As 'a lad', I played violin. And I quite enjoyed it really. I was, AFTER ALL, part of the legendary Morley Victoria School Orchestra that finished third in... a music competition that took place in a Portacabin in Rothwell in the late 80s. We played the theme from 'Black Beauty' less well than two orchestras. But better than several others. Apparently.
"Rockin' da joint" with Morley Victoria School Orchestra.
Then I got to high school and The Violin had to fight The Football for my attentions, and The Football won. My violin lessons clashed with games and, as a result, I went to about two lessons in a year before being booted out. Ho hum.
Several years later, after I'd taken my GCSEs, I decided that I'd learn to play the guitar. My parents were sceptical given VIOLIN-GATE, but I stuck at it and picked things up pretty quickly. As previously discussed, I'd started getting into music at the late age of 15/16 and had seriously fallen for Bon Jovi, then Guns N' Roses and Metallica. I still remember the time I was playing the opening riff to "Sweet Child O'Mine" in my bedroom, and a family friend told me he thought I was listening to he radio. He may well have said this to be nice, but I believed him at the time and thought that I was THE SHIT (I was actually just shit, obvs). Later my mate Jamie and I formed a band. The 'band' consisted of the two of us playing "Wasting My Hate" by Metallica, over and over again in Jamie's parent's garage. We didn't have a singer, drummer or bassist at that stage, so at least his neighbours only had to put up with the sounds of our inexpertly played guitars. But it was fun nevertheless. For us, not the neighbours. Natch.
Then, in January 1997 things got serious. OMG!!! A few days before the end of term, our school hall burnt down in suspicious circumstances. It was the night of our sixth form Christmas party (at noted hive of scum and villainy, Xclusive in Batley), so I wasn't hugely disappointed to have to spend a hung over morning in bed when I found out the school had been closed the following day. Rumours about the identity of the culprit's were litch RIFE when we returned in the new year, but I don't think anyone was arrested. Anyways, the school set about raising funds to replace the hall, and one of my English teachers, Mr Hines, suggested putting on a concert. Mr Hines was a total dude. He was the only guy in the school with long hair other than me, and adopted a rather idiosyncratic approach to the curriculum. For example, we spent most of our time in his class making a film of Christopher Marlowe's 'Dr Faustus', complete with a random interlude which saw me and my mates, Dan and Jamie, miming along to Guns N' Roses' version of "Knockin' On Heaven's Door". Apropos of sodding nowt. As a special treat, here is a clip (funnily enough, the footage was filmed in Morley High's old school hall before it burnt down):
'Hinesy' was looking for people to play the benefit show, and me and Jamie stepped forward to offer our limited services. Having an ACTUAL GIG to look forward to focused our attention somewhat, and we set about recruiting other band members. We secured the use of Morley High's drama workshop (scene of Whack's voming incident a few years earlier), as a practice space, and got to work. Jamie knew a guy from his job at Morrisons who could play guitar, and he jammed with us... once. I remember him having a fluorescent yellow superstrat and being all about the widdle. We made grand plans to play "Paradise City", with him shredding during the wig-out ending, but nothing came of it. We did eventually get a singer though, which made our fretboard fumbling sound infinitely better. We knew Chris from school and, not only could he sing, he was a cool guy who wasn't scared of getting on stage and flailing around. Plus he was the only person we knew who was even the slightest bit up for it.
Mr Hines was a lovely chap, but not, perhaps, the most organised bloke in the world. I think the benefit gig was originally scheduled for that summer but didn't actually take place until over a year after the fire. This gave us plenty of time to hone our set. Or it would have done if a) we had had a drummer and b) we could decide what songs to play. We must have rehearsed enough material to fill a good couple of hours, but we'd only been given 15 minutes. This was probably a good thing, as we were the sort of band who felt a sense of achievement from simply playing a song from start to finish without it completely falling apart in the middle. We were not, as they say, "toight".
Eventually we got together with a decent drummer we knew called Shawie. He was a year or two older than us and had lots more experience of being in bands, but he was also really busy and only turned up a few times. Rehearsals were pretty shambolic. We occasionally tried to play songs we didn't know the arrangements for. Or the guitar parts. Or the lyrics. Sometimes we tried songs one of more of us hadn't heard before. I can't remember the exact circumstances, but Shawie eventually told us he couldn't play the benefit gigs. We were obviously concerned, and spoke to Hinesy about this. In typically optimistic fashion, he told us that we shouldn't worry as he'd get us a drummer on the night. Given that none of us had ever played live before, we'd only been playing our instruments for a few years and hadn't even decided what songs to play, this probably should have set alarm bells ringing...
Meanwhile, in a rehearsal room over the other side of town I was practicing for the same gigs with my other band. A couple of guys at school, Leigh and Jonny, had been playing together for a while and I'd been keen to hook up with them as they seemed talented, particularly Leigh who wrote his own songs. At one of the many 18th birthday parties everyone from my sixth form went to in '97, I got phised and told Jonny I'd be up for playing bass in his band. According to my drunken face I was a really good bassist, so he said yes. After spending the next week locked in my room with my Dad's white Yamaha bass guitar desperately trying to learn to play the thing, I turned up for my first practice at Cherrytree Studios (a converted garage). Leigh wanted to do some of his own songs, but we ended up spending months playing "Street Spirit" by Radiohead. Over, and over again. We could never get it right, but we instantly sounded better than my other band. Although Chris was decent enough, Leigh was a fantastic singer. More importantly we had a full band set up. Which helped. Hinesy had put us in touch with a chap called Ricky who had left school the year before, and he became our rhythm guitarist. Ricky was always down on his own ability, but he wrote some really good songs and was a solid player. A drummer called Winny, who Leigh and Johnny had played with before, also joined us. He was easily the most experienced guy I'd played with up to that point, and made the rest of us look pretty amateur. He played gigs every week with his other group Emerald, a classic rock covers band he'd joined when he was 16, and had a massive kit with about seventeen drums and ALL of the cymbals.
After a while we started sounding ok. At the time, of course, we thought we sounded freakin' amazicles. We were going to change the course of musical history and take over the world. By playing a couple of Oasis and Radiohead covers :-|
Hall Aid I, Friday 27th March 1998 / Morley High School
Eventually March arrived, and it was time to unleash the results our countless practice sessions on a thoroughly suspecting public. As it was a charity event, performers had to buy tickets too, so I effectively paid £2.50 for the privilege of playing. Ace.
My first band (Jamie & Chris), had decided on the name 'Carenza', after Carenza Lewis from TV's Time Team. This had little to do with an interest in archaeology, and a whole lot to do with us being desperate and Jamie randomly suggesting it one day while we were on the phone and his parents were watching Time Team on the television. Or at least that's how I remember it. I still think it's a bloody good, unique, name though, and infinitely better than the uninspired dross groups of teenage lads usually come up with...
...speaking of which. My other band (Leigh, Jonny, Ricky & Winny) were SUPASTUCK for a name. We talked about it for hours. And hours. And got nowhere. Eventually Jonny suggested 'Forbidden Planet', after the comic book chain with a store in Leeds. The rest of us thought this was a shit idea but Jonny told Mr Hines that's what we were called, so that's the name that appeared on the tickets. Fab.
The first night of 'Hall Aid' took place at Morley High, with dancers performing in the small sports hall and bands playing in 'the well', a sunken seating area in the sixth form common room. Forbidden Planet were quite well rehearsed, Carenza less so. We hadn't been able to find a bass player so, at the last minute I recruited Mike, the son of the guitarist in my Dad's Irish folk band. Who'd never played bass before. We had one practice together but, as we couldn't agree what to play, I don't think this was a great deal of use. Particularly as we didn't have a drummer. We did briefly go through some chords BACKSTAGE (i.e. a classroom), but that was it. At least we'd actually kind of played together before though. Hinesy paired us up with a drummer called Morgan on the night. He was in another band who were performing that night and I think it's fair to say that they were his primary concern. We had the briefest of chats about songs that we all knew, picked three of them and walked out into THE COLOSSEUM!!!!!!!!
There were at least 50,000 (50) people there and they were going WILD (seemed mildly interested). They had been waiting for us all night (they had been waiting for their mates all night) and were psyched about hearing our awesome interpretations of The Popular Music Of The Day (were wondering how to sneak a sip of the bottles of 20/20 they'd smuggled in without any teachers seeing)
We opened with "Columbia" by Oasis. I'd prepared a lengthy guitar introduction based on a live version of the song from a bootleg album I owned called 'Listen Up', which featured an Oasis show from Vancouver in '95. It was going to be stunning. But Chris came in with the start of the song too early and I had to prematurely end the axe histrionics For The Good Of The Team.. The 'fans' were obvs gutted. After "Columbia", we went straight into "Cigarettes & Alcohol", then ended with "Song 2" by Blur. And it kinda went reallyreallywell. I know right? Looking back it's clear that Morgan held everything together. We were bloody lucky to have him play with us. Not only was he a dead good drummer, he also knew the songs (probably better than the rest of us). At the time though, I naïvely (theme?!!) thought that this 'performing music' business was dead easy. It didn't matter that we'd be playing with a different drummer the next night as Morgan couldn't (didn't want to?) play with us again. We'd be ace. Hmm...
Anyways, we were chuffed to have played through all our songs and have got a good response. It was a wicked feeling being 'backstage' after (what we thought was) an amazing performance. I remember thinking "I wish I could do that again". Which was lucky, as my other ACT were due on about half an hour later.
Forbidden Planet {shudder} were a better band than Carenza (mostly because we actually were a band rather than two guitarists and a singer), but as I 'only' played bass, I considered them my second group, so I wasn't as nervous before we went on-stage. Also I was confident that we knew (most of) the songs inside out given our weekly Friday night practice sessions. We opened with "Supersonic" then played Radiohead's "Creep". The crowd seemed genuinely up for it. We were genuinely up for it. Then we had to stand around while Jonny played acoustic guitar with some random girls who sang "Torn" by Natalie Imbruglia. Mr Hines also appeared in a pinafore (?!!) to play tambourine with them. Awesome. I seem to remember that the rest of us didn't know we'd be interrupted mid-set. I DEFINITELY remember feeling like a right wally, stood on stage with my limp bass in my hand, trying to melt into the carpet. The song seemed to go on for an eternity. I could feel my face getting redder. Awesome. After several decades, the last chord rang out and we were able to finish our set. We played a slightly nervous "Live Forever", then ended with "I Am The Walrus". The latter was dedicated to Mr Hines, who was a massive Beatles fan, and was played in the style of the Oasis cover version to appeal to the masses. Me, Ricky and Winny were never that happy playing it as we didn't know the arrangement that well, it being a last minute addition to the set. Ricky and I had a chord cheat sheet on the floor so we'd remember what to play. As I looked down at a blurry scribble, I realised that I needed glasses. I also realised that my bass was VERY loud. My fingers tried to make a break for it, darting over random frets as they did so. My legs wobbled and I prayed for the outro to come as that was the only bit of the song I was confident playing. Good. God.
All in all, the night went well though. We adjourned to the Queens pub in Morley town centre for celebratory drinks and talked about how we were going to SMASH IT at the second gig the next day...
Hall Aid II, Saturday 28th March 1998 / Woodkirk High School
The previous evening had been a 'current students only' event, but the Saturday night concert was for parents and ex-students as well. With Morley High being sans a big enough space after the fire, the show moved up the road to Woodkirk High School's main assembly hall.
Winny couldn't play with Forbidden Planet, as he had a gig with his other band Emerald, so we decided to do an acoustic set. I got to Woodkirk early on Saturday afternoon so we could run through a few songs and get a set together. Jonny hadn't wanted to play any of Leigh's songs the night before, presumably because it would have been the first time the audience had heard them, but Leigh was super keen for us to play at least one on the Saturday, so we rehearsed a fantastic tune of his called "Sleeptalker". Leigh had a collection of 5-10 really good tracks by that point, and I was chuffed that we had the chance to play one of them. His songs were one of the main reasons I'd been so keen to join the band. Jonny wanted us to play "I Am The Walrus" again for Mr Hines so, to avoid a repeat of the night before, I'd spent all morning practicing the chords. We chose "Talk Tonight" by Oasis as our third song after a long discussion about songs we all knew how to play. While we were practicing, a guy called Scott, who Jonny and Mr Hines knew, turned up with a brand new twin-neck Ovation guitar. He jammed with us a bit and Jonny invited him to perform with us that night. Leigh and I weren't overly impressed, particularly as Scott didn't really know any of the tunes we were playing, so we compromised and asked him to play with us on just one song. After going through the songs a few times we all left and I went home to change.
While writing this blog I've found that my memories have occasionally been a bit hazy. But I can be one hundred percent sure about the the second Hall Aid show thanks to a BLOODY VIDEO of the event, taken by Geoff, Morley High's caretaker. IKR!
Although I rewatched the performances by both my bands several times after I got the tape, I haven't seen them for years, and I don't think I've ever watched the full video. For the Good Of The Blog I dusted off my VCR and had a shufti. As I'm not a screaming masochist, I didn't watch the whole three-hour plus (!!!) show, but, with the aid of the fast-forward button, I caught the 'highlights'. There was an awful lot of: groups of girls dancing to CDs of popular music of the day. There was a fair amount of: Mr Hines and his band, 'The Beanz', playing songs with guest vocalists. There was a bit of: Teachers, litch, doing the funniest thingz (i.e. 'singing' Songs From The Seventies). And then there were my bands...
The running order had been changed from the previous night, so Forbidden Planet were up first for me this time. Except we'd had a bit a discussion and decided that we didn't want to be Forbidden Planet anymore. After a quick brainstorm backstage, we became 'Lucky' (after the Radiohead song). In retrospect it's probably an even worse name than Forbidden Planet. Anyways... The name wasn't the only thing that had changed since the night before. As I said earlier, Winny couldn't play drums on the Saturday, so the four of us had decided to do an acoustic set. Except Ricky didn't turn up. We waited and waited and eventually I gave him a call. He explained that he thought we didn't need him as the songs would sound overblown with four of us playing guitar (I suspect nerves might have been a factor as well). We were pretty pissed off at the time but, watching the footage of the gig back, he probably had a point.
The comperes (a couple of suited-up jockish lads who were in that year's upper sixth) introduced us as 'Lucky', and told the audience that they were "lucky to have" us. The wags. After waiting for the laughter to die down, we crept onto the stage, replete with Scott and his twin-necked GUITARBEAST. I'd borrowed an acoustic from my Dad's mate Tony, as I didn't have one and my stupid teenage face thought Dad's black guitar looked uncool. Unfortch it didn't have a pickup, which meant that it couldn't be plugged in so no-one could actually hear it. Awesome. This wasn't really a bad thing, given that there were four of us playing exactly the same thing during our first song, "Talk Tonight". At least it gave me something to hide behind while I was doing backing vocals.
Next up was "Sleeptalker". Watching it back on the video, I reckon it still comes across as a quality song, despite my shonky backing vocals and our general lack of performance experience. But, dear reader, you can decide for yourself with this rather fuzzy clip, coming at you from The Mists of Time:
We again had to take a mid-set break while Jonny performed "Torn" with a couple of girls and Mr Hines on tambourine. Which was nice. At least we could retreat to the edge of the stage at Woodkirk. After the spotlights had been turned back on us, and Leigh's girlfriend had thrown a pair of knickers at him, we got ready to play our last song, "I Am The Walrus". It began badly, with me playing in the wrong key, but, after stopping and starting again, we got it together - all the practice that morning clearly paid off. My "woo" backing vocals sound spectacularly lame on the video, and there's a horribly out-of-tune bit where my voice goes all breaky and high-pitched on one of the "crying" lines at the end of the verse, but other than that it's pretty good; the crowd are noticeably quieter and give us a genuine sounding round of applause at the end.
Twenty minutes later I was back on stage with Carenza. Mike couldn't play bass for us (he was working at Argos at the time and occasionally had to stay late on Saturdays), but I'd got it into my head that we'd "look stupid" without a bass player, so we asked Jonny to 'play' with us. As he didn't know any of the songs, this meant him miming along with the bass amp turned off. To his credit he agreed, and it's a bloody good job he did... After being introduced, I strummed my guitar to make sure it was in tune and nothing came out except a horrible electrical buzzing sound. Jonny helped me trouble-shoot and eventually we realised it was because I hadn't plugged my guitar lead into my wah pedal properly. Problem = solved.
Despite the fact that the previous night's set went really well, we decided to change things around, and opened with comedy-rawk song "Everything About You", by Ugly Kid Joe. This might have been ok if our new drummer knew the song. He didn't. Things had gone so well with Morgan the night before, that the fact that we'd only met the new drummer guy (a student teacher who'd come to Morley High after we'd left), 30 seconds before we went on, and that he claimed not to know any of the tracks we were due to play, seemed only a minor inconvenience. To be fair to him he gave it a good shot, but the time change, three minutes in, completely threw him, and the song disintegrated. Chris made the best of things with a few "woos" to prompt the crowd into clapping and we lived to play another song...
Following a guitar change from Jamie, and an equally unnecessary bit of guitar widdledry from me, we started "Cigarettes & Alcohol". You lucky people can watch said song below. It is quite possible that my guitar is a tiny bit too loud... Note the bit in the middle where the drums should stop but don't, and I look round like someone has pissed on my chips.
We ended our set with "Supersonic", with Leigh joining Chris on lead vocals. As our drummer didn't know the song I attempted to demonstrate the opening beat by tapping my hands on my legs. It didn't work. Eventually Chris told me to just start, so I cranked out the opening riff. It sounded IMMENSE in the massive hall, particularly when Jamie and drummer blokey joined in, and I really started to enjoy myself. I was probably enjoying myself too much and, like a total knob, I decided to play part of the main solo with my guitar between my legs. Jamie had semi-dared me to do this before we went on, but a desire to show off was the real reason for my acrobatics. DEAR GOD.
Under the circumstances the set went quite well. Drummer blokey came up to us afterwards and said "thanks lads, I enjoyed that". He'd obviously forgotten about the first song.
We went to The Frontier in Batley afterwards, and I had several celebratory Jack Daniels and Cokes. After enduring the bizarre 'laser show' interlude that happened every night at 'The Big F' (punters were cleared off the dance floor while some green lasers shot around the ceiling and the theme to Star Trek: The Next Generation was played. Seriously), we ended up at the Oasis Indian restaurant next door, where Chris, Jamie and I talked about how we were going to do more of The Gigs and how it was going to All of The Ace... In the event, these would be the only shows we'd play together. Sad face.
Then, in January 1997 things got serious. OMG!!! A few days before the end of term, our school hall burnt down in suspicious circumstances. It was the night of our sixth form Christmas party (at noted hive of scum and villainy, Xclusive in Batley), so I wasn't hugely disappointed to have to spend a hung over morning in bed when I found out the school had been closed the following day. Rumours about the identity of the culprit's were litch RIFE when we returned in the new year, but I don't think anyone was arrested. Anyways, the school set about raising funds to replace the hall, and one of my English teachers, Mr Hines, suggested putting on a concert. Mr Hines was a total dude. He was the only guy in the school with long hair other than me, and adopted a rather idiosyncratic approach to the curriculum. For example, we spent most of our time in his class making a film of Christopher Marlowe's 'Dr Faustus', complete with a random interlude which saw me and my mates, Dan and Jamie, miming along to Guns N' Roses' version of "Knockin' On Heaven's Door". Apropos of sodding nowt. As a special treat, here is a clip (funnily enough, the footage was filmed in Morley High's old school hall before it burnt down):
'Hinesy' was looking for people to play the benefit show, and me and Jamie stepped forward to offer our limited services. Having an ACTUAL GIG to look forward to focused our attention somewhat, and we set about recruiting other band members. We secured the use of Morley High's drama workshop (scene of Whack's voming incident a few years earlier), as a practice space, and got to work. Jamie knew a guy from his job at Morrisons who could play guitar, and he jammed with us... once. I remember him having a fluorescent yellow superstrat and being all about the widdle. We made grand plans to play "Paradise City", with him shredding during the wig-out ending, but nothing came of it. We did eventually get a singer though, which made our fretboard fumbling sound infinitely better. We knew Chris from school and, not only could he sing, he was a cool guy who wasn't scared of getting on stage and flailing around. Plus he was the only person we knew who was even the slightest bit up for it.
Mr Hines was a lovely chap, but not, perhaps, the most organised bloke in the world. I think the benefit gig was originally scheduled for that summer but didn't actually take place until over a year after the fire. This gave us plenty of time to hone our set. Or it would have done if a) we had had a drummer and b) we could decide what songs to play. We must have rehearsed enough material to fill a good couple of hours, but we'd only been given 15 minutes. This was probably a good thing, as we were the sort of band who felt a sense of achievement from simply playing a song from start to finish without it completely falling apart in the middle. We were not, as they say, "toight".
Eventually we got together with a decent drummer we knew called Shawie. He was a year or two older than us and had lots more experience of being in bands, but he was also really busy and only turned up a few times. Rehearsals were pretty shambolic. We occasionally tried to play songs we didn't know the arrangements for. Or the guitar parts. Or the lyrics. Sometimes we tried songs one of more of us hadn't heard before. I can't remember the exact circumstances, but Shawie eventually told us he couldn't play the benefit gigs. We were obviously concerned, and spoke to Hinesy about this. In typically optimistic fashion, he told us that we shouldn't worry as he'd get us a drummer on the night. Given that none of us had ever played live before, we'd only been playing our instruments for a few years and hadn't even decided what songs to play, this probably should have set alarm bells ringing...
Meanwhile, in a rehearsal room over the other side of town I was practicing for the same gigs with my other band. A couple of guys at school, Leigh and Jonny, had been playing together for a while and I'd been keen to hook up with them as they seemed talented, particularly Leigh who wrote his own songs. At one of the many 18th birthday parties everyone from my sixth form went to in '97, I got phised and told Jonny I'd be up for playing bass in his band. According to my drunken face I was a really good bassist, so he said yes. After spending the next week locked in my room with my Dad's white Yamaha bass guitar desperately trying to learn to play the thing, I turned up for my first practice at Cherrytree Studios (a converted garage). Leigh wanted to do some of his own songs, but we ended up spending months playing "Street Spirit" by Radiohead. Over, and over again. We could never get it right, but we instantly sounded better than my other band. Although Chris was decent enough, Leigh was a fantastic singer. More importantly we had a full band set up. Which helped. Hinesy had put us in touch with a chap called Ricky who had left school the year before, and he became our rhythm guitarist. Ricky was always down on his own ability, but he wrote some really good songs and was a solid player. A drummer called Winny, who Leigh and Johnny had played with before, also joined us. He was easily the most experienced guy I'd played with up to that point, and made the rest of us look pretty amateur. He played gigs every week with his other group Emerald, a classic rock covers band he'd joined when he was 16, and had a massive kit with about seventeen drums and ALL of the cymbals.
After a while we started sounding ok. At the time, of course, we thought we sounded freakin' amazicles. We were going to change the course of musical history and take over the world. By playing a couple of Oasis and Radiohead covers :-|
Hall Aid I, Friday 27th March 1998 / Morley High School
Eventually March arrived, and it was time to unleash the results our countless practice sessions on a thoroughly suspecting public. As it was a charity event, performers had to buy tickets too, so I effectively paid £2.50 for the privilege of playing. Ace.
My first band (Jamie & Chris), had decided on the name 'Carenza', after Carenza Lewis from TV's Time Team. This had little to do with an interest in archaeology, and a whole lot to do with us being desperate and Jamie randomly suggesting it one day while we were on the phone and his parents were watching Time Team on the television. Or at least that's how I remember it. I still think it's a bloody good, unique, name though, and infinitely better than the uninspired dross groups of teenage lads usually come up with...
...speaking of which. My other band (Leigh, Jonny, Ricky & Winny) were SUPASTUCK for a name. We talked about it for hours. And hours. And got nowhere. Eventually Jonny suggested 'Forbidden Planet', after the comic book chain with a store in Leeds. The rest of us thought this was a shit idea but Jonny told Mr Hines that's what we were called, so that's the name that appeared on the tickets. Fab.
The first night of 'Hall Aid' took place at Morley High, with dancers performing in the small sports hall and bands playing in 'the well', a sunken seating area in the sixth form common room. Forbidden Planet were quite well rehearsed, Carenza less so. We hadn't been able to find a bass player so, at the last minute I recruited Mike, the son of the guitarist in my Dad's Irish folk band. Who'd never played bass before. We had one practice together but, as we couldn't agree what to play, I don't think this was a great deal of use. Particularly as we didn't have a drummer. We did briefly go through some chords BACKSTAGE (i.e. a classroom), but that was it. At least we'd actually kind of played together before though. Hinesy paired us up with a drummer called Morgan on the night. He was in another band who were performing that night and I think it's fair to say that they were his primary concern. We had the briefest of chats about songs that we all knew, picked three of them and walked out into THE COLOSSEUM!!!!!!!!
There were at least 50,000 (50) people there and they were going WILD (seemed mildly interested). They had been waiting for us all night (they had been waiting for their mates all night) and were psyched about hearing our awesome interpretations of The Popular Music Of The Day (were wondering how to sneak a sip of the bottles of 20/20 they'd smuggled in without any teachers seeing)
We opened with "Columbia" by Oasis. I'd prepared a lengthy guitar introduction based on a live version of the song from a bootleg album I owned called 'Listen Up', which featured an Oasis show from Vancouver in '95. It was going to be stunning. But Chris came in with the start of the song too early and I had to prematurely end the axe histrionics For The Good Of The Team.. The 'fans' were obvs gutted. After "Columbia", we went straight into "Cigarettes & Alcohol", then ended with "Song 2" by Blur. And it kinda went reallyreallywell. I know right? Looking back it's clear that Morgan held everything together. We were bloody lucky to have him play with us. Not only was he a dead good drummer, he also knew the songs (probably better than the rest of us). At the time though, I naïvely (theme?!!) thought that this 'performing music' business was dead easy. It didn't matter that we'd be playing with a different drummer the next night as Morgan couldn't (didn't want to?) play with us again. We'd be ace. Hmm...
Anyways, we were chuffed to have played through all our songs and have got a good response. It was a wicked feeling being 'backstage' after (what we thought was) an amazing performance. I remember thinking "I wish I could do that again". Which was lucky, as my other ACT were due on about half an hour later.
Hall Aid I: A running order.
Forbidden Planet {shudder} were a better band than Carenza (mostly because we actually were a band rather than two guitarists and a singer), but as I 'only' played bass, I considered them my second group, so I wasn't as nervous before we went on-stage. Also I was confident that we knew (most of) the songs inside out given our weekly Friday night practice sessions. We opened with "Supersonic" then played Radiohead's "Creep". The crowd seemed genuinely up for it. We were genuinely up for it. Then we had to stand around while Jonny played acoustic guitar with some random girls who sang "Torn" by Natalie Imbruglia. Mr Hines also appeared in a pinafore (?!!) to play tambourine with them. Awesome. I seem to remember that the rest of us didn't know we'd be interrupted mid-set. I DEFINITELY remember feeling like a right wally, stood on stage with my limp bass in my hand, trying to melt into the carpet. The song seemed to go on for an eternity. I could feel my face getting redder. Awesome. After several decades, the last chord rang out and we were able to finish our set. We played a slightly nervous "Live Forever", then ended with "I Am The Walrus". The latter was dedicated to Mr Hines, who was a massive Beatles fan, and was played in the style of the Oasis cover version to appeal to the masses. Me, Ricky and Winny were never that happy playing it as we didn't know the arrangement that well, it being a last minute addition to the set. Ricky and I had a chord cheat sheet on the floor so we'd remember what to play. As I looked down at a blurry scribble, I realised that I needed glasses. I also realised that my bass was VERY loud. My fingers tried to make a break for it, darting over random frets as they did so. My legs wobbled and I prayed for the outro to come as that was the only bit of the song I was confident playing. Good. God.
All in all, the night went well though. We adjourned to the Queens pub in Morley town centre for celebratory drinks and talked about how we were going to SMASH IT at the second gig the next day...
Hall Aid II, Saturday 28th March 1998 / Woodkirk High School
The previous evening had been a 'current students only' event, but the Saturday night concert was for parents and ex-students as well. With Morley High being sans a big enough space after the fire, the show moved up the road to Woodkirk High School's main assembly hall.
Winny couldn't play with Forbidden Planet, as he had a gig with his other band Emerald, so we decided to do an acoustic set. I got to Woodkirk early on Saturday afternoon so we could run through a few songs and get a set together. Jonny hadn't wanted to play any of Leigh's songs the night before, presumably because it would have been the first time the audience had heard them, but Leigh was super keen for us to play at least one on the Saturday, so we rehearsed a fantastic tune of his called "Sleeptalker". Leigh had a collection of 5-10 really good tracks by that point, and I was chuffed that we had the chance to play one of them. His songs were one of the main reasons I'd been so keen to join the band. Jonny wanted us to play "I Am The Walrus" again for Mr Hines so, to avoid a repeat of the night before, I'd spent all morning practicing the chords. We chose "Talk Tonight" by Oasis as our third song after a long discussion about songs we all knew how to play. While we were practicing, a guy called Scott, who Jonny and Mr Hines knew, turned up with a brand new twin-neck Ovation guitar. He jammed with us a bit and Jonny invited him to perform with us that night. Leigh and I weren't overly impressed, particularly as Scott didn't really know any of the tunes we were playing, so we compromised and asked him to play with us on just one song. After going through the songs a few times we all left and I went home to change.
While writing this blog I've found that my memories have occasionally been a bit hazy. But I can be one hundred percent sure about the the second Hall Aid show thanks to a BLOODY VIDEO of the event, taken by Geoff, Morley High's caretaker. IKR!
Although I rewatched the performances by both my bands several times after I got the tape, I haven't seen them for years, and I don't think I've ever watched the full video. For the Good Of The Blog I dusted off my VCR and had a shufti. As I'm not a screaming masochist, I didn't watch the whole three-hour plus (!!!) show, but, with the aid of the fast-forward button, I caught the 'highlights'. There was an awful lot of: groups of girls dancing to CDs of popular music of the day. There was a fair amount of: Mr Hines and his band, 'The Beanz', playing songs with guest vocalists. There was a bit of: Teachers, litch, doing the funniest thingz (i.e. 'singing' Songs From The Seventies). And then there were my bands...
The running order had been changed from the previous night, so Forbidden Planet were up first for me this time. Except we'd had a bit a discussion and decided that we didn't want to be Forbidden Planet anymore. After a quick brainstorm backstage, we became 'Lucky' (after the Radiohead song). In retrospect it's probably an even worse name than Forbidden Planet. Anyways... The name wasn't the only thing that had changed since the night before. As I said earlier, Winny couldn't play drums on the Saturday, so the four of us had decided to do an acoustic set. Except Ricky didn't turn up. We waited and waited and eventually I gave him a call. He explained that he thought we didn't need him as the songs would sound overblown with four of us playing guitar (I suspect nerves might have been a factor as well). We were pretty pissed off at the time but, watching the footage of the gig back, he probably had a point.
The comperes (a couple of suited-up jockish lads who were in that year's upper sixth) introduced us as 'Lucky', and told the audience that they were "lucky to have" us. The wags. After waiting for the laughter to die down, we crept onto the stage, replete with Scott and his twin-necked GUITARBEAST. I'd borrowed an acoustic from my Dad's mate Tony, as I didn't have one and my stupid teenage face thought Dad's black guitar looked uncool. Unfortch it didn't have a pickup, which meant that it couldn't be plugged in so no-one could actually hear it. Awesome. This wasn't really a bad thing, given that there were four of us playing exactly the same thing during our first song, "Talk Tonight". At least it gave me something to hide behind while I was doing backing vocals.
Lucky performing "Talk Tonight". Left to right: Scott plus GUITARBEAST, Jonny, Me, Leigh.
Next up was "Sleeptalker". Watching it back on the video, I reckon it still comes across as a quality song, despite my shonky backing vocals and our general lack of performance experience. But, dear reader, you can decide for yourself with this rather fuzzy clip, coming at you from The Mists of Time:
Lucky - Sleeptalker
We again had to take a mid-set break while Jonny performed "Torn" with a couple of girls and Mr Hines on tambourine. Which was nice. At least we could retreat to the edge of the stage at Woodkirk. After the spotlights had been turned back on us, and Leigh's girlfriend had thrown a pair of knickers at him, we got ready to play our last song, "I Am The Walrus". It began badly, with me playing in the wrong key, but, after stopping and starting again, we got it together - all the practice that morning clearly paid off. My "woo" backing vocals sound spectacularly lame on the video, and there's a horribly out-of-tune bit where my voice goes all breaky and high-pitched on one of the "crying" lines at the end of the verse, but other than that it's pretty good; the crowd are noticeably quieter and give us a genuine sounding round of applause at the end.
Twenty minutes later I was back on stage with Carenza. Mike couldn't play bass for us (he was working at Argos at the time and occasionally had to stay late on Saturdays), but I'd got it into my head that we'd "look stupid" without a bass player, so we asked Jonny to 'play' with us. As he didn't know any of the songs, this meant him miming along with the bass amp turned off. To his credit he agreed, and it's a bloody good job he did... After being introduced, I strummed my guitar to make sure it was in tune and nothing came out except a horrible electrical buzzing sound. Jonny helped me trouble-shoot and eventually we realised it was because I hadn't plugged my guitar lead into my wah pedal properly. Problem = solved.
Despite the fact that the previous night's set went really well, we decided to change things around, and opened with comedy-rawk song "Everything About You", by Ugly Kid Joe. This might have been ok if our new drummer knew the song. He didn't. Things had gone so well with Morgan the night before, that the fact that we'd only met the new drummer guy (a student teacher who'd come to Morley High after we'd left), 30 seconds before we went on, and that he claimed not to know any of the tracks we were due to play, seemed only a minor inconvenience. To be fair to him he gave it a good shot, but the time change, three minutes in, completely threw him, and the song disintegrated. Chris made the best of things with a few "woos" to prompt the crowd into clapping and we lived to play another song...
Following a guitar change from Jamie, and an equally unnecessary bit of guitar widdledry from me, we started "Cigarettes & Alcohol". You lucky people can watch said song below. It is quite possible that my guitar is a tiny bit too loud... Note the bit in the middle where the drums should stop but don't, and I look round like someone has pissed on my chips.
Carenza - Cigarettes & Alcohol
We ended our set with "Supersonic", with Leigh joining Chris on lead vocals. As our drummer didn't know the song I attempted to demonstrate the opening beat by tapping my hands on my legs. It didn't work. Eventually Chris told me to just start, so I cranked out the opening riff. It sounded IMMENSE in the massive hall, particularly when Jamie and drummer blokey joined in, and I really started to enjoy myself. I was probably enjoying myself too much and, like a total knob, I decided to play part of the main solo with my guitar between my legs. Jamie had semi-dared me to do this before we went on, but a desire to show off was the real reason for my acrobatics. DEAR GOD.
Carenza performing "Supersonic". Left to right: Me (looking like a berk playing guitar between my legs), special freakin' guest star Leigh, Jonny, Chris, Drummer Bloke (behind Chris), Jamie. Note how engrossed everyone is in my guitar playing exploits.
Under the circumstances the set went quite well. Drummer blokey came up to us afterwards and said "thanks lads, I enjoyed that". He'd obviously forgotten about the first song.
We went to The Frontier in Batley afterwards, and I had several celebratory Jack Daniels and Cokes. After enduring the bizarre 'laser show' interlude that happened every night at 'The Big F' (punters were cleared off the dance floor while some green lasers shot around the ceiling and the theme to Star Trek: The Next Generation was played. Seriously), we ended up at the Oasis Indian restaurant next door, where Chris, Jamie and I talked about how we were going to do more of The Gigs and how it was going to All of The Ace... In the event, these would be the only shows we'd play together. Sad face.
Some important things that I learnt from Hall Aid:
- If something goes wrong, carry on. Do not give funny looks to your bandmates like a British version of Billy Corgan.
- It's better if your drummer knows the songs you are going to play. It's better still if you practice with your drummer beforehand.
- Playing your guitar between your legs makes you look like a right douchebag.
I was the guitarist in Inertia. This gig was on my 18th birthday too!
ReplyDeleteOur set (and some of yours) is on this video that our singer Westy's parents took at the Woodkirk gig. (Not sure if this will work or not?) https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6urk0zydOveVmVFUGFscXZjZTA/edit?pli=1
Our set was Basket Case, Parklife, Kung Fu, Song 2 and Beetebum.
We thought it sounded pretty good on the Saturday at Woodkirk (we were terrible in the 6th form common room), but having seen the video it's clear we were being a bit optimistic. Not sure the microphone on those 90's video camera did anyone any favors though.
I can't believe how clearly you recall those events, and it is astonishing that you kept the ticket and running order for the gig.
Never thought I'd be reading a blog about that set over 14 years later.
Vinny.
Ha, that's ace mate! The video I've got has got you on too so I can upload it if you like? It's pretty rubbish quality though, as you can see from the vids of my bands! These shows were easy to remember, it's the random pub gigs from the early 2000s that I'm struggling with.
ReplyDelete