My Exciting Life In ROCK (part 1): 7/5/03 - The Albion, Winchester

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Although I wasn't really doing many gigs around this time the ones I DID do were disproportionately in Winchester. There are many possible explanations for this - a burgeoning scene hungry for Hibbett Action, a wide range of fantastic venues or easy transport links - but the real reason was that my friend Ray was a student there, and so kept booking me to play his gigs. It is, it turns out, Who You Know.

This particular gig was in a pub recently taken over by a friend of his who made the CLASSIC mistake of all New Pub Owners throughout history: thinking gigs are a good idea. I'm sure even in prehistoric times, They Who Hit Stones Hard got booked to play a LOT of gigs by fresh faced new Mammoth Blood purveyors who'd never actually BEEN to a gig but HAD seen The Commitments and thought that ALL gigs were ram-packed booze-a-thons where a cheer would go up every half hour when the bar, just drunk DRY, was re-stocked.

The high hopes of such people are almost always DASHED, and I speak from EXPERIENCE as I have the distinction of being the first and subsequently ONLY artiste to play in all SORTS of pubs up and down the country, where excitable new publicans have decided Friday Night Is Band Night. In most pubs, especially Local Pubs, having some pillock SHOUTING through a PA system on your busiest night does rather tend to send people down the road to a quieter place, especially when it's someone like me that pretty much nobody has heard of. My top piece of advice in these situations is, if offered, TAKE THE MONEY FIRST. Excitable New Publicans will often offer you HUGE piles of CA$H, unaware that this is not the norm, and if you wait until it's all over, when it's just you, him, and the guy who's come to pick the PA up sitting in an empty pub half an hour before closing time, it's very difficult to take it.

Actually, if any Pubs Down The Road are worried about new pubs opening nearby, do let me know - my skills as a SABOTEUR are obviously MIGHTY.

Anyway, this particularly night was something of an exception, as it went BRILLIANTLY. The evening started well with a set from the marvellous Mr Owen Tromans - Owen is a Surprisingly GRATE person to play gigs with. I say "Surprisingly" only because the type of music he plays sounds quite Serious and Complex, so you always expect him to sit and glower, contemplatively, from behind a single half of Difficult Continental Beer. This is not the case, indeed, many gigs in that area of the country have been significantly improved for me by a tiddly Mr Tromans greeting the announcement of songs with "GET IN! COME ON! GET IN!" Also, dancing around.

Owen also did me a MASSIVE favour in lending me his acoustic guitar pickup, one of those Dean Markley ones that you just pop in the central hole while you need it and then take out and wind-up when you're done. It was BRILLIANT, so much so that I went straight out and got one myself - INDEED, I now have TWO, so I'm ready if the original breaks, but it has never done so. It felt like I was part of a Great Acoustic Tradition, as he'd been introduced to them by Mr Chris TT, and I must say it is one of the few pieces of Musical Equipment I would ever unequivocally recommend. It is BLOODY GRATE - stick that in yr adverts, Mr Markley!

Enhanced by this I had an absolutely AMAZING gig. I was sat in the corner of the pub and thought I'd be politely ignored, but ten minutes into the set the whole ROOM was singing along (with songs they'd never even heard before!), BELLOWING for more, and even going All Quiet And Teary Eyed when I did "I Can See Clearly Now" and "Fly Me To The Moon". Even Old Guy With Dog, Supping Mild (a GENUINE example) smiled by the end of it, and as a direct result of his ASCENT I got to do an encore. It was FAB.

Afterwards we went back to Ray's house, where there was a PARTY. Usually I would SHY AWAY from this sort of thing, preferring to get some KIP as I'm usually having to get up early next day to go home, but I was so ENERGISED I threw myself wholeheartedly into the MELEE. When a MARIJUANA DOOBIE JOINT got passed around I thought "Heck yeah! I smoked these when I was student, give it here!"

Unfortunately I had chosen to ignore one simple fact: that was a LONG LONG time ago. Since then DRUGS had changed somewhat, and also so had I - the old fashioned MELLOW styled POT that I had enjoyed was now a thing of the past, and I was taking walloping great TOKES (drug talk) on one of these new SKUNK affairs, and so soon found myself feeling A Bit Peculiar. The fact that I was now about ten years older (than me as a REEFER KING, also than everybody else in the room) meant that my only option was to go STRAIGHT TO BED.

This was a student house, so my accommodation was not quite as salubrious as one might have hoped for - in fact it was an inflatable lilo, on the hard kitchen floor. In normal circumstances this might have been OK, but my Altered State meant that I went on to spend a rather frightening 30 minutes ROLLING AROUND, falling - nay, BOUNCING - off my bed every two minutes, before clambering back on to WRESTLE with its ridges before flying once more into the kitchen table. In the end I had to CRAWL upstairs to the party and BEG to be allowed to kip in mein host's bed. It was a POOR SHOW, but something had to be done.

When I woke up in the morning I discovered the room was SO untidy that I couldn't find my glasses. I'd left them on top of a book, but as the floor was COVERED with books, also socks, guitars, newspapers and so forth, I had NO idea where they were and eventually had give up, GROPE my way to the door, and ask for some help. When you're already conscious of being much older than everybody else, having to say "Can someone help me find my spectacles? I've forgotten where I put them, and can't see well enough to find them on my own" doesn't really help!

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