Intro: Wednesday 25th July 2012
Five years ago today I had one of the greatest live music experiences of my life. It had been a rain-soaked summer much like this one - Truck Festival had just been flooded out that weekend - and the motoring organisations were still saying don't drive unless you have to. There was no question in my mind that I had to, and just like this week the sun finally broke through, to guide me via rainbows over the M6 to Northampton and a church so ancient you could feel centuries of history all around you... as with all these kinds of things, looking back now it can be hard to separate the reality from the semi-mythologised memories, but I was documenting all my gig going in 2007. It seems such a very long time ago now.
This report is excavated directly and unedited (apart from a couple of typos) from my old Myspace blog, which ran from 2006 - 2010. Reading it back today I suddenly remembered how my car used to be littered with A4 paper prints from Multimap, the website with which I pretty much ran my life back then. It was never the same after Bing bought it out and basically fucked with everything good about it; then Googlemaps for Blackberry (or I-phone equivalent) effectively negated the need for paper map printouts anyway. That thing about the past being a different country? They're not wrong; it's just scary how fast things change. See also the mention of a (Myspace) "bulletin" in the opening paragraph - a word I'm not sure I have even heard for a couple of years - and indeed at the mention of the 2007 Mercury Prize's "predictable" View and Arctic Monkeys entries, given that in the end the thing was won by The Klaxons, a band to whom I had given little thought since until their big single "Golden Skans" opened Andrew Collins' 6Music breakfast show this very morning. It sounds as 2007 as the word "bulletin"...
Thursday 25th July 2007
I am slightly nervous. I have a ticket in my pocket for what looks like it could be one of the gigs of the year -
Maps, freshly and rather surprisingly nominated for the Mercury Prize alongside the more predictable View and Arctic Monkeys, are playing a rather special hometown gig at the 12th century
Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Northampton. When the bulletin popped up I'd bought the ticket before I'd even thought about it. Right, where exactly is Northampton again?
One of my favourite summer guilty pleasures is the weeknight long-haul gig. The dash out of work, checking my well-worn timing checkpoints on the M6, M1 or M5 or M40, cursing every little traffic jam and cheering as the miles on the blue signs count down; pulling into a car park in some far-flung town with my trusty Multimap print-outs. The taste of Red Bull and the sound of a favourite band enhanced by adrenaline as opposed to alcohol. And then the night drive home along still warm motorways, empty but for lorries and the nocturnal maintenance crews and their trucks with the big flashing arrows on the back; radio on, the closest a British girl can get to that Jonathan Richman Roadrunner experience; then counting the hours until the alarm clock when I finally fall into bed, smiling to myself if it's more than four cos that means I should be fine for work tomorrow.
Bristol, Middlesbrough, Carlisle, London - I've even done Northampton before, but that was a long time ago in those 2003 early days of British Sea Power obsession when I'd have probably gone to the moon to see them if I could have somehow been back by morning. I don't remember the trip down too well, but last year almost to the day I was blasting up and down much the same route - a little further, even - to catch Brakes in a cafe-bar in Watford. That, however, was the hottest day of the year. Today, half the country is under water. The other side, sure, but these things tend to have knock-on effects - not something I'd even thought about two weeks ago when I bought the ticket. Maybe I shouldn't even try... but of course I will. I'm like that.
Near Crewe I'm making good time; I pass the brown sign for Stapeley Water Gardens, and shout "Shite!" at the top of my voice. I am not normally a superstitious type, but I seem to have developed one here. A couple of years ago Half Man Half Biscuit played, for reasons best known to themselves, in a working mens' club in Stafford, and during a break between proper songs Nigel did a short spoof of "Shout!" by Lulu, with the titular exclamation replaced by the word "Shite!" and the other lines detailing things he thought were, including "Bastard taxi drivers - Shite!" and "Stapeley Water Gardens - Shite!". I don't know exactly what he had against the place; we went there a few times when I was a kid and I recall it being a glorified garden centre with, as the name implies, a particular bias towards water features and "ornamental" fish, and rather more interesting than the stately home type places which were my parents' more normal choices for an afternoon walk when we had visitors. On the way home from the gig, as we passed the sign Nick and I both shouted "Shite!" at it. And thus it came to happen on every single subsequent journey on that stretch of the M6. Until 12th September 2006. Driving back from a British Sea Power gig in Birmingham we had a passenger, regular lift-sharer (James) Sui. He'd already been past the sign in my car twice the previous week returning from Leicester and Oxford, and I'd muttered the word under my breath knowing he was half asleep anyway. But this time for some reason it remained unsaid. It was just a handful of miles up the motorway that my old car spluttered to a halt and was read the automotive Last Rites by an AA man. I've never missed it since.
Literally seconds later, BBC Radio Stoke's traffic report cuts through my CD and tells me the southbound M6 is "actually less busy than usual at this time of day." I'd already reached ths comclusion actually - and even with a little trouble negotiating Northampton's one-way system (a total breeze, mind you, compared to most other towns down that neck of the woods) I find myself parking up opposite the church with a full 45 minutes to spare. The sun's shining. Time for a little walk around then. The band are standing around outside their van, but a long way from Manchester and the band don't know me; there's none of that awkwardness that prevents me from ever turning up early to a gig by British Sea Power or iLiKETRAiNS or (the list goes on). I find a comfortably worn wooden bench under a tree and enjoy the peaceful anonymity. At least having seen them means I have got the right place. However improbable it seems for a live music venue.
I'm not religious now, although I was brought up C of E, Sunday school or church once a week until at the age of 13 I finally convinced my parents none of it actually meant anything to me at all and they stopped making me go. But here there's definitely a spiritual feel about the place. Maybe it's the fact that I'm walking around almost a thousand years of history; I sneak a look through the open door. It's laid out with seats like a service, I can see folded paper on each one. The sign for toilets points into the nearby church hall; I walk past a karate class in one room and what appears to be a reading circle in another. Yep, another spot in my "oddest venues of the year" chart's been filled tonight...
There are no seat numbers; other early arrivals are hedging a few rows back, but I reckon I'll take the front centre thank you very much, and with the best part of an hour to go before the actual performance I settle down to read the "Order Of Service".
The album is to be played in full, start to finish; this means opening - as indeed most of their gigs do - with the gorgeous "So Low, So High"; its washes of lush melody echoing high into the round tower as the floor drum is crashed right in front of us and James's beautiful understated whispers float around the ancient walls. Shafts of daylight reach in from the small stained glass window way back over the altar; a projector sends the "We Can Create" dandelion clocks back onto the ceiling of the nave, the band are lit in deep reds and purples. It's mesmerising and breathtaking and we're only one song in. James smiles sweetly at the crowd or indeed congregation, thanks us for coming; many of the faces before him are friends and family, still more will be known faces from the Northampton live music scene, just a few of us from furher afield. I don't know if anyone's come as far as I have, but already I know I wouldn't have missed this for anything.
Highlights - well, this is one long highlight. But if there were moments where they went one higher - the thrashing coda to "Eloise". The chilling electro-dreampop of "It Will Find You" and the realisation that evening has turned the church pretty cold. James nervously introducing "To The Sky", "the first time we have ever played this one live", and it sounding absolutely sublime. The multi-talented keyboard player, Phil, who also crashes various percussion items and adds high, angelic, almost ethereal backing vocals to James's murmurings that sometimes takes them sound-wise most of the way towards Slowdive's Neil and Rachel. I'm driving, so there's nothing stronger than a Red Bull gone down me (admittedly no tea, either) and I am entranced. The perfect space-pop of "Lost My Soul" - after hearing which I genuinely believe I never want to see Spiritualized again, because it reminds me so much of how good they used to be, but for them that was fifteen years and a whole load of line-up changes ago; Maps are here and now. There are people dancing under one of the windows.
At the end there is a deserved standing ovation; one of the band sneakily snaps a photo of their congregation. An encore of "Start Something", and it's all over by ten; one of the greatest musical hours of 2007. I feel - but mostly resist - the urge to text everyone I know and tell them how amazing it was.
And at this rate I'll be home at a well reasonable hour too; aware that I'm not as young as I used to be and with an evening meeting at work Thursday I'd arranged a late start and plans to just work through. Initial annoyance at the northbound M1 sliproad's closure, meaning I have to drive one junction south and flip round back up again, is allayed when I reach the M6 Toll pay station at three minutes past eleven thus just hitting the cheaper night rate. One final "Shite!" at Stapeley, a quiet M56 and a green wave all the way up Princess Parkway (don't you love it when that happens? When you don't have to stop even once from the end of the motorway all the way to Hulme roundabout?) and I'm home for half twelve.
Within a couple of days I am so obsessed with Maps I'm looking up their festival appearances. D:Percussion - good. Someone on the Longcut forum reckons they might clash with The Whip but I'm not sure how he's come to that conclusion - fingers crossed they don't, but if they do then sorry Bruce and Danny... Leicester Summer Sundae - hmm. The Whip are on there too. Not sold out. Day tickets not unreasonable. Hmmm.... Lodestar - bastards! With British Sea Power on Saturday and iLiKETRAiNS Sunday there was always going to be one night under canvas involved, but Maps Friday? Two nights in a tent? Might have to...
Thoughts five years on...
- Lodestar Festival got cancelled in the end for reasons I can't remember, and has never been heard of since, thus making it rather ahead of its time...
- Maps did clash with The Whip at D:Percussion, which was annoying - more annoying (though we didn't know at the time) was that this turned out to be the final D:Percussion. Visiting Sheffield Tramlines this weekend just gone - specifically the main square events - I was just thinking how great it would be if Manchester had a free for all city centre new music festival, before remembering that we did, once upon a time.
- I am still not entirely sure of the correct pronunciation of "Sepulchre".
- God only knows what happened to The Klaxons, but following British Sea Power's 2008 nomination and subsequent disappointment it has been quite nice the past few years to not have to care about the Mercury Prize.
- I don't do weeknight drive aways very often these days. I guess I got old and/or got some common sense - and the combination of cheap Travelodges, early morning trains and a manager not averse to me occasionally coming in an hour late and making the time up means these days I'm more likely to be found on a near-deserted 6am station platform than a near-deserted 2am motorway. But when the mood takes me and there's a band I can't miss or the chance to see a friend and no other means of doing so I'll still do the odd one.
- I broke all my personal records for gig going in 2007, and this did indeed top the end of year list. It would almost certainly be in my all time favourites list if I had one.
- Rarely a week goes by without me seeing some band or other mixing electronics with shoegazerish sounds - Great Waves the most recent, less than 24 hours ago at the time of writing - but "We Can Create" remains the blueprint in this field and has not, in my opinion, been surpassed.
The 2007 incarnation of the Maps live band played their final gig a year later almost to the day, on the Sonic Cathedral stage at Truck festival. Maps is currently working on his third album which - as is the current way - seems to involve frequent Twitter posting of Instagram pictures from the studio. I wonder if by 2017 "Twitter" and "Instagram" will sound as dated as "Myspace bulletin" does in 2012.
The 2007 incarnation of me was very much that "last mad surge of youth": I was 35 but most of the mates I was hanging around with on a daily basis were a decade or more younger and in my head I was maybe 28 (which I could also get away with then) - in complete denial, as if I could stay young forever if only I believed it enough. Five years on I know I am 40; sometimes I feel older but rarely younger. The twentysomethings at gigs no longer feel like my peers, and rarely a day passes without reading some ageist dig somewhere at older music fans / reviewers. I guess I should have made 28 my "Smash Hits age" then and I'd only be 33 now, though I'm not sure anyone would believe me. I do still love music though and - remarkably - still go to nearly as many gigs, but I have neither the time nor the will to write everything down and I miss that. The reviews I write for websites don't flow out of me already written the way they used to; I actually have to compose them. I sometimes think about stopping altogether, but I'd never be able to afford my music habits otherwise - so yeah, often it's closer to actual work these days, but (as they say) it's still nice work if you can get it.
Stapeley Water Gardens went out of business a couple of years ago, taking with it a tiny piece of my childhood - it was a while before the brown signs vanished from the M6 but they're gone now too. I still sometimes shout "Shite" roughly where they used to be.
