still as POTENT as it had been when he'd sealed it in, and small children had to be taken outside to be revived.

After soundchecks we popped out for the traditional Hull Tea: CHIPS. Hull has the LOVELIEST chips in the world, sold in GRATE chip shops where the opening hours are given as "DINNER 12-2, TEA 5-7", which is THE CORRECT WAY. The chip shop, like all shops in Hull, was also very directly named, being called THE CHIPPY. It was next door to a corner shop called THE CORNER SHOP and opposite a pub called THE BEVY, where people go for a bevy.

When we got back we saw Jeffrey Lewis had arrived, in his Tour Vauxhall ("I didn't know they HAD Vauxhalls in America", said Adam, before we gently explained how hire cars work) as indeed had Mr Bewsher, bringing with him his unassailable solution to the problem of far too early stage times - a TYPED running order. "Nobody can argue with a typed running order!" he said and, indeed, as soon as he'd shown it to Paul he completely agreed that that was a very sensible way of doing things. Typed running orders - UNASSAILABLE!

After that the evening was GRATE, everyone had a good gig and Jeffrey Lewis was AMAZING, also very BRAVE. He had a song about the History Of Punk which, like so many American histories of punk, claims that it was an AMERICAN invention. This sort of nonsense is all well and good on a television documentary, but it takes a man with BALLS OF STEELS to stand up before about fifty Ageing PUNKS and CRUSTIES and try to persuade them of it with oversize comic books.

He also turned out to be a LOVELY man, and a great champion of the MANLY HUG, which we shared before leaving. Frankie and Gary headed off to Sheffield, ready for the next stage of the tour, while Adam and I went back to Eddy's, both clutching the comic books we'd swapped with Mr Lewis for our CDs. Being on Tour: FANTASTIC!

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