Ever since we played with Parisman at the Rose & Crown in Golcar we'd talked about putting on our own show. We hoped we'd be able to earn a bit of money to put towards our next recording session and maybe start a bit of a buzz around the band if we could stage a successful, regular, night.
We began looking for a venue in early 2000 and, although I'm not sure how we found it, ended up organising a meeting with someone at Woodkirk Valley Country Club on Leeds Road. The venue's main benefit was its location. Suggy and Mike both came from Dewsbury and their friends often struggled to get over to Leeds to see us. Woodkirk was much closer and therefore easier to get to for teenagers without enough money to pay for cabs/trains/buses, let alone their own transport. It was also quite near Morley where the rest of us grew up and we hoped that, if we could book a show in April, we'd be able to attract some of our school friends who'd come home from university for the Easter holidays.
Although the location was great for us, Woodkirk Valley itself left something to be desired. It was a golf club type place with two function rooms which looked like they'd last been decorated in the early '80s. When we went to check out the venue, a pensioner's aerobics class was taking place in one room while the other was empty. I don't think they were doing very well at the time and we were offered our choice of room, free of charge. We decided on the larger room and set about promoting our own show for the first time.
We wanted to get as many people through the doors as possible so we set the ticket price low, at £2.50 or £2 with a flyer. We also wanted to make as much money as we could so we decided that, rather than pay another band to support us, we'd do two electric sets with a short acoustic set in between. We practiced some older songs to pad out the running time, as well as working up a rudimentary full-band version of an old acoustic song of Leigh's called "Things Fall Apart". Luckily Leigh also wrote a new song, "Sibling", a few weeks before the gig, which we were able to arrange and add to the second set. I really liked "Sibling" but it did sound more like our older material and, with its slightly sentimental lyrics, was a world away from the 'cool' quirky indie rock I wanted us to write.
We made a real effort to hand flyers out and tell as many of our friends as possible about the show. I also rang (e-mail not being the preferred method of communication in those days) the Yorkshire Evening Post to ask them to include the show in their 'What's On' guide. Unfortunately I didn't explain the deal with the entry fee very well and the published listing simply said that the entry fee was £2, rather than £2.50 or £2 with a flyer.
When we arrived at the venue on the day, the room seemed much bigger than I remembered and I started to worry that we wouldn't come close to filling the place. It took a long time to set up the PA that we'd borrowed from mine and Mike's Dad's band, Bad Habit, and we finished soundcheck just before the audience started arriving. Because we knew the night would be hectic as it was without us trying to play records, we employed the services of DJ MiniDisc, who was cheap and didn't complain, to keep the crowd entertained between our sets. I spent ages putting three MiniDisc mixtapes together for the occasion, one of which didn't even get played.
By 8.30 we'd already had around 50 people through the door, which was cool but also made me a bit nervous as most of them were school friends who'd never seen Novacain before and I suddenly started to panic that I'd forget my guitar parts / they wouldn't like the songs / &c. We were also having problems with the entry fee. After the mix up in the Evening Post we'd decided to just charge everyone £2, but this meant people with flyers thought they should get their promised 50p discount and only pay £1.50. Sigh.
We'd put our better tracks into the second half of the show so I just wanted to plough through the first set without the audience losing interest. I was particularly worried about "Things Fall Apart", which we'd only rehearsed a couple of times. I calmed down a bit once we started playing though and the set went quite well. More people arrived as we were playing and by the time we got to the final songs, "Scarborough Warning" and "Second Time Around", the room was pretty full and we were getting a more lively response from the crowd.
During the interval I bumped into our original guitarist Ricky. It was the first time he'd been to see Novacain and it was also the first time I'd seen him since he'd left. We reminisced about the early days of the band and he was really complimentary about the new line-up. He told me about a bunch of songs he'd written in the past year and later gave Leigh a tape featuring eight tunes, which I thought were ace.
Leigh and I returned to the stage around 9.30 to play a (very) short acoustic set featuring "She Keeps Me" and "What Is It?", one of the first songs Leigh had written back when we were in the sixth form.
After another short break we started our final set with "Gibbsy's Street", probably my favourite track of ours at the time. The sound on stage was really good, we had a large and appreciative audience and I felt much more confident about the tracks we'd chosen to end the show. For the first time all evening I began to enjoy myself and we ended up giving one of our best performances to date. We even did an unplanned encore, playing our newest songs, "Gibbsy's Street" and "Sibling", for the second time that night.
After the show I talked to Chris, the singer in my first band Carenza, and Jamie, who'd also been in Carenza and had formed a band called Cloudburst after I left. I offered Cloudburst a gig with Novacain at Joseph's Well but, for whatever reason, that didn't happen until October, by which time they'd changed their name to Freewheeler and played the Well on a couple of occasions. Jamie was never one for compliments but I remember him saying "you were always good" when we talked about playing guitar, which I thought was really nice.
Gibbsy and his mate, who we'll call Bootsy, stayed behind as the rest of the crowd drifted off and asked to borrow my acoustic guitar. Suggy told me they'd decided to start a band together and, after a bit of cajoling, they played us a couple of tracks while we were packing up, with Bootsy singing and Gibs on guitar. They were much better than I thought they'd be but, as far as I know, they never played any shows together.
Novacain - Sibling
We recorded "Sibling" at Leeds Met on 21st May 2000, while Mike was studying sound engineering at the university. We only had a day to record so we never got round to recording backing vocals.
We made a real effort to hand flyers out and tell as many of our friends as possible about the show. I also rang (e-mail not being the preferred method of communication in those days) the Yorkshire Evening Post to ask them to include the show in their 'What's On' guide. Unfortunately I didn't explain the deal with the entry fee very well and the published listing simply said that the entry fee was £2, rather than £2.50 or £2 with a flyer.
When we arrived at the venue on the day, the room seemed much bigger than I remembered and I started to worry that we wouldn't come close to filling the place. It took a long time to set up the PA that we'd borrowed from mine and Mike's Dad's band, Bad Habit, and we finished soundcheck just before the audience started arriving. Because we knew the night would be hectic as it was without us trying to play records, we employed the services of DJ MiniDisc, who was cheap and didn't complain, to keep the crowd entertained between our sets. I spent ages putting three MiniDisc mixtapes together for the occasion, one of which didn't even get played.
By 8.30 we'd already had around 50 people through the door, which was cool but also made me a bit nervous as most of them were school friends who'd never seen Novacain before and I suddenly started to panic that I'd forget my guitar parts / they wouldn't like the songs / &c. We were also having problems with the entry fee. After the mix up in the Evening Post we'd decided to just charge everyone £2, but this meant people with flyers thought they should get their promised 50p discount and only pay £1.50. Sigh.
We'd put our better tracks into the second half of the show so I just wanted to plough through the first set without the audience losing interest. I was particularly worried about "Things Fall Apart", which we'd only rehearsed a couple of times. I calmed down a bit once we started playing though and the set went quite well. More people arrived as we were playing and by the time we got to the final songs, "Scarborough Warning" and "Second Time Around", the room was pretty full and we were getting a more lively response from the crowd.
The crowd started off small, but not as small as this picture suggests. Dad (left, in the denim jacket) kept a watchful eye on DJ MiniDisc while we played our first set. Left to right: Me, Leigh, Sug, Mike, Winny (behind Mike).
During the interval I bumped into our original guitarist Ricky. It was the first time he'd been to see Novacain and it was also the first time I'd seen him since he'd left. We reminisced about the early days of the band and he was really complimentary about the new line-up. He told me about a bunch of songs he'd written in the past year and later gave Leigh a tape featuring eight tunes, which I thought were ace.
Leigh and I returned to the stage around 9.30 to play a (very) short acoustic set featuring "She Keeps Me" and "What Is It?", one of the first songs Leigh had written back when we were in the sixth form.
Novacain - What Is It?
This version of "What Is It?" was also recorded at Leeds Met on 21st May. Mike needed two songs for an assignment and an acoustic track seemed like an easy option for the second of these.
After another short break we started our final set with "Gibbsy's Street", probably my favourite track of ours at the time. The sound on stage was really good, we had a large and appreciative audience and I felt much more confident about the tracks we'd chosen to end the show. For the first time all evening I began to enjoy myself and we ended up giving one of our best performances to date. We even did an unplanned encore, playing our newest songs, "Gibbsy's Street" and "Sibling", for the second time that night.
Left to right: Leigh, Suggy, Mike.
After the show I talked to Chris, the singer in my first band Carenza, and Jamie, who'd also been in Carenza and had formed a band called Cloudburst after I left. I offered Cloudburst a gig with Novacain at Joseph's Well but, for whatever reason, that didn't happen until October, by which time they'd changed their name to Freewheeler and played the Well on a couple of occasions. Jamie was never one for compliments but I remember him saying "you were always good" when we talked about playing guitar, which I thought was really nice.
Gibbsy and his mate, who we'll call Bootsy, stayed behind as the rest of the crowd drifted off and asked to borrow my acoustic guitar. Suggy told me they'd decided to start a band together and, after a bit of cajoling, they played us a couple of tracks while we were packing up, with Bootsy singing and Gibs on guitar. They were much better than I thought they'd be but, as far as I know, they never played any shows together.
It had been a thoroughly successful night and we took well over £200 on the door to put towards our next recording session. We talked about booking another show at Woodkirk Valley but shortly after we played a regular promoter took the venue on and, although we made some rather half-hearted attempts to look for somewhere else to stage a follow-up gig, we ended up falling back into our usual routine of playing for other people.
Set list (Novacain)
Set 1
- Slipstream
- M.F.S.
- New Song #1
- Party Politics
- Things Fall Apart
- Scarborough Warning
- Second Time Around
Acoustic Set
- What Is It?
- She Keeps Me
Set 2
- Gibbsy's Street
- Stick To What You Know
- Back Row Exit
- Step To It
- End Of The World
- Sibling Encore
- Gibbsy's Street
- Sibling
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