Playground + Novacain + Mainline / The Duchess, Leeds

When we got our first gig at the Duchess in February 1999 we were made up. It was one of the most prestigious venues in Leeds and had played host to the likes of Oasis and Nirvana in their early days. Less than a year later we found out that the brewery who owned the Duchess had sold the property and that it was going to become a Hugo Boss shop. Funny how things change innit? Of course since then we'd realised that the Duchess wasn't ALL THAT anyway; we'd played there three times and had such a bad experience at the third of those gigs, our first headline show, that we'd vowed never to play the place again. When Chris, a school friend of mine, offered us a support slot there with his band Playground though, we thought we may as well play for old times sake. We knew we'd never play there again, we weren't under pressure to bring hoards of fans with us and, as we'd already been booked for gigs at Joseph's Well and The Cockpit in January, it meant we could treat the month as a 'tour of Leeds'.

The Duchess produced its own free monthly magazine, Backbeat. Along with interviews with bands and competitions, the magazine included a small write-up of all upcoming shows. For our support slot with Playground we were described as having a "powerful psychedelic rock sound". At least were weren't compared to Mansun...

Mainline were on first and played a solid enough set of Oasis-esque rock songs. The audience didn't seem that interested, which we found a bit worrying as Mainline were a lot closer in style to Playground than us, and their fans made up the majority of the crowd. It didn't seem to bother Mainline themselves though. Chatting to them afterwards, they came across as a sound bunch of lads and, at the time of writing 12+ years since this gig, they're actually still together which is more than can be said for...  every single band I played with while I was in Novacain.

In the last few months before it closed The Duchess played host to several new bands, like Muse and Doves, who would go on to be massive, as well as the famous-for-five-minutes JJ72. Kirsty MacColl, who was tragically killed in a boating accident later the same year, also played probably her final Leeds show at the venue on 10th February. For all its problems The Duchess had a great booking policy, showcasing a real mix of music, and it was a fantastic experience for a young band like us to play on the same stage as groups we read about in the music magazines.

Leigh started our set by thanking "all our fans for not coming down tonight". We'd actively discouraged people from coming to the Duchess as we wanted to make sure we sold as many tickets as possible for our headline shows at the Cockpit and Joseph's Well at the end of the month. We were also concerned that we'd suffer from the same problems with sound on-stage that had caused us to boycott the Duchess after our last gig there. In the event the monitor mix was actually ok, easily the best we'd ever had at the venue, and the recording of our set that we bought after the show makes for much easier viewing than the tape of our previous Duchess performance.

We opened with a rejigged version of "End Of The World", as debuted at Joseph's Well before Christmas. After the show we realised that not much happened in the start section and changed things around again in time for our next gig at Joseph's Well. If only we'd realised that the original arrangement we came up with when we wrote the song was much better...

Novacain - End Of The World (Live)

An assured version of "Back Row Exit" followed and got a reasonable cheer from the rather sparse crowd. Things went downhill somewhat with next song "M.F.S" though... As ever the duelling guitar section, where me and Mike were meant to trade 'licks', was hampered by the fact that we were standing at opposite sides of the stage and couldn't really hear each other. And the unenthusiastic response from the audience set the tone for the rest of the set. We thought that Playground's fans would appreciate our slightly heavier tracks, "Stick To What You Know" and "Party Politics", we thought wrong. People disappeared to the bar and we found ourselves playing to the handful of friends and girlfriends we'd brought with us.

From left to right: Mike, Winny, Leigh, Suggy, Me.

We ended proceedings with "Scarborough Warning" and "Second Time Around". "Scarborough Warning" was still known as "New Song #3" at the time as we'd only written it a few weeks earlier. We considered it our strongest track but, despite us giving a spirited performance, the crowd's muted response caused Leigh to ask "do you not like that one?" when we finished. "Second Time Around" was rather shambolic, with me playing the wrong chords at the start, but we pulled it together at the end. It wasn't the greatest show we'd ever done but at least we'd managed to exorcise the Duchess Poor Sound Ghosts. And at least we'd never have to play there again.

Novacain - Scarborough Warning (Live)

Playground closed the night with their usual mix of silly songs, good songs and a man in a penguin costume running around the stage.

Playground may have had more fans on the night, but 'Nova cane' definitely won the battle of the flyers.

After we'd packed up I spoke to Chris from Playground in the doorway to the venue. He was quite complimentary about our performance but said he "thought we'd have brought more people down". I didn't have time to feel bad though as our conversation was brought to an abrupt end when one of Mainline ran past and threw the remnants of a doner kebab in Chris's face. Awesome.

Set list (Novacain)

1. End Of The World
2. Back Row Exit
3. M.F.S.
4. Stick To What You Know
5. Party Politics
6. Scarborough Warning
7. Second Time Around