When I see stars

Published on Sat 13 Apr 2013

It's been a relatively musicy week. On Saturday I was playing guitar with Annie at a pub in Southend-on-Sea (we didn't want to leave the keyboard there on the back seat all day) so we went down early because it's somewhere we used to go to when I was little. In particular I remember what is now Adventure Island and used to be Peter Pan's Playground. There's a crooked house there, which (it turns out) is quite hard to get through as a grown up, but I remember us going a lot as children. There used to be a marker on it showing where the water had got to in the flood of 1953 and I kept looking for it, but it's been painted over I think. Which is a shame.

We got some above average but not spectacular fish and chips, spent a few quid on those 2p waterfall machines that even if you pretty much emptied out you'd put all the coins back in again, and had a go on various rides. I'm not good on rollercoasters so we had to check before each one that it didn't go upside down or anything. Everyone else on each one was a parent with their toddler. I actually quite enjoyed the last one. We also had a go on the go karts, which I was great at but not as good as the little chavvy kid who could go faster than everyone else because he was little.

There was a definite change in atmosphere about the place as the afternoon wore on. Run down turned to edgy. Mark Eitzel wrote a song about Southend. He wasn't wrong. 

The gig was ok. It wasn't exactly busy but people seemed to like it. I'd never played all the way through all the songs on guitar before the set, which was a bit of a risk, but we only decided to do that the day before. I felt like I did alright. I'd seen the guy before us, Bob Collum, back in the day at the Boat Race. I quite liked him then, but I liked him more now.

The venue toilets had some wonderful graffiti.

Here's my selection of gear. Would've been easier to take the keyboard

On Tuesday it was Annie's EP launch at The Slaughtered Lamb in London. They've been having decent gigs there for several years but there's never been anything I wanted to see enough to go to London for. It was a lot plusher than I expected, but I had imagined there'd be a stage. It was her first full band show in the UK. We had cello from Jo who plays with Emily Barker, cajon from Mike who played on all my recordings and backing vocals from Kerry Devine, who was the opening act. All of them were great. Gary Stewart who we stayed with in Leeds did the middle set. He has that thing where even if the songs were no good (which isn't the case) it's really compelling to watch him just because of how perfectly he plays the guitar.

Our set sounded really nice - the cello and drums and effortlessly great harmonies really filled it out. I've missed playing in bands. Saying that, the most exciting thing about the whole thing for me was that Max from Hollyoaks was in the pub upstairs. No sign of OB, but it's still the best celeb I've seen in a long time (I think he beats the twice-weekly sighting of Rory McGrath in Fitzbillies). Nobody else seemed very impressed.

The parking they have round there is interesting. They've got a perfectly good pay and display machine which they've blocked up and put a note on saying you either have to call a premium rate phone line or go to a newsagent about 10 minutes walk away with a number and your registration. I guess they're trying to squeeze extra cash out of the phone line, but it seems a bit wrong headed.