How It Was

My mate Roo texted me the other week and reminded me that around nine years ago I’d said to him that I wanted to do just one big gig, one good payer. To stop trawling around grabbing £40 here and £50 there. He said he feels like the universe has frankly overdelivered for me. He’s probably right.

In 2017 I got a call from Debbie that plucked me out of obscurity and gave me one job to try and do well. It was a bit like when Apollo picked Rocky’s name out of the directory of Philadelphia fighters, a seemingly random decision of “I like the sound of this guy.” Meanwhile there’s Rocky shaking people down for a loan shark, happy for the extra fifty dollars to take Adrian to the zoo. My situation isn’t that similar but I like sticking Rocky clips on here almost as much as I like sticking Muppets ones up so I’m sticking with it. Me being picked for the LG job was like Apollo plucking Rocky out of the hat.

That was all a couple of months after I turned 40. I remember the days after turning 40 really clearly, a cloud resting over me. I remember thinking, “That’s probably it for me now.” I thought that the interesting tours were behind me and I’d be squeezing a dwindling supply of weddings and pub gigs until they had no juice left to give. I thought about having to get a real job. Sometimes it’s unavoidable, I have to think about that. I still have to every now and then.

In 2016 I played gigs at the Bridge with Ofay. I played at the Sun with the Uptown Band. I played at Colne British Legion. We did a fundraiser at St. Cuthbert’s to raise money for the new church roof. I played with a blues band called Midnight Jonny where everyone was wearing vests and the wrong kind of denim. I did a tour with Stella Parton playing Dolly Parton’s songs to auditoriums that were less than half full. I toured with a Patsy Cline tribute show playing to auditoriums packed full of Scottish octogenarians carrying their shopping bags with them and singing along in sagging, creaky voices. We had to pay for our own hotels, two to a Travelodge room, out of the meagre fees we were paid.

I played Michael Bublé covers wearing a suit from Next with Paul Guard. I played chart hits I’d never heard of with a band called Blind Tiger, anxiously reading chords off an app on my phone balanced on top of the organ. I played in a version of Atomic Rooster featuring non-essential members of disparate 70s line-ups who bickered endlessly.

And I taught! Once a week I would visit two boys with serious behavioural difficulties and teach them TV theme tunes. Actually it was more like a dance off, they’d play a TV theme and I had to do it back at them or I’d instantly lose their respect. I taught a girl who would never ever gain an understanding of the concept of rhythm, no matter how long I tried to teach her. I knew it but I needed her mother’s 20 quid and I took it in full dishonesty. I drove to the lessons. I was always tired. Sometimes I just pulled over on the side of the road and slept for seven minutes, setting my alarm and then wiping the drool off my chin to set off again when it shattered the peace. I took a job at a college in Middlewich, Cheshire “teaching” BTEC music. The kids didn’t respect me, I walked around pretending to be going somewhere. I stood in the storeroom pretending to be looking for something. The staff didn’t talk to me, I ate my sandwiches in my car. I spent a third of the money they paid me on driving there.

There were more gigs. Forty quid at the Sun up Harle Syke. Fifty quid at Nelson ACE centre. I sold a few pieces of equipment on Ebay. Started a Country covers band. Made instrumental hip hop with Woody. Somewhere in there I made a solo album though I wasn’t really sure what I could do with it. At least once a month I had my face painted as a mouse and played funky nursery rhymes to toddlers in Manchester. I didn’t mind that either as it goes.

I should’ve probably shaved before they painted but you live and learn. Have you ever seen a children’s entertainer wearing just as much despair as face paint?

I did absolutely anything I could. I did everything I was asked. My career was faltering and so was my self respect. I was doing a bad job of everything but I just had to carry on. None of this is unique to me, to all my friends who are musicians this is just what life looks like some times. A lot of the time.

Things can pick up suddenly when you least expect it. There’s really no logic to it and when I think back to that year it baffles me to think of the treadmill I was on and that somebody had the decency to pluck me off there.

We’ve been told not to put anything on social media till after this weekend’s shows, which is a bit odd because everybody else is talking about nothing else on social media. I don’t know if they had ambling Substack posts in mind when they said that but I’m a team player so I’m not talking about anything I’m doing this weekend. I am gigging though, in Wales. If you’re watching give me a wave. Thanks for all the supportive messages etc. It’s been genuinely moving.

But I’m not talking about what I’m doing this weekend.

All I’m telling you here and now is that it wasn’t always like this.

Life In the Festival

I enjoyed Glastonbury in the end, I stuck it out. I almost gave up on music itself when the 1975 were on but I stuck it out and felt it was worth it. Watching it on telly obviously isn’t the same but it’s easier to get from one thing to another, when you’re there moving from one stage to another whilst trying to herd your mates can be an ordeal. I loved watching John Fogerty even though he’s right on the edge of usefulness, it might be the last time he’s allowed out. I thought Pulp came in and nicked the whole thing on Saturday afternoon and I loved seeing it. Nicky described Rod Stewart’s set as “turgid” to me on Whatsapp and I trust him enough not to try it for myself. I loved the fact that Neil Young stood up there and delivered an anti-headline set, no fancy lights or big production, just a really great jammy band. A band that featured Spooner Oldham on Hammond no less, a legendary piece of the Mussel Shoals backline. He was playing gorgeously too! It didn’t escape me that everyone I was drawn too was in their 80s, I think within five years I’ll struggle to look at Pyramid stage coverage. There was a lot to love at the smaller stages though, I think if I’d been there I’d have parked at West Holts and never moved. I could watch a whole weekend of Goat playing and nothing else.

Beaufort Scales

Try this on for size, music for women’s voices and electronics. No spoilers, other than I felt like I was losing my mind on Thursday night listening to it. Losing it in a good way…

Addendum

Fuck it, I will talk about last night a little bit. It was magical, the proof is in the five star reviews this morning from all the previously sneering corners of the media. I’m not about to give some scoop or post a behind the scenes photograph but I will gladly say that walking out just behind the newly united Gallagher brothers as the world warmly welcomed them back was one of the great privileges of my life. You’ll have to take my word for it. Don’t worry, I’m not going to get carried away. I was just there, doing basic manual labour at the back of the stage. It was nice to have a good seat though.