My Exciting Life in ROCK (part 2): 7/5/2004 - The Adelphi, Hull

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Even when you've got an Album Of The Year in Rolling Stone and an International Internet HIT on your hands you still need to do GIGS and so at the peak of what, surely, future sociologists will call Hey Hey 16K MANIA we headed off to HULL. As I detrained I was ALARMED to find that there was no security on hand to hold back the baying crowds, and I can only assume they'd cleared the station especially for me, as despite the STORM of publicity about our arrival the station seemed deserted. Earlier that week I'd done a telephone interview with the Hull Daily Mail which, I was GLEEFUL to discover, was printed in full, and when we got to the venue I found that our pal Mr Eddy Bewsher had gone to town on all local papers and, perhaps more importantly, his massive social circle, to ensure that people turned up. It was like being in BROTHER BEYOND or something!

Eddy needed to extra work because the only people playing all night was US. For some mad reason I'd decided that the best support act to have for MJ Hibbett & the Validators was a promising young solo artiste called MJ Hibbett, who wasn't likely to bring in all that many people who weren't already coming for the main act.

Still, as Morrissey teaches us, when you're the headline act you can choose who you LIKE, and this particular act went onstage and had a WHALE of a time. Supporting myself meant that I wasn't able to do some of the songs I ALWAYS do, like "The Lesson Of The Smiths" or "Easily Impressed", as we'd be playing them as a band, but it was BRILLIANT to do "Boom Shake The Room" last, get everyone singing along, and know that I'd be able to come back later for MORE.

Tim had recently been TASKED with responsibility for writing setlists - INDEED this may well have been the first time he acted officially in this capacity. It might sound like an easy job, but it's a MINEFIELD of ETHICS and POLITICS. Certain members of the band would prefer to do pretty much the same set every night, as that way they can be sure they ONLY do songs that a) go down well and b) they know the words to (I wonder if you can guess WHICH member of the band that is?). OTHERS have a seemingly SUICIDAL urge to do songs we've either not played for YEARS or have NEVER played, and BAULK at the idea of playing songs that people might actually LIKE. THUS the nearest The Validators ever get to proper On The Road ROWS is when Tim tries to miss "Easily Impressed" off the end and I THEATRICALLY raise my eyebrows at him until he puts it back. It's just like METALICCA really.

THIS time Tim had "hilariously" written "One Last Party" as the last song. This was the closing song on Rolling Stone's Album Of The Year, which featured no guitars, bass or violins but a LOT of euphonium, trumpet, tambourines and The Choir of The Women's Royal Engineers. OH YES. So PUMPED UP was I by the events so far, however, that I was leaping about like a mini-Liam Gallagher saying "COME ON! Let's DO it! OH YEAH! I'm READY!"

Seeing the MADNESS in my eyes Tim relented and we went on to ROCK, though his hilarity was to come back to haunt him. We had a GRATE gig, stumbling only once halfway through when I suddenly realised there were about 50 people there who'd come to see US. How on earth had that happened? None of them seemed very American, so we couldn't thank Rolling Stone, and the lack of either Norwegian Infant Schoolchildren or that many obvious IT Professionals meant it wasn't Hey Hey 16K either, so clearly it was the aforesaid Mr Bewsher, who gallantly KEPT putting us on over the years and KEPT dragging his friends along. I hope we've always been sufficiently grateful - being gracious is often FORGOTTEN in these circumstances, as the urge to jump up and down drinking beer shouting "I AM GRATE!" tends to takes over.

As, indeed, does the urge to do STUPID THINGS. When we came back for an ENCORE, I decided that, rather than play one of the songs we had in reserve for such occasions, we should instead perform Johnny Nash's 1972 pop-reggae classic "I Can See Clearly Now". It's a lovely song, and I do actually know all the words... but none of The Validators had ever played it before. They'd made a pretty good attempt at playing it, in the circumstances, but my popularity rating within the organisation dipped somewhat while they were doing so.


I swiftly learnt my lesson and made attempts in future to CALM DOWN, but the whole experience did force me to be a bit more understanding when reading of ROCK STARS behaving like... well, like ROCK STARS. All it took for me to hit CELEBRITY MADNESS was a few pints of real ale and a half page feature in The Hull Daily Mail, GOODNESS KNOWS what would have happened if it had been ME on Norwegian Telly, rather than just a video!

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