We worked really hard during the first quarter of 2001 to write some new songs and hone our set. We made a conscious decision to avoid gigging for a while to allow us more time to write, and our show at the Royal Oak in Keighley on 12th April was our first full-band live performance in nearly three months. Despite a shaky start it had gone really well, we were chuffed with our three new tracks and we were looking forward to a TRIUMPHANT return to the Leeds scene at Joseph's Well on the 19th.
We promoted the show more than usual, creating flyers that proclaimed our five month absence from live performances in Leeds and urged fans not to "miss the first chance to hear [our] new material". We also, rather embarrassingly, made up a quote about our last show at the Rocket, which compared us to Idlewild, the Super Furry Animals and the Madchester scene of the early 90s. Hmm...
A flyer for the show in ALL its glory.
Regular readers of this blog (hi Dad!) will know that things rarely went plan for Novacain, and this show was no exception. First band, Bill Posters, were a late addition to the line-up and managed to bring a whole, entire, person with them to witness their set of standard punk songs. They were really young and technically proficient for their age, but they didn't have anything approaching a unique sound. Of more pressing importance to me at the time was that, despite this being our glorious comeback gig, the Well was dead and Novacain band members made up 90% of the audience while Bill Posters played.
Where were our friends? Where were our families? Where were the guys from Keighley who'd said they'd come after our gig at the Royal Oak? I was still waiting for an answer by the time Hatch took to the stage. They were a pretty decent band, with some good tunes hidden amongst the slightly sloppy playing. Although they seemed to veer between Britpop-type indie on the one hand, and metal on the other, they managed a degree of coherence which Novacain had struggled to achieve, given our own mix of, not necessarily complimentary, influences.
Along with the regular nights put on by the Well themselves, by April 2001 the venue was playing host to regular nights, such as 'Naked Bar Guitar,' run and compared by Chris Catalyst of Eureka Machines and Sisters Of Mercy fame, the Blue Star Music showcase, Northern Sound Exposure and the weekly 'Last Laugh' comedy night.
People finally started to arrive around 9.30, but the trickle never became a flood and we played to a disappointingly small audience of around 20. The lack of interest knocked our confidence and our set started badly. We messed up "Meaning Of Life", Mike snapped a string after "Quick Release", sparking an impromptu run through the theme to 'Postman Pat' (!) by me, Sug and Win, and the new songs sounded undercooked. Listening back to a recording of the show also reveals that there was work to be done with our backing vocals, particularly mine.
Novacain - The Meaning Of Life (Live)
This live version, from the Joseph's Well show, is the only recording we have of the one and only Novacain song entirely written by me. Win messed the drums up in the middle and the backing vocals are a bit shonky, but I don't think its an entirely charmless performance.
We were a much better band than we had been a few years earlier though and, rather than fold, we improved towards the end of the night and were even persuaded to encore with our cover of "Something For The Weekend".
Novacain - Something For The Weekend (Live)
We all loved the Super Furry Animals and jumped at the chance to learn a song by them when we decided to add some covers to our set for a gig at the White Hart pub in December 2000. I think we did a decent enough job and this live recording from our encore at the Well captures that, although, once again, the backing vocals are slightly suspect.
Set list (Novacain)
- Now You've Got It, Use It
- Cull
- The Meaning Of Life
- Quick Release
- Sibling
- Gibbsy's Street
- One For The People
- Echo
- End Of The World Encore
- Something For The Weekend
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