My Exciting Life In ROCK (part 1): 6/12/01 - The Casbah, Sheffield / 12/12/01 - Blue Cat Cafe, Stockport

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People in the Music "Industry", they don't half talk a load of old bollocks. One of the CLASSICS of Utter Crap they spout is "If you're any good, you'll be discovered."

This is meant to convey the message "HANG IN THERE, The Kids! If you've got talent, we, the mighty and ENTIRELY BENIGN Music 'Industry' will find you and help you. No need to try and do anything without us." What it actually means is "We are too lazy to ever go and see a gig outside the M25 and even then only if it's to see something somebody ELSE says is good, but we would like you to think we somehow KNOW WHAT WE ARE DOING, so if we've not heard of you it must be because you are rubbish. PASS THE COCAINE."

For LO! I have seen many many MANY utterly GRATE bands in my time, and approximately NONE of them have gone on to be Signed Up by The Majors. This great ROCK NATION of ours is constantly producing AMAZING bands who hardly ever get heard of by anyone outside the city they live in but those who DO hear them never forget. The MOST GRATE of these sort of bands that I ever saw were The Frightened Prisoners Of The Kraken, from Darwen in Lancashire. They were a trombone-led BARQUE POP outfit with a baritone lead singer and band members who looked, variously, like teachers, club bouncers, an uncle, and the owner of a music shop. It was like a school reunion in a junk shop

They came into my VIEW when they sent a Demo to our record label, Artists Against Success. We used to get LOADS of these when we were in our pomp - we eventually worked out that this was because AAS tended to come near the TOP of the alphabetical lists of independent record companies, so people from all over the world sent us stuff without ever bothering to listen to the sort of thing we put out - if only people who sent us demo tapes BOUGHT even ONE of our records we would have TRIPLED sales figures!

THUS, when we had our monthly meetings there'd always be a PILE of terrible terrible tapes to share out between the three of us which we would dutifully go home and listen to. When we started the label this was FINE - you'd have a gentle LAUGH at the more ridiculously bad tapes, smile hopefully through all the Oasis copycats, and return to the next meeting waving the WORST of the MANY Working Man's Club Band Publicity Photographs we'd been sent. After a while though you started to realise that these were people's DREAMS we were fast forwarding through - every tape was the culmination of HOURS, sometimes WEEKS of EFFORT and LOVE, and every single one was sent out with the hope that someone, somewhere, would hear something in it to love, to cherish, and to make famous. And they were nearly all RUBBISH.

Every once in a while, however, you'd get something really GOOD, at which point whoever'd got the tape would copy it for the others. This happened with The Kraken (as we came to call them), when Frankie came to a meeting RAVING about them. Me and Mr Whitaker got cassettes, and the next time the pair of them RAVED together. I couldn't see it myself - it sounded like a tuneless Experimental Soundtrack to me, all wind noises and glockenspiels, but they were so ENTHUSED that I went back to have another listen. It was only at the next meeting when they started SINGING the entire tape that I realised I'd been listening to the wrong side...

SO, we signed them up, put out their record, and dragged them down to Derby to play at our fifth birthday gig. We'd never met them in the flesh before, so were a bit worried about what they'd be like, and were a bit worried in case they turned out to just be some fey indie types playing at being A Bit Northern. We needn't have worried. They took to the stage GRUFFLY, SEIZED the gig in both hands, and UTTERLY BLEW THE MINDS of everybody there. At the time, DRUNK, I told everyone that it was like listening to Bob Dylan recording "Blonde On Blonde" but BETTER, also A LOT MORE FUNNY. It was a huge whirligig of SOUNDS and ACTION and FUN and TUNES and just UTTER BRILLIANCE, and the three of us were jumping up and down with GLEE at how GRATE they were.

They were just as brilliant at these two gigs, especially the Sheffield one where me and they played to nobody AT ALL. The other band who played with us were all about 19 and reminded us that not just Pulp, but also DEF LEPPARD had come from Sheffield. There were a few more people in Stockport (many of whom were still doing that irritating late-90's pillock's affectation of swaggering around with their legs far apart going "AAraaat?" in a bad Liam Gallagher impersonation) but the main thing I remember about it is that the Cafe seemed to still be in FULL MOURNING for George Harrison.

Those three gigs were the only times I saw The Kraken - not long afterwards their bass player, awfully, died, and shortly after that there was a family-related falling out between the two band leaders which meant that The Kraken were no more. There've been various promises of reconciliations and the remaining members getting together again over the last couple of years, but not much has ever come of it. If they ever DO manage it, I will be STRAIGHT on the train to Darwen!

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