Wednesday 11th of April, 2001
Not much to the day. I get up, amazingly. After the first hour or so (half an hour of sitting and then half an hour of making, eating and digesting breakfast), I seem to wake up quite thoroughly. Perhaps it has something to do with the colossal cup of coffee I drink each morning, I don't know. At this time of day, there's not much harm that a colossal cup of coffee can do.
I get to the gym, and at lunch I finish reading Moving Pictures and immediately move on to The Thief of Time which isn't out for a month. As it turns out, reading this book a month before it comes out is entirely appropriate.
I put in some practise on a solo guitar piece that I'd really like to play out more, but the right hand fingering is too fiddly. perhaps I'll do it a t the VAC tonight.
At 4:30 I just crash out completely and sleep for an hour, which I oughtn't to have.
In the evening I get to the VAC. When I arrive, it's already completely packed. I arrive just in time for the 7:30 curfew and am told that I can play but it has to be first. Now. I need to go and get a drink first.
(Grapefruit and soda, that is)
With only one song (and still a bit breathless from getting there), I plump for The Secret Agent's Dream which is the old standby and ought to be easy. It's a bit ragged. There's some kind of disturbance in the middle-towards-the-back-of-the-room (turns out to be a drunk old scotsman). I stay and watch a few acts (including Aiden McGee, very bravely doing a dead quiet one) then, when I go downstairs to the loo and to call Peter about running through some stuff with him on bass, I spot Dorothy. Fix a rehearsal tomorrow with Peter, and chat to Dorothy about music, life and her website until my bladder screams at me to relieve it, and then back upstairs.
Steve Chin appears - I ask him how he thinks it's going. Complete madness, he says. People overload. Article Dan points out the edginess of the crowd - one slip and they go for the throat. But there's nothing obvious about it. It's just an energy thing. You are very aware of their disapproval, though. Entertainment red in tooth and claw.
Still, that's the great thing about something that's free (the Kashmir proves the same thing) - people will actually come to it. People who would gladly pay £2:50 for a sandwich and upwards of £30.00 for a t-shirt are loath to spend anything at all to get into a gig.
I suppose that's just the way things are.
Still, I ought to remember the power of Free.
I stay until what I think is 10:00, but when I get home discover that it was 9:00 (a bit early to leave, I suppose, but then I'm sure they were glad of the space. It's not like those evenings where there are only four of you to begin with and they need every body they can get.
I get home, call Nina Finburgh (who's left a message on my answerphone) about the Kamel Klub on Sunday and carry on reading The Thief of Time until after bedtime. It really is very good.