My Exciting Life In ROCK (part 1): 7/11/2000 - Bull & Gate, London

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Aah, what a time to be alive and TOURING! Who can resist the LURE of the sticky black flooring, the SMELL of the toilets, or the TASTE of the beer recycled from pub next door's spill trays? For LO! It is THE ROAD - or, in this case, THE RAILS, as I was off again on a magical journey through the Great British Countryside to the fabled land we call LONDON, there to ROCK!

And THIS time the journey only took TWICE as long as it normally should due to the ongoing "emergency" speed restrictions. Say what you like about the hapless efforts by the long disgraced former heads of the useless privatised shiteheap Railtrack, but at least when they forced the entire transport network to run at 30mph for ABSOLUTELY NO REASON, nobody actually died. Except of boredom.

The reason it ONLY took twice as long was because the driver pretty much GAVE UP on ever making it to St Pancras and stopped instead at Kentish Town railway station... two minutes from where the Bull & Gate is. HOORAH! There are many rubbish and stinky things about London, but one of the ACE things is that it has an entire OTHER transport network that you never ever hear about. Yes, everybody knows about the Underground and the sexy map and all that, but all around the edges is a MASSIVE network of Overground trains that go to all sorts of weird places that nobody's ever heard of, but always seem to be Eerily Close to somewhere much closer. Why, only the other day I got TURFED OFF a Central Line train in Bethnal Green (COSMOPOLITAN GLAMOUR) and was able to walk five minutes round the corner to the TRAIN station (a real proper train station hidden down a back street behind some garages) where I was able to get a couple of totally OTHER trains, empty even in rush hour, and be home within twenty minutes. I shouldn't really be telling you about it though - it never gets into those maps in diaries because it is a LONDON SECRET. I shall probably be blacklisted from the WINKLE STALLS, and never taste LIQUOR AND MASH again.

ANYWAY, I strolled into the pub full of the joys of TRAVEL, got soundchecked and prepared to do the gig. I have played MANY times at The Bull & Gate but THIS time was rather different from usual: there was an AUDIENCE.

They weren't there to see me of course - that would be ridiculous - they were there for one of the other bands, and usually this would mean they'd sit in the other room until their pals were on. THIS time however I was lucky enough to fall open The Gigging Band's GOLD MINE: a brand new band with a brand new audience! OH! how one DREAMS of stumbling upon such a thing, a whole CROWD of young people all excited just to BE in a venue! Impressed by anything that makes a loud noise! Unjaded by years of dreary bands and convinced that ALL gigs will be JUST like in The Commitments!

It was BLOODY FANTASTIC - they started off all rowdy like a bunch of 15 year olds that the teacher trusts to be left on their own (which, but two years previously, is EXACTLY what they would have been), with lots of joining in the songs, crap heckling, and general LAIRINESS, but my dears I have done a LOT of gigs like this and if I have learned NOTHING else in ROCK I have learnt how to bring round a crowd of Excitable Gig Virgins. It is easy: you keep going, you do a couple of cover versions, and you DO SWEARING. It NEVER fails, and this was no exception - "Boom Shake The Room" AND "It Must Be Love" were wheeled out, the set SWERVED to include "Fucking Hippy" and any other song I had with CURSING in it, and by the end of the set we were like old friends. The only mis-step really was when, bizarrely, it turned out that one of them had seen me before and shouted "Do that one about banks!" Now, normally the song "Payday Is The Best Day" goes down Quite Well, but I soon realised that this lot had very little experience of paydays, being mostly at SCHOOL, and so it gained a MYSTERIOUS ALTERNATIVE final verse: "Payday is the FUCKING best day". HOORAH!

Afterwards there was a RUSH of people RUNNING forward to buy CDs and singles past a small crowd of my AMAZED friends. I staggered away from the throng towards the bar, only for things to get BETTER: a real live GIRL came over to talk to me! Also, a really NICE real live GIRL, who wanted to by me BEER! She said the traditional "You are very brave!" and overcome by the excitement of the occasion I did what any red blooded male in my position would do - I said "thankyouverymuch" and RAN AWAY.

What? I just wasn't USED to talking to girls at gigs, this is my excuse and it is the one I have STUCK to during YEARS of questioning, for this PARTICULAR real live girl was somehow not put off by my FLEEING and sometime later managed to calm me down enough for us to go on a DATE and LO! now we are shacked up together, in the long-term LOVE business. Isn't romance GRATE?

I had no idea about any of this at the time, of course, so foolishly went off to The Camden Palace, there to be AMUSED by the overwhelming LONDON-NESS of it all, with people dandying around like there were in some imagined version of The Blitz club crossed with The Good Mixer circa 1993 and MAD MAX III, whilst actually just being a bunch of pillocks wading through warm lager soaked carpets. Much, I suspect, like it was in The Blitz Club and DEFINITELY how it was in The Good Mixer.

Still, there was nothing that could put me off my stride after a night of train LUCK, an actual audience and talking to a PROPER GIRL, and I was still in such a good mood that I didn't really even mind when I turned up next morning at St Pancras to find that they'd found a revolutionary new solution to delays. They'd CANCELLED all the trains! HOORAH!

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