When I was young my family weren't really into music. We had a tiny bit of vinyl (Buddy Holly, The Stones and "Paranoid" by Black Sabbath) but our record player broke when I was at 5 or 6 and we didn't replace it. Whenever we were in the car though, Irish folk music was permanently on the tape player thanks to my Dad, whose maternal family had come to Leeds from Ireland in the late 19th Century and never forgotten their roots. Summer holidays to Blackpool, the East Coast and Devon were soundtracked by the likes of "The Rose Of Allendale", the slightly depressing "Three Score And Ten" and the very bloody depressing "Last Of The Great Whales".
It was only towards the end of the '80s that Dad took a real interest in playing music though. Mum had bought him a nylon-string guitar before I was born and he'd learnt some simple classical pieces but I don't remember Dad playing much until I was in the last few years of junior school. The catalyst was an Irish folk group called Sláinte (later to become Blackthorn), who Mum and Dad first saw at the Roundabout pub in Wakefield after stumbling across a newspaper advertisement for the show. Dad was impressed and my parents ended up going to see them several times as a result. Always one for a chat, Dad got quite friendly with the band members, particularly their guitarist/mandolin player/singer, Tony. At some point Tony gave Dad a photocopy of the famous 'Soodlum's Irish Ballad Book', featuring lyrics and basic chords for lots of folk standards, such as "The Wild Rover" and "Cockles & Mussels".
Because he'd learnt classical guitar, Dad wasn't very good at playing chords. He managed to learn "The Leaving Of Liverpool" by arranging the song for fingerstyle guitar, but struggled with the rest of the songs in Soodlum's. Frustration led him to sign up for a guitar evening class at Morley High (where I'd recently been imprisoned after leaving junior school). During the course he learnt more chords, improved his technique and met an enthusiastic young guy called Wayne. Although Wayne was more into punk bands like The Clash and The Jam than The Dubliners, him and Dad became friends and the two of them ended up going to the Croppers folk club in Cleckheaton most Fridays. While there they met Paul, another guitarist, and the three of them starting playing songs together, with Dad providing vocals.
Several months down the line, Dad, Paul and Wayne, joined up with Tony, an amazing guitar player and multi-instrumentalist that Dad's mate Andy knew, and the four of them formed Bad Habit, an Irish folk band (natch) named after the large amount of cigarettes they all smoked. As Paul and Tony were the better guitarists, Wayne played bass while Dad sang and played banjo and mandolin when required.
Bad Habit circa 1995. From left to right: Paul, Wayne, Dad, Tony.
Bad Habit gigged quite regularly from the early '90s to the mid 2000s and, although I was too young to see them when they first started out, I did go to one or two shows when I was in the sixth form. I was still in my "you're so embarrassing Mum/Dad" phase but I remember feeling really proud of Dad, particularly when I overheard a couple of guys talking about what a fantastic frontman he was during a gig at the The Railway Tavern pub in Hensall in summer 1996.
Around the same time I first met Paul's son Mike. After a fruitless search for a bassist, I eventually asked Mike if he'd like to join Novacain on bass in late 1998. He later switched to rhythm guitar when his friend Suggy, an actual bass player rather than a guitarist who could play bass like me and Mike, joined in March '99.
As well as playing pubs and folk clubs, Bad Habit also performed at the Cleckheaton Folk Festival several times in the late '90s. Dad was friendly with the organisers, particularly a chap called Geoff, and when they were looking for bands to help with a fundraising event in 2000 he suggested Novacain. We were rather sceptical about playing, given that we were very much not a folk band, but we figured that we may as well accept the booking as it gave us the opportunity to perform to a new audience outside Leeds.
I'd never had an 'Artist' wristband before. Wow.
We got to Cleckheaton Town Hall quite early on the day of the show so we could soundcheck before the audience arrived. I remember being quite impressed with the size of the concert room and stage. We were used to being crammed into the corner of a tiny pub and the largest venue we'd played previously was the Cockpit in Leeds, which would have fit into Cleckheaton Town Hall at least three times over. It soon became immediately obvious why we'd not played any large venues... Although 30-40 people turned up when doors opened at 6.30, the concert room was so big they looked like a few grains of rice in a shoebox. The fact that the main lights were still on didn't help matters, creating an atmosphere akin to the last few minutes of a particularly unsuccessful school disco.
Speaking of which... opening band Image were made up 13-15 year old school kids (I swear they performed in their school uniforms). Although I was only 22 at the time this made me feel ancient and, as a result, I was too busy feeling sorry for myself to really absorb their music which, so the programme tells me, was "influenced mainly by soft rock". Nice. Hilariously the programme also tells me that, like Novacain, their bass player was called Suggy. LOL.
The "souvenir programme" for the event included brief descriptions of all the bands. I spent an evening coming up with a couple of witty paragraphs about Novacain, only to find that we'd missed the deadline for submission. Instead we got some anodyne crap about the venues 'Novacin' regularly played in Leeds and the fact that we'd had a couple of line-up changes. And they managed to spell Leigh's first name and Winny's last name wrong. Awesome.
Solo artists performed acoustic sets in the bar area in between bands but Mum and Dad and a few of our friends turned up after Image so I ended up 'working the room' and missed all the acts who were on while we waited our turn to play apart from a rock group called Recoiled. They were pretty decent, although once again a fair bit younger than us. While I was researching this article I read Recoiled's entry in the programme and discovered that their drummer at the time was actually my current work colleague James. It is indeed a small world. When I talked to James about the show he told me that Recoiled's singer, Amy, took part in The X-Factor several years later. Her cringeworthy audition is below. Cor blimey.
I don't remember Amy being so aggressive at Cleckheaton Town Hall.
By the time we were took to the stage, the town hall had filled up a bit and the lights had been turned down. The concert room still looked empty but there must have been around a hundred people there, which was the biggest crowd we'd played to at the time. We resisted the temptation to play some of our slightly more folky acoustic numbers, instead performing our standard electric set, which opened with "End Of The World" and finished with "Second Time Around". The audience was 45% school kids, 45% folk festival types and 10% our mates, but we went down quite well nevertheless. My abiding memory of the show is of my guitar strap falling off mid-solo and a guy from Purple PA, who were doing sound for the event, rushing on stage to sort it out while I kept playing like an Actual Rock Star.
From left to right: Suggy, Mike, Leigh, Win, Me. Atmospheric times...
...slightly spoilt in the second photo by the obvious lack of a capacity crowd.
The headliners for the evening were a seven piece band from Germany called Metamorphosis. They'd obviously supplied the programme makers with a brief history and some information about their musical style as their entry was entirely in German. Despite this I was looking forward to seeing the band, even if I had no idea what to expect. One of the festival's organiser's told us they'd been touring their numerous albums around the world since 1975 so I reasoned that they most be half decent. My enthusiasm lasted all of ten minutes though before the lure of the Hallelujah 'Madchester' club night at the Cockpit beckoned. Me, Mike, Sug and our mate Gibbsy were Hallelujah regulars at the time, due to our love of The Charlatans, Happy Mondays, Stone Roses et al., and I didn't want to miss out. We saw a couple of songs, but the only memory I have is of one of the female singers wearing a white feather boa.
Set list (Novacain)
We may have been the last band mentioned on the flyer, but at least we were on the flyer.
Set list (Novacain)
- End Of The World
- Back Row Exit
- Stick To What You Know
- M.F.S.
- Step To It
- Party Politics
- Scarborough Warning
- Second Time Around
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