When Novacain first started playing shows in early 1999, promoter John ‘Flatnose’ Trueman seemed like the only game in town. A year and a half later, things had changed dramatically. John’s main venue, The Duchess, had closed down and the Cockpit had decided to stop letting him put on unsigned bands because the extra bar staff and security they had to pay for, due to the size of their main room, meant they weren’t making enough money from his, often poorly attended, shows. There didn’t appear to be anywhere else for John to go - Joseph’s Well and the New Roscoe were the only other established small venues in Leeds and they both had in house promoters. We performed at one of his last shows in the Cockpit’s main room and he seemed quite depressed when we spoke afterwards. However, a month or so later John rang to offer us a gig at the Feast & Firkin (now The Library). It looked as though he’d fallen on his feet; the pub had a largish upstairs room and was ideally located near the university. He booked us in for a headline show in April and the Novacain Promotional Machine swung into action i.e. we made some flyers.
Flyer and poster from The Gig That Never Was.
We were looking forward to playing but, a week or so before the gig, John rang to say that he’d had to cancel all his planned events at the venue. Following an inspection, the Fire Brigade had ruled that the upstairs room represented a fire hazard as there was no fire escape and the stairwell wasn’t suitably insulated. It wasn’t all bad news for Flatnose though... During his two-month long exile to the Feast & Firkin, the Cockpit had added a stage to their middle room to enable smaller shows to take place. He was able to begin putting on gigs in this room, now called the Rocket, almost immediately after his shows at the Firkin fell through and he offered us a slot there in June in recompense for having to pull our April date.
In the two months since our last gig at Woodkirk Valley Country Club, we'd not achieved a great deal. Although I'd missed a couple of practices due to my second year exams, we still generally rehearsed twice a week, for three hours at a time, yet we'd only managed to write two songs since November 1999. The frustration was beginning to set in, particularly as our two newer tracks seemed to be taking us in opposing directions. "Gibbsy's Street" was a danceable, quirky, indie-pop song, while "Sibling" was a melodic acoustic track, with slightly sentimental lyrics that was more reminiscent of our earlier material. Leigh, who wrote "Sibling", loved the song while our drummer Winny really disliked it. Me, Mike and Sug fell somewhere in the middle; we thought it was a fantastic tune, but it wasn't the direction we wanted to go in.
When we met up for soundcheck on the day of our Rocket show, it was clear that we weren't just suffering from musical differences. I'm not suggesting that bands should wear uniforms, but they should look like they've actually met at least once before. I arrived wearing combats and a Dark Star t-shirt, nailing my alt-rock flag to the freakin' mast, while Leigh turned up in a Leeds United shirt with an England flag (!) Suggy is a DAPPER chap, but he was wearing shorts. SHORTS I TELLS YER! It may have been a warm day but there is LITCH no excuse for wearing shorts on stage. None at all.
Access All Areas. Apart from the backstage areas. Basically, we were allowed in the bar. Cheers.
The Rocket was an ok venue but we thought it was a bit of a step down from playing the main room. We weren't even allowed to use the dressing rooms so we had to hang round in the bar with the proles until the show started {sadface}
First band, Loco, played knock-about punky grunge not very well. They were really young and probably would have benefited from a few more months in the practice studio before they started gigging. When we first played for John we thought we must be good to get a show in Leeds. Watching Loco made me realise, more than ever, that Flatnose would put anyone on as long as they "pulled a crowd". Which Loco certainly did. The Rocket was packed with their school chums while they played. Any thought that we might have a similarly large audience were dashed when Loco's friends all left immediately after the band came off stage.
Next up were Infinitum and Mir. We'd played with the former at the Cockpit in January and their set at this show was much the same; solid, but not especially memorable, chart rock, with a touch of the Manics post-'Design for Life'. Mir were more interesting, although, vocals aside, I didn't really see the Pavement likeness, as advertised on John's poster for the gig. Some nice guitar parts though.
Novacain with 'that' England flag. Left to right: Me, Win, Leigh, Mike, Sug.
By the time we took to the stage for our headline performance the crowd had thinned noticeably. Despite the sound on stage being atrocious, we played ok, although the audience were rather 'polite', which I'm going to optimistically attribute to the heat. It was hard to reconcile my own idea of what Novacain was at the time, and what I thought we could be, with yer actual facts: we were playing a batch of songs I was increasingly unhappy with to a dwindling number of friends and family. Not that it was all bad of course, I loved hanging out with the guys in the band and I'm still proud of some of the tunes we wrote, but, not for the first time, I began to think that big changes needed to be made.
A post script:
Hard as it is to believe, back in the early 2000s the internet was not the all pervading force it is now. Although it had been around since the mid-'90s, I had almost no experience of The Worldwide Web until I went to university and even then I only really used e-mail. During the week before teaching started for my third year however, I decided to spend an afternoon 'surfing'. I found a PC in the Woolhouse Cluster, opened up Netscape Navigator and wondered what to do next. I searched for a few bands I liked on Lycos then decided to see what the net had to say about Novacain. I wasn't expecting to find anything so was pretty shocked when a couple of hits appeared on a website called Leeds Music Scene. My heart jumped into my mouth as I realised they were for reviews. OH MY FREAKIN' GOD, SOMEONE HAD COME TO OUR SHOWS AND JUDGED US!!! o_O My finger hovered over the mouse button until I plucked up enough courage to click one of the links. And there it was: a review of this show at the Rocket. Although we were the headliners we were barely mentioned, the reviewer merely stating that "the Madchester-style swagger of the Leeds Utd shirted Novacain" made Mir seem more alt-rock than they'd appeared at an earlier show he'd attended. Although I was pleased that no mention had been made of the England flag, I still think I'd have been up for quitting if I'd read the article at the time. Thankfully, six months later, things had changed for the better, but I was still hurt by the 'if you haven't got anything nice to say, don't say anything at all' nature of the review. I later learnt that, if you are totally confident in what you're doing reviews don't really bother you, if you're at all insecure though they can really bite...
Acting THE goat post-gig. Left to right: Lucy (Suggy's sister), Sug, Gibbsy, Me.
Set list (Novacain)
- End Of The World
- Stick To What You Know
- Scarborough Warning
- Gibbsy's Street
- Back Row Exit
- Second Time Around
- Step To It
- Sibling
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