Just kind of saving myself for the scene

Published on Wed 13 Apr 2011

I'm moderately wasted in a hotel room in Leeds when I should almost certainly be sleeping. We're up here for a work thing that consisted of bothering innocent members of the public as they went about their daily business, and playing a LOT of table football. Which I am really good at unless I'm playing someone who knows what they're doing. Fortunately the losers I work with mostly don't know what they're doing. I've not been to Leeds before. It seems a bit like a smaller Birmingham with a different silly accent. Don't see myself coming back any time soon but, if nothing else, the taxis are nice and cheap.

I went to a really enjoyable show at The Haymakers on Saturday - The Singing Adams, Deer Park and The Esqueleto Foundation. We turned up halfway through the first band, having been sitting by the river with a beer, which was a shame, because they were great - they're all old hands at being in bands round here, and know how to make a really big noise. I'm not sure they'll be doing it that much, but I'll definitely try and see them next time they play. I'd never heard of Deer Park but they (or he in this case - the rest of the band were touring with other people) seem to be playing some decent gigs in London. It was kind of alt-country with pleasingly sinister lyrics. I was so impressed I bought, count them, 2 CDs, which almost never happens. He seemed like a really nice guy too. The Singing Adams were easily the best I've seen them - they seemed more coherent and comfortable (and the songs are becoming more familiar) than at The Portland last year. Though I may have been a bit tipsy by then as I was singing along quite loudly at times, especially to St Thomas. There was a great moment during the encore when Steve just started wandering round the crowd playing what may have been a Leonard Cohen song (none of the people I was with were sure, and googling the lyrics wasn't completely conclusive). A good night. Though we got chips from Ali at the end of my road and he forgot to cook one portion of them. Not my portion thankfully. 

I did my first arranged-more-than-3-hours-beforehand gig for ages last night at a pub in Histon (a village just outside Cambridge whose football team was, until they got relegated this week, a bit of a thorn in the side of Cambridge United. I hated them until last week, but feel bad now) and had a nice time. It was a bit easy to see the sad faces of the audience as I was playing, but all the people I thought were hating it most were the ones who bought (or took) stuff (giving CDs away seems to be proving more profitable than selling them for some reason). I really want to play more. Even at venues where you're looking at a kitchen the whole time you're playing. I'm determined to make some kind of doomed token effort when the next CD is ready so that I can complain that nobody will have me.

Setlist: The Ghost of Paddy's Night Past, Muscle Memory, Magnetic or Rhetorical?, Watertight, This Place is Dead Anyway, A Folly or a Fortress, You Won't Break My Heart, In Sure and Certain Hope (the first time this has ever been played live - I was very nearly in tears at the end and spouted a bit of rubbish after - I think, lyrically at least, it might be the song I'm most proud of. It took 3 or 4 years to get every line just right, and I think that I did), Edinburgh, The Temptation of Adam (got right to the end before fucking up this time).