My Exciting Life In ROCK (part 1): 11/05/01 - The Bull & Gate, London

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Another trip south to that glittering MECCA of all that is fabulous and metropolitan: Kentish Town. Kentish Town! Where even the litter is coated with gold, the dog turds are gilded with gemstones and the tramps talk LATIN.

By now I was quite used to the giddy whirl of our nation's capital and almost impervious to the charms of its celebrity culture or the terror of it's busy transport system, but I was on special alert this time as it was the first gig for our newest member, Mrs Emma Pattison. All the way down I was making plans for the inevitable moment when she PANICKED at the prospect of having a MASSIVE audience like ours (15 people, at its peak) LOOKING at her occasionally.

Annoyingly she was completely calm throughout the whole experience - unbeknownst to me she was PREGNANT at the time so probably had more things on her mind - so instead it was ME who got the collywobbles and THE FEAR, while she looked on sympathetically.

THE FEAR, by the way, is the an Actual Medical Term for the DEEP DREAD that you sometimes get before a gig. When I first set sail on the seas of ROCK I was IMMUNE but, like an old lag occasionally being land-ridden by bouts of inexplicable sea sickness, I have since gone through PHASES where've I got it at nearly every gig. The symptoms are always the same - a massive rush of blood to the FEET, heart palpitations, shaking, and a complete CONVICTION that everything will go terribly terribly wrong. It's like that dream where you realise you've got to stand up in front of an audience made up entirely of your NAN and be in a play where you've no idea what you're meant to say, and you are in the NAKED NUDE. Or is that just me?

I combated the problem in the Traditional Fashion (CLUE: self medication) and the gig itself went off pretty well - so much so, in fact, that we even got an ENCORE, and STRODE back on stage to do the BAND version of "Stan" which we'd rehearsed. True Things In ROCK: NEVER rehearse a special encore, it will ALWAYS go wrong, as The Gods Of ROCK frown upon those who expect such things. This time the song started up POWERFULLY and I gripped the microphone and LAUNCHED into the words... only to find the soundman had turned it off. You're not allowed encores at The Bull & Gate unless you're the last band on. We slunk off stage, TOLD OFF.

Afterwards it was all VERY glamorous. Not only did I have a long conversation with the drummer from Ween (most of which was spent with me being confused - I thought he'd said he was the drummer in WINGS) who was in the building for some reason, but also got into a long conversation about submitting songs for use in NEWSROUND. It seems a bit rum, looking back, but at the time I just assumed that was what HAPPENED in That London.

A couple of weeks later I was down again to see Frankie do a SOLO gig, Upstairs At The Garage. Once again there was CELEBRITY, as The Warm Jets were playing. In case you've never heard of them, The Warm Jets were a Corporate Indie Band hyped up quite a bit around then purely because one of them was going out with Zoe Ball. The band seemed a bit peeved that they were getting attention because of this, as they were ABOUT THE MUSIC, but personally I think they would have been better off pursuing a career as Celebrity Boyfriends, as the music was pretty unmemorable and once she met Fatboy Slim they slid out of view quicker than a skateboarding spaniel down a slipway.

We've spoken MUCH of soundchecks as an INDICATOR of the WORTH of bands, and The Warm Jets did nothing to disprove the relationship, as they SO LONG on it (and, again, it's not like they were an ORCHESTRA) that we ended up queuing outside for HALF AN HOUR after Official Opening Time waiting for the doors to open so we could get in.

Frankie was on first, and had to start before most people had even got up the stairs, and after he'd finished we proceeded to DRINK, also to discover that all our preconceptions about the main band were happily borne out. After their set I decided to show HOW unphased by celebrity I was (and, coincidentally VERY phased by BOOZE) by lurking around backstage TUTTING QUITE LOUDLY and occasionally saying "Hmm, didn't think much to them" when there were passing NEAR BY. HA! Even the presence of Dennis Pennis Off The Telly in the backstage area would not put me off, STILL I folded my arms and said "Mmm" reasonably loudly, before going to get a pint.

Me, London, and Celebrity: we just GO together!

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