My Exciting Life In ROCK (part 1): 4/4/00 - The Bull & Gate, London

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Back back again at the Bull & Gate for the next chunk of touring action with Johnny Domino. The Validators had gone down a bit early so we could do a session for Imperial College's radio station, in their basement studio. Frankie and I had been and done a session for them the year before which was GRATE. We'd arrived to find the studio locked so we were FORCED to march the borderline underage engineer round to the pub to have a LOT to drink before doing the session at high speed then taking him out on the RAZZ with us, seeing another band then going CLUBBING. It was a different youngster this time - I hope this was just the natural CYCLE of CHANGE at student stations. Nobody SAID the last chap had mysteriously disappeared, last seen in a gutter, so I think it was OK.

This time the studio was fully open but we still had a fine old time playing and, vitally, having a much-needed practice. As mentioned previously, our fresh-faced teenage bassist Ollie was soon to head off to University and as he'd been unable to make this gig we thought we might as well try out a new arrangement, with Frankie moving over from lead guitar to bass and me playing ALL the guitar bits on my own. Things suddenly became significantly more PUNK. Frankie's an excellent, rather florid guitar player, especially compared to me and my tendency to try and hit as many strings as possible and hope I've got the basic chords right. Conversely, I was originally a bass player and tend to be very wibbly wobbly boingy boingy (technical terms), whereas he plays more in the Peter Hook tradition of HERE! IS! THE! BASS!

Now, you might wander why we chose to go that way, instead of retaining Frankie's guitar expertise and having me switch to bass. The answer is simple: playing bass and singing is REALLY HARD. Bass itself isn't difficult - it's actually PEASY, although you'd not guess it from the plethora of pillocks that try to do SLAPPING or play with six strings or fretlessly in an effort to make out like it's DIFFICULT. It ISN'T - if you want to play something that ISN'T easy be a man about it and get some bagpipes!

No, the difficulty comes from trying to play bass AND sing simultaneously. It's hard ENOUGH for me when it's just the guitar and singing, as there's always about 500 things going on in my mind at the same time. As proof, here is an unedited transcript of my BRANE PATTERNS at a gig: "How many choruses have we done? Is Tom OK over there? What's Emma looking at? Are people liking us? What chord comes next? Have I finished my Beer? OH GOD WHAT ARE THE WORDS?!?!"

At least with guitar the changes only happen a few times a minute and you can hit as many strings as you like (well, that's how I do it), but with the BASS you playing all sorts of different strings in all kinds of places in all MANNER of timings which just CONFUSES a fundamentally Not-Particularly-Musical BRANE like mine. Far better then to avoid the terminal embarrassment of every gig ending with me in TEARS and going for the PUNK EDGE instead.

It was a GOOD GIG, although the thing I remember most clearly about the whole evening was when Johnny Domino turned up at the venue, and each and everyone of them got out of the car and IMMEDIATELY took out a mobile phone, so as to ring their girlfriends. Quite aside from how impressive it was that EVERYONE in that band had a real-live proper girlfriend, it was also remarkable to see them ALL on mobile phones. Hardly any of us had them at that time, and those who DID have them would always make a point, when down the pub, of taking them out of their pocket and ostentatiously placing them on the table, just in case anyone rang. They never did, of course, as the only other people any of us knew who owned one would be sat at the same table, but we'd all LOOK at these wondrous articles of technology with ENVY, also FEAR.

After we'd played we were all rather surprised at how NATURAL this line-up sounded, which was handy as it was pretty much what we were going to be stuck with forever after. It was a good night all round, as Johnny Domino were a) dead good but b) not SO much better than us to make me upset, so everyone was happy. We looked forward IMMENSELY to our final gig of the tour, in our adopted home town of Derby - it was going to be great, wasn't it?

A clue to the answer to that question can be found in the last two words of the sentence. Just move them round a bit.

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