The final show in our January 'Tour of Leeds' was a headline appearance at the Cockpit for John 'Flatnose' Trueman. After our gig at Joseph's Well a few nights before, where technical problems and alcoholic overindulgence made for a rather disappointing evening, we were determined to put in an impressive performance.
Infinitum opened the show with a set of mainstream rock numbers, not a million miles away from the Manics post-Richey, although without the politics. In fact they ended with a (pretty decent) cover of "You Love Us" by said Street Preachers. Problem being that playing one of the better songs by a band you sound like makes your own songs seem a bit poor in comparison...
Chris, lead singer in Playground and a school friend of mine and Leigh's, had talked to us after soundcheck to ask if his band headline instead of us. Apparently the rest of Playground weren't pleased that they were going on second. At the time we bought into the view that headlining a show meant something - it was a vindication of our musical endeavours and suggested that we were a cut above other acts on the scene. Playground obviously thought the same thing. Of course this is a load of crap really. The reality of headlining for unsigned bands is that you generally play to fewer people, as the family and friends of groups who've performed earlier in the night have usually left, and you have to bring your drum kit and amps for the other acts on the bill to borrow. Awesome. Anyway an argument of sorts developed between us and Playground. They were adamant they'd sold the most tickets and should, therefore, go on last. Flatnose had been known to flip bills around when this occurred so we were mildly worried until Chris and Leigh talked to John and we found out that we'd actually sold more tickets than Playground anyway. I wasn't really expecting this as they had something of a 'following' and we'd already played two Leeds shows in the past few weeks but at least it put an end to the argument.
Playground once again gave an entertaining performance, although the rest of Novacain weren't taken, especially as one of the band said something that they should have been headlining instead of us from the stage. The more I saw of them, the more I liked them though, particularly as their guitarist Andy announced that this show would be the last time they'd perform the truly terrible song "Zanzibar", which was so daft I felt it detracted from the rest of their set.
We'd played with 22 Blue several times over the past year, and had seem them at one of John's gigs before Christmas, but this show was the last time we were on the same bill and I think it might have also been the last time I saw them. I don't remember very much about their set, other than the fact that it was decent as ever, without really having any stand out songs.
We went on at around 9.45 and played a more professional version of the set we'd debuted at Joseph's Well the Friday before, minus "New Song #1" which we began to drop when possible around this time as we thought it was too sombre in tone. Things went well and we all agreed that it was one of our better shows. Annoyingly it's the only one of our January gigs I don't have a recording of.
Afterwards John told me that he'd been worried we wouldn't "pull" a crowd, as we'd played gigs at the Well and Duchess in close proximity. He was obviously very happy that we ended up bringing so many friends and family members along in the end but he seemed unusually down considering he'd just earned a bucket load o'cash. Under normal circumstances he would have offered us another gig, but he wasn't in a position to do so... Not only was the Duchess closing in the next few months, the owners of the Cockpit had decided that it wasn't really worth their while paying for the bar staff and security required to put on a gig in their main room when John's shows rarely brought in large numbers of punters. There was talk of a stage being added to the Cockpit's middle room to enable smaller shows to continue but this wouldn't be ready for some time. Although Flatnose could be bloody irritating, and was far from trustworthy, he was also genuinely funny at times and, beneath all the bean counting, did seem to have a real passion for working with local bands. It was a shame to see him cast aside by the harsh economics of the music scene although it didn't take him too long to find another venue for his shows.
An aside:
Around this time I'd had to skip a few practices because of exams. The rest of the band met up at Mike's parent's house on a couple of these occasions to write and record. As well as 'laying down' an acoustic version of "Scarborough Warning", the band also wrote a track called "Phase 2", inspired by the rejection letters we'd got from record companies after sending out some of the demos we recorded at Cherrytree Studios.
Thanks, but no thanks.
Despite the fact I had nothing to do with it, I reckon "Phase 2" is one of Novacain's best songs. Leigh wrote a typically catchy melody, Mike added some really nice effects and Sug came up with a fantastic one-take keyboard solo on a crappy Casio Mike had knocking about.
Novacain - Phase 2
Set list (Novacain)
- End Of The World
- Back Row Exit
- Stick To What You Know
- M.F.S.
- Step To It
- Paracetamol
- She Keeps Me
- Party Politics
- Scarborough Warning
- Second Time Around
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