OK, backtrack a bit. It is Monday 1st October and the last six gigs I have been to were in Liverpool, Oldham, Great Harwood, Bradford, Yeovil and Stoke. Previously this year I have enjoyed live music in Bury, Lincoln, Milton Keynes (or somewhere near there, anyway), Scunthorpe, Wolverhampton, Warrington, Northampton, Holmfirth, Lancaster and Stockport. (And some places that don't feature in the Crap Towns series, but they're nowhere near as fun). It is getting increasingly difficult to find new towns to experience - which is why when Brakes' tour dates were published, it was far more than the buzz of the first night of the tour that tempted us. Anyway, as they say...
I so nearly bought it, but one of my mates has already got one (in green). Bastard. Anyway, for reasons which I can't even remember, I seem to have volunteered to do the merchandise stand this evening. For which myself and trusty companions Nick and Liam will get free entry into the gig and T-shirts and beer... and an excuse to go to Hull.We're meant to be there half an hour before doors open apparently. What time's that then? Fuck off; there is precisely no way we can be there at seven. Half past, I say. Definitely. I don't actually believe this for one second; we set off at 5.40 and I reckon we'll be lucky to make it for 8.
"This is the Road to Hull"... Multimap reckons the journey time is 1 hour 46 minutes. It is 97 miles, so this is at best improbable - but once we've cleared town the M62 isn't too bad. Once we've cleared Pontefract civilisation is replaced by cooling towers, and more cooling towers... a blot on the landscape? Not to these eyes. If Turner was alive today he'd be painting those buoyant plumes hitting the evening sunset. Cooling towers are replaced by nothing. We pass the turn off for Scunthorpe; we'd always wondered what there was up this end of the M62 - nothing. Not even any other cars. I look down, the needle says 102mph. we're tearing up the road now - and suddenly that's it, the end of the M62. The great open estuary of the Humber opens up alongside us. We've never seen the Humber bridge before - what a feat of engineering that is... then the signs of a city; first the Do-It-Alls and tyre centres, then the residential suburbs; a football ground, houses become terraces; shop names become foreign, the takeaway strip - welcome to Anyroad into Anytown, and finally the sign, Universities. We swing into the car park bang on half seven. How the hell did we..... never mind.
Where's the students' union then? The campus is not what we'd call buzzing. Back home in Manchester every bar in studentdom is spewing out onto the street as the bright young things and older and wiser returnees celebrate not having to tell Mum what time they'll be home. Here it looks somewhat like there's been an air-raid curfew and nobody's told us. The glass doors on the front of the venue are locked, and the six or seven security staff inside make no effort to find out why we are standing there; eventually Brakes' tour manager and soundman (one person - the only non band member in the somewhat lean operation) lets us in; Nick and Liam go off for some food whilst I stand there gaffer-taping coat-hangers to the wall and trying not to dwell too much on the utter ridiculousness of the life I have found myself living. Doors open, Nick and Liam come back with the most revolting chips in the history of potato-frying, there's a band onstage - "is this the soundcheck?" Nope, I tell them, there's just nobody else here...
The Schoolgirls (yes, I wrote down their Myspace address on the night so you, my lovely readers, don't get done by the perv-police; isn't this something they should have thought of though?!) are, of course, lads. Not school aged either, although probably not that far beyond it. Just the two of them, they sound like some sort of thrashy, trebly DIY hybrid of French punk (no, they're not French, not even slightly) and Pixies on Red Bull. They're quite good. I really feel for them up there staring out across the empty expanse of floor in front of the not-exactly-essential-tonight barrier.
It's actually a pretty decent venue in a similar sort of vein to quite a few more newly built university venues, Reading SU and indeed our own Academy 4 spring immediately to mind - there's floorspace for a couple of hundred down on what doubles as a dancefloor, a sturdily built stage that's wide and a decent height, and plenty of raised and stepped space around the back and sides. You could imagine it being relatively easy to see even from some way back if it were full - as it is, that's not a problem tonight; by the time the Schoolgirls end their set on a frenzied alt-rock punk-out there are twelve punters in.
I have sold precisely nothing, although there's one lad who says he recognises me from the British Sea Power forum (on which he, somewhat disturbingly, claims to have been lurking and reading for some years now but has never joined or posted - only mildly disturbing, then) promises to come back and buy a vinyl album afterwards. The next band are called The Holy Orders - or Holy Shit as Nick and Liam have dubbed them within minutes. This is OK - later, during Brakes' set, Eamon will attempt to thank the support bands and get as far as "Holy... holy what? holy... something..." They are local. That's local as in local , as in - well, you know, not very good in a "if they lived in Manchester they'd be propping up the arse end of V-Man pay-to-play bills" sort of way.
They're one of those annoying bands who have a stunning influence list on their Myspace page - 65daysofstatic, Interpol, Josh T Pearson, Nick Cave and Radiohead (and several billion more generally quite ace things) but haven't, as yet, managed to quite shape anything startling out of it. And they're not impressed with the turnout (now numbering 23) - "people are just cunts, aren't they?" At this point we're still wondering, given the large number of gigs The Holy Orders seem to play around Hull, whether people have just stayed in the pub til they've gone.
Tour support The XCerts' Myspace page claims, somewhat intriguingly, that they are from "Aberdeen / Exeter". I am trying to think of two cities further apart on the British mainland, and I'm struggling. They do sound very Scottish, in a sort of early Idlewild way, but I actually have to do some work at this point. I'll watch them properly on Saturday. By the end of their set I have sold three whole T-shirts, including one of the really rubbish pastel pink girls' ones you can't even see the print on properly; the lads'll be dead impressed with me for shifting that. Liam wanders off to tell the XCerts in his own uniquely forthright way, that he quite enjoyed them because they "weren't as shit as the first two bands".
Eventually it's Brakes time. Excluding ourselves and venue staff there are 43 people in, so I stuff the merch cash box in my bag and go stand closer - from where it is somewhat evident that at least some of Brakes are quite pissed. After a decidedly messy "Hi How Are You" Eamon says "Hull-o!" - which makes our crap puns look almost passable. Tom is in full-on rock god mode, spending most of the set with his legs splayed and his long shaggy hair hanging over his eyes. They're probably not massively impressed with the turn-out themselves, although one of the greatest things about Brakes is the fact that they quite clearly just love playing, and give it as much as they can.
Three "Cheney"s tonight - "we're going to carry on playing it until he stops being a dick!" laughs Eamon, aware that topical songs have a lifespan; on which point we also note that "Blair" has not (yet) been substituted with "Brown" on "Pick up The Phone". Another highlight is "On Your Side" which comes the closest to actually getting the crowd dancing. The set barely tops 35 minutes, but then we are talking Brakes here and that's still rather a lot of songs. Towards the end Eamon and Tom share the mic for "The Most Fun", there's the ridiculous "Huevos Rancheros" and of course the obligatory "Comma Comma Full Stop". At which point, returning to my table, I catch sight of two security guards looking baffled.
The crowd cheer with an enthusiasm way beyond their numbers, and are rewarded with one of the most bizarre encores ever - initially a solo Eamon doing "Fell In Love With A Girl" in a state so obviously inebriated that the few lines he can actually remember come out in no particular order whatsoever. It's past eleven now and the security men look more than slightly pissed off as Eamon announces "one more song" - but it's "Comma" again, and they just about get away with it. Amazingly, we even have a rush in the merchandise - and when I deposit the cash box back with the barely-standing band back in the dressing room they all seem quite pleased with its apparent fullness. We estimate, roughly, that one in every four people in attendance bought something - not bad when you look at it like that.
Back onto the M62 it is then; I don't think we even pass another vehicle till somewhere near Leeds and despite the slight over-run and necessity to stay around afterwards and pack up the merch boxes we're still home the right side of 1am. Yep, given this - and the fact that under normal circumstances you wouldn't actually need to be at a venue til 9 or so - Hull is now officially added to the list of Weeknight Do-able. Have to say, however, that whoever it was that coined the phrase on that legendary Tourist Board T-shirt had possibly never spent a Monday night in the students union...
