Saturday 24th of March, 2001
Amazingly I am awake.
I do a flier for the Kamel Klub in April - A5 two-up on a sheet of A4 - and email it as a TIFF to Katrina to print out and hand out tomorrow night.
Tidy up a bit and hoover the living room and the hallway. I fully expect to hear a solid I-Told-You-So, but it only takes about five minutes if the last time you did it was a couple of weeks ago, not last year. And yes, you did tell me so. And yes, you were right. And no,I didn't listen.
Fail to get to gym again. I will surely get there eventually, hopefully before I am fully walrus-shaped.
Have a bath. Not quite the Ultra-Cleanliness that the Hot Room and Shower at the gym affords, but will have to do.
Lunch. Not so much a properly thought out meal as whatever I can muster - I am at the end of my supplies again. Rice with a tomato sauce that was left over from the time I made pizza last and some frozen Quorn pieces, sautéd and micro'd for a few minutes. It's the first time that I've actually had the Quorn bits without actually cooking them in a sauce of some kind or another. They really have done qute a good job of imitating chicken. I eat half and put the rest in the fridge for later.
I set off to Queen's park for a rehearsal with Simon and Tom (playing congas). I realise that in about 1988 I came here - I was aiming for a street parallel to the one I am going to today - to visit someone, misunderstood the directions and ended up in Notting Hill (actually quite a long way away). I have no idea how I failed to notice that I had been walking for over half an our to reach a place that was supposed to be five minutes from the station.
Simon plays us some grooves of the kind that perhaps he would like. i am playing through a tiny practice amp which is distorting and is in no way satisfactory. I will have to take my Trace Elliot to Finborough tonight. Which means that I will have to blag a lift from my Pa. Although being driven to gigs by your parents is embarrassing when you're 16, I suppose there must come a time when you don't care any more.
On way back, I pop into the newsagent's and buy Private Eye. I haven't bought one for weeks. How many have I missed? At least one. And for the first time since 1990.
In the corner shop I get a carton of milk and relent and buy baguette to have with honey for Afters (I had promised myself that it would only be home-made bread from now on, or some such bourgeois affectation).
Leave at 7:00 to get to the Finborough. Set stuff up. It transpires that Veronique barely suspects what we have in store for her. There is a sofa down there, which makes the place feel like a liveing room - dead cosy.
We sit around jamming a bit before the show starts - firstly Simon is extemporising on the theme of Kevin Ayres, then I'm jamming with Dave Russell on a sort of one chord blues theme and something a bit looser and jazzier.
It's a very good evening for floorspots - I do a couple, Ivor Game is down, Sarit from the VAC is there, a couple of others whose names I dont catch, as well as the usuals. The first spot (randomly chosen) is Dave, playing a Lightning Hopkins and a cover of the last Madonna single - I'm sure he nearly has enough madonna covers for an album now.
Generally the while living room vibe has made everything a bit laid back - I do Mr Wrong and admit that I'm on the verge of sending myself to sleep. I also play Secret Agent with the rectal concealment introduction. I'm not getting much back from the audience though, at least during the songs - perhaps they're even more laid back than me. I don't think I'm playing badly. But there's not much energy happening.
The first main act is Steve Dowsett, who plays a lot of new material he's been recording.
And then it's us. Well, first Simon and Tom have to make a toilet visit, leaving me standing there with the bass on, and then we're off. Start out doing the Groove and some talk of the heroics of love and then Simon's onto his Kevin Ayres again and I go into some kind of walking bass thing, back to the groove, back to the walking and then finish with the tempo ostensibly a lot faster, but playing the bassline at half-speed. This seems to go down well, so we do two others - For Michaelis and Artists in Rock, which, since I know them, I have some chance of punctuating.
We are certainly whipping up a lot more energy, or at least Simon is.
The Soundwave is advertised as being "Music, Poetry and Wierd Things", and I think it's possible that we managed to be all three.
It's actually quite tricky getting it all packed away after - the next act up, Dispersion, decide to open with something that's both long and silent, as I'm trying to get the leads into the back as quietly as I possibly can. Have to leave without really saying goodbye in order to get my lift home.