So somewhere near the start of the beginning…

… we pull our VW round the side of the Jericho Tavern in Oxford, and there’s already some fucker there – a van totally blocking the entire carpark.

Green milk-truck… with about a THOUSAND amps and speaker cabs and flight-cases and what-not in the back, being unloaded by these… people.

My first thought was… “Jesus… they’ve got really rough roadies in the UK”, and I felt this massive sense of dread… a bit like my first day of school, when the first thing I saw was this massive sign over the school gate saying “NO SPAZMOS”. Oh fuck I though.

They looked a bit like the band off this:

But they were the roadies.

God knows what the actual band were like. Unimaginable. We parked outside and went into the bar-bit downstairs and got a beer. Sat around the table, not really saying a whole lot. One pint, 4 straws.

(Time passes)

After a while one of roadies from earlier appears… looks around… I was all “Oh shit, he’s coming over here”.

Comes over, crouches down at our table… and with creamily devastating English charm says “We’ve gone over time a bit – you’re probably not going to get a sound-check. It’s all going to be a bit rock and roll I’m afraid” – with a smile that could knock birds out of trees, and we’re all “yea, ok, sure – no worries”

It was this guy:

Not an actual roadie apparently.

Turns out that none of them were. These people. The band:

Shake Appeal – probably biggest band in Oxford at the time; definitely the loudest. By the time we went on, the place was absolutely rammed to the ceiling with misfits and fringe-dwellers – mixtures of man-alive. Earth People. It was a LOT better than any of the London gigs I’d been to in the previous year. It fucking went off man. Bedlam.

…

Tips for Newbies?

Never do your first gig (with a new-band-config) in front of a big audience. There are a load of technical issues that you only find out about by experience. Me? It was not turning up with an extension chord. I played the entire gig standing by the back wall of the stage facing sideways towards the drum-kit, because that’s all the 1m long cable that came with the echo machine would allow.

I think we did a good gig. No idea. We probably didn’t – it definitely didn’t matter. People were leaning all over the stage and yelling stuff and spilling their beer. Hellish crusties and gorgeous Oxford chicks and wall-eyed-maniacs, and the whole place just fucking… shouting. 8-deep at the bar and people falling out of windows. It rocked.

I slept in the car that night… or like didn’t sleep… head a-buzzing and a-blaze with having just blundered into something utterly amazing – far better and far worse than I could possibly have imagined.