My Exciting Life in ROCK (part 2): 11/12/2003 - BBC6 Music, London

< previous

next>

This was a fantastic day in Difficult Circumstances. It had all been booked a few previously when Henry The Producer from 6Music had rung up to ask me if I'd like to be on Steve Lamacq's 6Music end of year special, "Lamacq's Almanac", where he'd be looking back at the year to come.

I'll just say that again - we'd be looking back (so far so good) at the year to come. Or rather (and now things will hopefully become clear) we'd be PRETENDING to do so, as the show would be filled with Humorous Items gently mocking the world of music and, as part of this, Henry thought maybe I could do something about the forthcoming European cup finals. "Maybe one of those awful football songs?" he suggested. "Awful football songs?" I said. "I've GOT one of those!"

This song was, of course, "The Fair Play Trophy" which I have mentioned SEVERAL times... though not yet as many times as I've RELEASED it. It first came out on Fortuna Pop! in 1998 for the World Cup, and then again in a brand new version in 2002 as an AAS online single. I'd already re-written the words for that one, so thought nothing of doing so again for this one, and set to thinking about how to PERFORM it. On the recorded versions we'd multi-tracked band members several times to make it sound like a crowd - how on earth could I re-create that LIVE?

AHA! By getting a CROWD! I emailed loads of people I knew and told them all to meet in a PUB near the BBC on the big day (which was a couple of weeks before the end of the year, as we were pre-recording). SEVERAL of them turned up, including my three brothers, although I was not altogether in the best of states to greet them due to the Difficult Circumstances mentioned earlier. The Beer In My Pint Glass had fallen ILL with a kidney infection earlier in the week and, as anyone who's ever been NEAR a kidney infection can tell you, this is NOT good news. We had three or four days of her being INCREDIBLY hot and MASSIVELY poorly, needing constant looking after day and night. Happily she'd improved enough to be left at home with our lovely Landlady (we'd been taking it in turns), but it'd left ME with quite DRASTIC sleep deprivation, also WORRY.

What I needed was a BEER, and that is what I GOT. In fact we got just the RIGHT quantity of beer so that, as we strolled towards Broadcasting House, most of us were perfectly happy to sing in the street as we walked, BELLOWING out the song's choruses which we'd all soon be recording.

Once AT the BBC we had quite a wait until they were ready for us, and this was enlivened in several ways - by singing, by visiting the famous BBC Canteen, and by looking at The Broadcaster And Journalist Miranda Sawyer, who happened to wander into the reception while we were there. INSTANTLY a dividing line was drawn on age and gender grounds: Women and young men were seen to think "Hmm, haven't I seen her off the telly?" while INDIE MEN OF A CERTAIN AGE stood there and OPENLY GAWPED, DRIBBLED, and took several MINUTES before they recovered their composure. MIRANDA SAWYER! YOINKS!

"Who was the other one?" one of us said. "Caitlin Moran!" replied the rest, in joyful nostalgic chorus.

Eventually we were called into the studio with my little crowd by now quite BLASE about being in the BBC. This changed rather quickly when we got into the studio as SUDDENLY it became clear that this was about to ACTUALLY HAPPEN. My brother James got a LITTLE over-excited and decided Phil The Soundman was his BEST MATE EVER. "Are we OK here Phil?" he'd say. "Is this all right Phil? Phil? Can I take some photographs Phil?" He then took photographs of EVERYTHING.

One of these was of me, stood on the other side of the room from everyone else in front of a handy "BBC 6Music sign". My vantage point meant I was looking across to everyone else grouped around microphones, and so when The Broadcaster And Journalist Steve Lamacq walked in I got a GLORIOUS view of ALL of them going "Blimey! Steve Lamacq! This is REAL!"

He gave me a quick run-down of the General Idea and we were OFF. The idea was that "The Fair Play Trophy" had been a MEGA HIT and as I'd been imagining that MYSELF for several years by now I had VERY little trouble talking about it at quite some length. We then LEAPT into the song, which caused a bit of a SHOCK for the BBC Professionals - we'd briefly soundchecked the crowd sing-along when they'd first been COWED by the site of the studio and Mr Lamacq. Now that they'd had some time to get used to it and we were singing the song properly they gave it FULL VOLUME. It was MAJESTIC, and accompanied by FRENZIED volume knob twiddling.

After that we'd agreed that I'd do the single b-side, and as the 2002 version had featured The Fresh Prince's classic "Boom Shake The Room" we thought we might as well do that, containing as it does a LOT of scope for audience participation from the crowd. This went VERY well and I got SO excited that, as with my first visit to 6Music, I got the words completely wrong. I could see everyone else FRANTICALLY scanning through the lyrics to work out where we were, and when I suddenly ground to a halt it was all I could do to look across for HELP.

My friend Pauly was the first to realise what was happening, and leaned forward and said "Boom?" Charlie, next to him, caught on and said "Shake?" and my brother Thomas said "the?" after which everyone else cautiously sang "Room?", I said "OH YES!" and with HUGE relief we all launched into a MASSIVE final chorus. The volume knobs went even FURTHER down to contain it all.

After it was all over we STAGGERED down the road for celebratory PINTS, pausing only to take a LOT of very silly pictures of us pretending to be NINJAS in the corridors of Broadcasting House. Well, you would, wouldn't you? Best of all I got home to find The Crisps In My Packet sat up in bed for the first time all WEEK, feeling better and wanting to know what had happened. It was BRILLIANT!

< previous

next>