After seeing Radiohead at the start of October, we decided to sack off "Until The Sun Bleeds", a track we'd been working on for a month and a half without getting anywhere, and write some new, more experimental, material. Win came up with a cool drum break, Mike added a minor chord, arppegiated riff, Leigh wrote a typically catchy melody over the top and, within one night, we had "One For The People". We could write songs after all...
Novacain - One For The People
We 'laid down' a demo of "One For The People" not long after it was written, using some equipment belonging to Mike, who was seriously getting into recording at this point, having started the second year of his audio engineering course at Leeds Met. I was busy writing essays when the bulk of the track was recorded so I added my lead guitar parts later (I've never really been happy with them). I'm not a huge fan of the telephone sound at the start, but overall it's a decent version.
We were booked to play the Rocket on 29th October with Flatnose John, but cancelled so we could concentrate our efforts on our next gig at Joseph's Well. Although we didn't play very often, all our gigs were in Leeds and we'd got into the rather bad habit of agreeing to shows that were only a week or two apart, which diluted our audience.
Another bad habit we had was arriving late to soundchecks. We thought we'd managed to turn things around at the Well, after setting up our gear on-stage before the sound tech had even arrived, until Sug called to say he'd missed his train and wouldn't be in Leeds until 7pm. We ended up playing a couple of songs without him before quickly going through "One For The People" when he eventually arrived.
Freewheeler seemed to collectively be in a surly mood and hardly said a word to us before opening the show. They played the same set they'd played a month earlier when me and Spen had seen them at the Well and left straight afterwards. Awesome.
Second act, Portabello, were good eggs and a super tight band. It was obvious that they'd been playing together for years, and they were really professional without being slick. That said, their songs were a bit 'music college' - high on technically impressive parts, low on memorable melodies and individuality. In common with a surprising number of 'unsigned' bands I've seen over the years, they had a kind of Chilli Peppers-lite funky rhythm section. They say that hardly anyone bought the first Velvet Underground album, but everyone who did formed a band. A hell of a lot of people bought 'Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magick' and 'Californication' and I'd HAZARD A GUESS that a substantial proportion of those formed an unsuccessful, technically decent, but ultimately rather bland indie beat combo with funk leanings in and around the North of England. Many thanks Flea. You knob.
Shortly before we were due on-stage, Suggy found that his bass wouldn't stay in tune. Further investigation revealed that some teeth had sheared off one of the tuning pegs. Which was nice. Luckily Portabello came to the rescue and lent us their bass. I thanked them before our first song, urging everyone to buy their CD. I know this because we recorded the show on MiniDisc. It makes for much easier listening than the other early shows I've got recordings of.
Around the time of our show at the Well I started adding reminders about guitar settings and song changes to my set lists. I always forgot to look at them though. Good one.
The start is a tiny bit sketchy, with Sug obviously getting used to his borrowed bass on "The Way She Talks". My guitar is missing from the beginning of "Stick To What You Know" thanks to a problem with my delay pedal and "Step To It" is a shockingly awful mess of out of tune vocals and out of time instruments. But... the last four songs are great.
We débuted "One For The People", which sounds decent. There's something special about playing a new song live for the first time, and the recording captures the giddy energy we obviously felt at finally having a fresh track in our set after months of song writing slog. I seem to remember that the crowd didn't really know what to make of the song at the time, and uncertain applause greats the final guitar swoosh on the recording.
Novacain - End Of The World (Live)
We finished with traditional set closer, "End Of The World". The track ends with me placing my wristwatch over one of my guitar pickups before turning on a delay pedal to give a continuous 'tick tock' effect. Nice eh? Yes. Yes it is.
"Quick Release" runs really well into "Gibbsy's Street" and it's clear that we'd improved dramatically as players since our early shows. We followed a really good version of "End Of The World" with a second airing for "One For The People" as an encore. Although probably not the Smash-Hit-Number-One-Single we thought it was at the time, the audience seemed to like it better the second time. My mate Ralph told me afterwards that he thought it was better than "Why Does It Always Rain On Me?" by Travis, his favourite song at the time. Looking back, I suspect he was taking the piss...
The October flyer for Joseph's Well includes most of the stalwarts of the Leeds scene at the time: Sugarvalve, Parisman, Phluid, Catalyst, D-Rail, Brazil, Albeit, 5'4", Circadian Rhythm, Edison Medicine, Circa, Milque, Orca, Being 747, along with a couple of bigger acts like Richard Green's post-Ultrasound band, The Somatics, and Cinerama, featuring David Gedge from The Wedding Present.
Although we loved playing the Well, we decided that we wanted to try and get some gigs at different venues, so this was our last show there for six months. Not that we were particularly successful in our attempts. We only played one show in Leeds in that time... and that was at the Rocket for Flatnose John.
Set list (Novacain)
- The Way She Talks
- Sibling
- Stick To What You Know
- Step To It
- One For The People
- Quick Release
- Gibbsy's Street
- End Of The World Encore
- One For The People
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