Win 'designed' the poster for our show at the Royal Oak. I'm saying nowt.
“Now You’ve Got It, Use It” was inspired by “Standing Here” by The Stone Roses, in that it
comprised of two distinct, and very different, parts. The first half was a cantering, Super Furry Animals-esque POP ASSAULT, led by a chunky riff written by Mike and lots of “ooh” backing vocals from me and Sug. After about a minute and a half, the track completely broke down to a jangly, early-Roses like section, with a catchy melody from Leigh.
Novacain - Now You've Got It, Use It
Mike recorded this version of "Now You've Got It, Use It" at Cherrytree Studios over the 24th and 25th March, using an 8-track recorder he'd recently bought. We added vocals at his parent's house later on, using a makeshift vocal booth set up in the garage. The noise at the start and end is a recording of me dropping a spoonful of sugar into a glass of Coke (give it a try kids!)
“Echo” was a more straightforward indie rock track, reminiscent of ‘Tellin’ Stories’ era Charlatans. Mike came up with some great chords for the verse and chorus, but it was the outro, led by Suggy’s looping bassline and Win’s pounding drums that really made the song.
Novacain - Echo
As with "Now You've Got It, Use It", we recorded "Echo" at Cherrytree and added vocals at Mike's parent's house. The chorus originally had backing vocals but they didn't really work. We dropped them for the final mix, but you can still just about hear them. My lead guitar part at the end was a total pain to get right for some reason.
The third track, “Cull”, was perhaps the pick of the bunch. It was our most successful attempt at a Radiohead-type song and featured some of Leigh's best ever lyrics (about the 2001 foot and mouth disease outbreak in the UK). I got to play horrible, dissonant, feedbacky guitar in the verse, before switching to a clean sound for the brilliant, Smiths-like middle eight written by Mike and Sug.
Novacain - Cull
Using money from the gig at the Royal Oak, we booked another session at Woodman Studios in Elland and recorded "Cull". Unlike most Novacain tracks, the majority of the instruments were recorded live at the same time as the drum track.
The Royal Oak wanted us to play two sets of at least one hour each, which was by far the
longest we’d ever been asked to play before. We thought we’d be ok with the covers and the new tracks, but we were still well short when we timed a couple of rough sets at practice. We added some older tracks like "Stick To What You Know" and the ubiquitous "Slipstream" and also worked up a perfunctory version of a new song by Leigh, which may, or may not, have been called "Feel My Force". It was a great track, similar in style to "Quick Release", but the die had been cast at this point and the feeling amongst the band, especially so Mike and Win, was that all new songs should be written by Novacain as a whole. This policy worked quite well during our three month break from gigging before the Royal Oak show but, despite being together for another year after our performance in Keighley, the band only wrote two more complete songs and "Feel My Force"'s one and only outing here marked the last time we played a new song completely written by Leigh.
Getting to the Royal Oak was a bit of a pain. Leigh had recently bought a two seater sports car, which hadn't gone down at all well with Mike. Because me and Sug couldn't drive, it meant that we had to take all our gear in just two cars. Ordinarily this wouldn't have been too bad, but we had to take our own PA to the Royal Oak. Mike had originally agreed to take the PA plus me and Sug, but we quickly realised that it wouldn't fit and had to call Win to come over and help out by squeezing a couple of speakers in between the drums in his boot. When we eventually set off, we managed to lose Win, who was meant to be showing us the way to the pub, and ended up driving blindly around the moors until we finally stumbled across the pub. It was at the foot of two huge tower blocks and looked rough as fook. Excellent.
The was no stage (natch), so we set our gear up in a corner, with our amps resting on the fitted seats. The place was already packed so we rushed through soundcheck and began our first set as soon as we could. We all seemed pretty nervous and made more mistakes than usual, especially on "Movin' On Up", which sounded appalling. Because the pub was so full, a guy was stood right in front of my microphone which meant everytime I sang I was inches away from his face and had to avoid looking him right in the eye. This did not help matters any.
It was very different from our first pub gig at the Rose & Crown a few years earlier though. Despite the fact that we only knew five people in the audience (Leigh and Win's girlfriends, my mate Spenner and Jamie and Dec from Freewheeler), we got a huge cheer after each song. During the break we were plied with drinks and could hardly get away from people wanting to tell us how good we were.
Spurred on by the compliments and free booze we relaxed and played a great second set. All three of our new songs went really well and we were asked back for three encores, of which we did two, playing "Now You've Got It, Use It" and "Laid" respectively, for the second time that night. Some indie looking types surrounded us after the show as though we were The Who ("we couldn't believe a band from Leeds was playing here!") and fought for the right to carry our gear to the cars for us. It was a much needed validation of hard work over the past few months. Several people claimed that they'd be making the trip to Leeds to see us at the Well the following week and we left pub a happy bunch.
Set list (Novacain)
Set 1
- The Way She Talks
- Something For The Weekend
- New Song #8 ("Feel My Force")
- Step To It
- Meaning Of Life
- Slipstream
- Stick To What You Know
- Movin' On Up
- End Of The World
- Now You've Got It, Use It
- Quick Release
- Yellow
- Cull
- Sibling
- Scarborough Warning
- Laid
- One For The People
- Gibbsy's Street
- Echo Encore 1
- Now You've Got It, Use It Encore 2
- Laid
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