Blog: Day 1: Birmingham

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After sitting at my desk getting EXCITED all day I decided enough was enough and DASHED giddily to Euston an hour early. This meant i saved about 20 quid on my train fare, which was GOOD, but also meant I had to spend an extra hour in Birmingham New Street station, which was BAD. It hasn't changed.

Mr Francis Albert Machine arrived and we hopped into a taxi... and spent 15 minutes and five quid driving to the end of the road. It was TRAFFIC TASTIC.

Eventually we got to the Jug Of Ale to find everyone else arrived, and set to Setting Up, Soundchecking, and All That. I've still not got used to us going on last - I sat around thinking "When's the Headline Band going to turn up and set their gear up? Oh yeah..." Also I was WONDERING in AMAZEMENT at What We Had Become: it's not the fact we were on last, nor that we had a backdrop, nor even that we had a VAN, parked out the back, but the very FACT that all the gear, including drums, (big) amps AND guitar stands all belonged to us, it filled me with PRIDE. Well done US!

Eventually we were all SORTED, and then Tim said that Magic Word guaranteed to set anybody's heart aflutter: "Balti?" That's the sort of culturally aware band we are, we like to savour the traditional food of everywhere we vist and BY HECk was I glad we did, it was DELICIOUS. We also had a FAMILY NAN, which was the biggest bread product I have ever seen in my LIFE. It was GRATE!

Back to the venue then for some sitting outside - it was HOT - and chatting to the many and various lovely people who'd turned up, including Andrew from cambridge, Tim's old pal Richie, my old pal Guesty, The Bearos's, and SEVERAL more. The other bands seemed very young and at least one of them were doing their first gig, so though there was quite a lot of people through the door not many of them were staying on for the other gigs - a sturdy few did, but faced with the option to go OUTSIDE where it wasn't so BAKING HOT, many did!

So it was a MEDIUM sized crowd of people that we went on stage for, many of whom had sensibly decided to get SAT DOWN, and this is what we played for them:

The Gay Train

Better Things To Do

Hey Hey 16K

The Fight For History

Leave My Brother Alone

Quality Of Life Enhancement Device

You Will Be Hearing From My Solicitor

Born With The Century

The Lesson Of The Smiths

Easily Impressed

Billy Jones Is Dead

It seemed to go pretty well, despite the IMMENSE HEAT - afterwards I was able to do WRING OUT the bottom of my shirt and produce a DELUGE OF SWEAT all over the floor, it was Quite Impressive. Several people were very pleased to hear Born With The Century for the first time in AGES, even if Certain People got a bit confused and missed out a whole verse (tho The Vlads coped MANFULLY), there was LOTS of chat with Audience Members, and we even did an ENCORE, even tho we had to have a bit of a DEBATE about what it should be.

Afterwards we GRAPPLED our huge piles of GEAR into the van, had another quick drink and chat to the various nice people who'd turned up, and then headed off into the night... in THE VAN. It's really VERY EXCITING having your own VAN i must say, it felt dead proper. After dropping everyone else off me and Tom got back to his at about 1.30am, to find an ELECTRICAL FIRE at the end of his street - is this how life IS, ON THE ROAD? As Tom's hand is still POORLY i ended up doing quite a bit of heavy lifting, so i am HOPEFUL of even LOSING weight by the end of the week if it carries on like this!

I got in and retired to bed, HAPPY with how things have gone so far - one down, six to go!

posted 22/7/2006 by MJ Hibbett

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