Cath Aubergine: Up The Down Escalator

The Longest Awayday - Australia, music and me

2010-03-09T10:03:00.000-08:00

"I recall a bigger brighter world, a world of books and silent times in thought

And then the railroad, the railroad takes him home

Through fields of cattle, through fields of cane"

Like many British thirtysomethings, I spent teenage evenings dreaming of the day I'd visit Australia. But for me it wasn't the shiny leafy utopia of Neighbours or the sun-blazed beach town of Home And Away that attracted me, although of course I watched them both; pretty much everyone did, even my soap opera hating parents. It was something wilder and less specific; the very different pictures painted by a generation of astonishing wordsmiths. In those three lines above (from "Cattle And Cane", many years later selected by the Australasian Performing Right Association as one of the Top 30 Australian songs of all time, although a great many music fans would put it at least in the top five), The Go-Betweens' Grant McLennan made you feel the wide open spaces of his country. I'm not the sort of person who sheds tears at the death of people I never actually met, but in 2006 McLennan was my exception; his and co-songwriter Robert Forster's words told me more about this far-off land than a million school geography lessons about sheep farming. As did Peter Garrett of Midnight Oil - at the time of writing just about hanging on (more on which later) as Government Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts - "out where the river broke, the blood wood and the desert oak, holden wrecks and boiling diesels steam in forty five degrees". I couldn't actually imagine what forty-five degrees felt like. My favourite Australian band of the era The Triffids were less specific in their lyrics, but their 1987 album "In The Pines" - famously recorded at a shearing station deep in the great expanse between their native Perth and the rest of the country - somehow carried the sound of its environment with it.

The reason for this fascination can be traced, like most of my life if I am being honest, to the influence of one man. Who wasn't Australian, but Greek-Mancunian. It's customary for music fans of mine and other generations to talk of John Peel as having changed lives and opened up new worlds, and sure, I listened to Peel back then too, but most of the music I have loved for the past two decades and more stemmed from Sunday nights in the mid to late 80s and the crackling of Piccadilly 103 through my little bedside mono radio-cassette, finger hovering close to the Record button. It was here that I first heard The Fall, The Buzzcocks, The Stone Roses, Inspiral Carpets and hosts of lesser known local bands. It was there that I first heard The Chameleons, the band which (as described in previous blog "Decade") more than any other influenced and continue to influence my life. And then there was the Australian thing. As I wrote, in a review of the brilliant 2003 compilation "Tales From The Australian Underground" ( http://www.music-dash.co.uk/releases/archiverelease.asp?item=512 ): "I’ve been accused more times than I can remember of only listening to Manchester bands. I blame the weekly influence of Tony Michaelides’ radio show in my musically formative years. But the other abiding legacy I retain from those teenage Sunday nights with my finger on the Record button is a love for the music of a land a very long way from here. There’s a whole generation of Mancunians, and I meet them every now and then, who still rate the Moffs “Another Day In The Sun” as one of the finest records ever made, for whom the Triffids and the Go-Betweens were as much a part of growing up as New Order and the Chameleons. For some reason the Australian indie scene always seemed a lot closer in spirit and sound to what was going on in Manchester than even the music from other parts of the UK did. The rapid turnover in the Australia & New Zealand rack in Vinyl Exchange would seem to confirm this – that there are an unusually high number of people in this town with an interest in music made the other side of the world 15 to 20 years ago." It's not there any more - I guess it was all bought up by people like me who couldn't afford at fifteen to buy all the records they liked the sound of.

And it's music that's finally taken me to this country. My good friend Ernst, a fellow Chameleons acolyte and awaydayer, got there first: his own longterm favourite band The Church originated from there, and whilst band members are dispersed across the globe these days it's their homeland tours which are the jewel in the crown for their hardcore fans. Ernst is so hardcore he's been three times. As he lives in Oslo, he will pretty much always hold the undisputed longhaul awayday record - there's not much further you could go and see a band without actually leaving the planet. Me? Well, in late 2009 British Sea Power announced that they'd be doing their first tour of Australia in early 2010. I'd always said I'd go when they did, and here I am.

Let's get one thing straight; this isn't some desperate need to see a band everywhere they play. Some of the hardcore went to watch them in China in autumn 2009; I never considered joining them because China is just not a place I have ever had any desire to visit. In fact I've actively avoided it several times in the day job: an atrocious human rights record gives me an official excuse, although a workmate's tale of biting into a small pastry that turned out to have a whole duck's foot in it (and similar food-related concerns: I don't eat dead stuff, and they don't seem to eat much that isn't) is at least as important on a personal level. I have seen the band in Prague, Poland, Los Angeles and most recently Jersey because these are places I always wanted to see, and tour dates provided an excuse. Awaydaying is a way of seeing the world, but with musical entertainment thrown in. Without the bands I love I would probably never have taken the stunning train journey from New York up to Boston; ventured outside touristy Krakow to the industrial Katowice and out into the Polish countryside; conveniently arrived in Niagara Falls on what the B&B proprietress told us was the best day of the year; walked around in the deep sub-zero ice of a sparkling Oslo winter night (I love Ernst, but without a shared interest in a Doves gig I'm not sure I'd have picked late November as a sensible time to visit); caught a lunar eclipse over the Hudson River; ridden a slow and somewhat rickety bus cross country from Galway to Limerick, or (the night before 2009's Primavera Festival) celebrated into the night with Barcelona fans as their team decimated Manchester United, having first explained of course that our city has two football teams. Tony Michaelides, The Go-Betweens and The Triffids made me want to go to Australia one day; British Sea Power simply defined which day that would be.

I offered to cover the gigs bit of the trip for Incendiary, as the band's manager Dave has been kind enough to put us on the guest list and I always believe in giving something back, however small; also Incendiary wanted the exclusive UK perspective on the band's first Australian tour. Sorted - thanks Dave. So a fair bit of the gig and festival coverage here's already appeared online there - here you'll find it in a more personal context.

* * *

It's midday on Sunday 14th February; morning back home and late afternoon where we're going, but as the bright golden sands of the Arabian desert give way to the hazy blue ocean which will be our window view until it gets too dark to see, it isn't really any time at all. We left Manchester Saturday evening and a meal, film (The Damned United, which is pretty good if you can manage to convince yourself that Timothy Spall - playing Timothy Spall as usual - is Peter Taylor) and quick nap later it was morning in Dubai. Amidst the chaos of the upmarket shopping mall that is its transfer zone we rendezvoused with Boom and headed for the calm of an equally high-class bar; G&T for us, a White Russian for him, the unknown quantity that is the local currency shielding us from the possibly astronomical cost, at least until the next credit card bill. You can even have a cigarette because here they've got the sort of stunning air conditioning whereby the smoke is whisked off and imperceptible just metres away. You have to be a paying customer at the bar to do so, though - clever marketing given that many passing through are mid-way between two long flights. But then this entire country was built on money - they don't miss a trick.

I have already decided Emirates is the Best Airline Ever. The film was our choice from over a hundred; the music selection is eclectic (I listen to a Johnny Cash and Joe Strummer duet of Redemption Song and reckon if there is any sort of afterlife they're still hanging out, plus half a Talking Heads album because I can); the Economy seats are the best I've ever sat in and even the meal was actually quite nice. Pretty much any other airline I've experienced I'd be dreading the second, longer, stint. As it is, well, ten hours on a plane is never fun, is it? I play Tetris for an hour, listen to The Flaming Lips' 2009 album "Embryonic" (c/o the inflight entertainment) and read Michael Moynihan's rather patchily written if well-researched and fascinating "Lords Of Chaos: The Bloody Rise Of The Satanic Metal Underground" (c/o there not being much in HMV's books section last week). The book features a burning church on the cover and the chillingly matter-of-fact transcription of one Varg (Burzum) Vikernes' confession regarding the fatal head-stabbing of an ex-collaborator. The Flaming Lips album meanwhile is surprisingly good, as many critics said at the time - well, actually, most of them said it was "experimental", "insane" or somewhat lacking in the borderline showtunes with which Coyne et al have been annoying festivals for the past few summers. Good. I'm not sure, for instance, how the "children's entertainer with Santas and Teletubbies" act would work with the blistering two-minute feedback assault that is "Aquarius Sabotage", but it goes pretty well with tales of extremely hairy Norwegians slaughtering each other for no reason at all. That said, by the time it finally reaches track 18 I don't think I ever want to hear it again. Can't be doing with contrivedness in bands.

That's why I love watching British Sea Power: wild imagination without contrivedness. Or is it "contrivance"? I can't remember; I'm writing this on the BlackBerry at what I think is 1am Perth time, which is 5pm back home, which is 31 hours since we got up. And we're not actually in Perth yet. The arrival time of 1.15am seems to have slipped by over an hour. We've discovered The Killers Live At The Albert Hall on one of the video channels, which would be a nice find except it's from the third album tour and therefore contains a high level of the shite they'd descended to by then. Christ, I'd forgotten that sax. Still love the first two albums' stuff though; they were meant to be playing Australia this week too and I did sort of half look into fitting one in, but they've had to pull the dates due to a bereavement. Wouldn't mind catching some local bands while we're out here, too. Although right now I just want a bed. The plane actually touches down on time. An hour seems to have slipped out of the time difference (a couple of days later our resident contact will attempt to explain this; there was some referendum on Daylight Saving Time recently) and I will spend the next few days with no idea what time it is back home - and not really caring...

Monday. We open the curtains to a blazing Perth morning and a view of the back of the festival stage: the nightshift guy who checked us in at 2am had told us the music only stopped about 1am, and that the hotel had complained. We'd replied that that was what we were here for... Behind it is a big wheel, and beyond that the Swan River which here forms a wide bay. A day just wandering around the centre drifts into an evening in Northbridge, an area round the station packed with bars, restaurants and takeaways as well as the city's Chinatown - even the guide book describes it as a bit rough and Boom reckons he nearly got mugged on his way to the pub, but the restaurant we find is anything but. The drink prices are a bit of a shock - you're looking at $15 (£9ish) for a couple of pints. We settle into the Mustang Bar on the grounds that it's got a stage and we saw some musicians loading in earlier - from a vintage American car with a long bonnet, and including a stand-up double-bass. Inside is what we guess may be Perth's entire psychobilly community; two lads in battered leather jackets with immaculate six inch quiffs and a girl in a rockabilly dress. Yep, every Monday night is 50s night and the three of us swell the audience number considerably.

The band are fantastic, though. Called The Rhythm Kings they do this every Monday night, two sets a time, good time old rock'n'roll that's probably all (or at least mostly) covers, although my knowledge of the period isn't really sufficient to confirm this. One notable number goes "I dream about a reefer five foot long" (Barry? Anyone?) but we do recognise "Folsom Prison Blues", there's a girl twirling her skirt as her partner spins her round and we can't help but join in. By the end of the second set we've got a dedication to us. The band are top blokes and make for a great first night, even if the 11pm closure's a surprise; we'd kind of thought tight licensing was a UK thing... still, an early night's probably a good idea, we seem to have clicked into the timezone well but I'm sure it'll hit us at some point. A little more reading before bed: Varg Vikernes is explaining that "we support Christianity because it oppresses people, and we burn churches to make it stronger. We can then eventually make war with it". In the light of which, travelling halfway round the globe because of the music that inspires you seems quite sane, really...

Expecting to be more disoriented by the time difference than we actually are, we've a couple of free days before the tour starts and decide to spend the first one mostly on a boat getting pissed. Sorry, what I meant was, on Tuesday we go on an organised vineyards cruise up the Swan River - on which was have a little training in Wine Appreciation. Basically the first "samples" come out about 10am and are distributed all too frequently throughout the day. We do indeed appreciate them.

We also note - I'm not sure if appreciate is the right word - that as we drift up the beautiful river past (among other minor local landmarks) the house Rolf Harris grew up in and the creek in which he honed the skills that made him a national backstroke swimming champion many years before introducing the wobbleboard to a generation of British kids via Saturday teatime telly, the boat has a quite terrifying selection of vaguely "alternative" soft-rock CDs with which to entertain us. Yes, as we go under a big bridge we get the Chili Peppers' "Under The Bridge", thanks for that. I'm hoping the theme might continue - say Doves' "Caught By The River" - but instead it shifts into the unknown (and in these cases not without reason)... we're almost pissing ourselves at the lyrics of this one... "So please / baby please / Open your eyes / Catch my disease" (repeated, heavily). Turns out the man responsible for this not exactly tempting offer is one Ben Lee, formerly of Bondi Beach pop/punk band Noise Addict who were feted by Thurston Moore, toured with Sebadoh and put out several releases on the Beastie Boyss' Grand Royal Records. I can only presume that something really traumatic happened to Lee between then and this 2005 release, effectively lobotomising him. And god only knows who's responsible for the next selection: this a cheesy (low)power ballad with the heartfelt refrain line "You've got to follow through". Again sounds Australian, could be there are phrases that mean something here but not there? None of which excuses this exceptional ice-lolly advert we spot the following day...

Home already feels like a very long time ago, and it's that wonderful stage in a holiday when you know you have a lot more of it left that you've already had. Checking Facebook on Wednesday we learn Britain's had another snowfall - eight inches in Bradford apparently, although this may be a slight exaggeration, and four inches in Manchester. As the text from my mum arrives with the latter news I can't help but send her one back, attaching a picture of exactly what we're looking at at the time...

This is Cottersloe Beach, just a few miles outside Perth, and by the time it starts to get just too hot to be out in it's time to head back and start thinking about going to a gig. I have, as I generally try to, booked a hotel close to the venue - in fact this time I think I've excelled myself...

We start with a quick drink in the pub over the way - and if you think Golden Gaytime's a dodgy name for an ice lolly, let me just tell you the pub is called The Lucky Shag - check out this menu...

Here we catch up with Jamie, a local fan who grew up in the UK - Derby to be precise - and as such was quite used to being able to go to as many gigs as he could afford to. Including a fair few British Sea Power performances between 2002 and moving out here around 2006. I think I might even have been talking to him down the front at Bristol Bierkeller in late 2005, although I don't realise this til later. He loves the life out here but he's pretty startved of his favourite music; Australia is just far too far for most overseas bands to venture, at least unless they've reached a rich level of commercial success. Sure, there's live music to be had every night in the cities' bars; the listings pages are packed with local acts and cover bands - but if you want to see bands from other continents here, there's basically February. It's the tail end of summer - festival season, where just as in Europe a music fan can spend a few consecutive weekends watching live music in the open air whist eating fried snacks (although the weather's a little better here - and so, as we'll later discover, are the fried snacks). And when bands come over to play the festivals, they'll often stick a few tour dates in the weeks in between.

Back in the 80s, watching from afar, The Triffids never seemed part of the whole Australian guitar bands scene, and arguably "made it" in the UK (on the indie circuit at least) before they had much recognition back home; and then you realise that travelling from Perth to Sydney is much the same distance, in northern hemisphere terms, as travelling overland from Moscow to London. Perth's isolation even from the rest of the country leaves it doubly starved of touring bands for eleven months of the year; in February the calendar's so stuffed Jamie can't even afford to go to all the great gigs he'd like to. This is partly down to Perth International Arts Festival. Now in its 57th year, the oldest international arts festival in Australia features around a thousand performances and events across three weeks: there's drama, literature, comedy, dance, visual arts and music of every possible specification from opera to traditional indigenous sounds, jazz to metal - and on a hot Wednesday night in a temporary open-air venue backing onto the Swan River, British Sea Power playing their first ever gig Down Under.

It's not exactly sardine-packed down the front, a lot of those present are hanging back or sat in the seats, although here's a small clutch of excited fans crowding the centre - and the first song BSP perform on Australian soil is "A Wooden Horse". A treat for fans (our expat almost explodes with excitement) as opposed to a more general rabble rouser, but that's BSP all over: they do what they like and common sense doesn't always come into it. The majority watching the band for the first time are probably wondering why the hell Yan has the word "SHITHOUSE" written on the back of his suit-jacket in green sticky tape - and frankly so are we, not that you'd be likely to get a sensible response if you asked. An upbeat salvo of "Apologies to Insect Life", "Lights Out for Darker Skies" and "Remember Me" gives the front crew something to jump around to; the rest probably aren't going to whatever happens. Still, the band look excited just to be here and there's plenty of jumping on each other, launching of foliage and general high spirits as they play through a set heavy on "Do You Like Rock Music" material along with a run-out for one of the new songs they've been previewing recently - "Zeus" scuttles along with a Smiths-ish beat before shifting (via a guitar break that briefly threatens to turn into Fleetwood Mac's The Chain but thankfully doesn't) into a different gear entirely. Rumours that the band have been at the prog and Krautrock as they prepare to unveil their fifth album sometime this summer would seem not entirely unfounded. The set ends with a typical boisterous "Carrion" into "Spirit of St Louis" and an old-style "Lately/Rock in A" encore in which the potted plants around the stage are uprooted and hurled into the crowd; Noble, Phil and Hamilton attempt some rather precarious crowdsurfing and some older guy ends up draped in Phil's floral garland and Noble's guitar. Aside from the obviously delighted little gang in the middle we think the crowd enjoyed it but it's kind of hard to tell, we suspect some of them were a little taken aback by the finale. It's not often you end a gig covered in compost.

As, indeed, were the festival staff. Minutes after the band have left the stage their possibly long-suffering manager's joined us at the bar, "escaping the shouting": it seems that the potted plants, of which one's been whipped off home by a couple of Jamie's mates whilst I'm still trying to brush its remains out of my after-sun cream, were not in fact theirs to abuse. Oh well. Tomorrow night's headliners are Warp Records' first Aussie signing Pivot (such a shame they weren't earlier in the week) and I can't see them being that bothered by a reduction in houseplant levels.

Thursday it's time to catch up with our own country's history, at least the part where in entwines with Australia's: Fremantle Prison. Built by convicts in the earliest days of the colony, it remained in use until 1991 - once housing the young Bon Scott, later of AC/DC fame, for (apparently) having unlawful carnal knowledge and stealing twelve gallons of petrol. These were possibly separate offences, but you never know. These days it serves as a museum relating to the colonial / convict era and Australian justice over the subsequent decades; I won't bore you with the details - although would-be students of sociology, history and law and order can find out more here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fremantle_Prison - worth a trip should you ever find yourself down that way.

A reconstructed convict era cell. Not unlike some London B&Bs of my experience...

Back in Perth that evening it's the other side of British Sea Power, the side which most certainly wouldn't throw someone else's plants at people and the one where their own fans can be in the minority in the audience: a cinema performance of "Man Of Aran". The Astor is a beautiful art deco cinema just north of the city centre, and for everyone who looks like an indie kid walking through the doors (we clock a lad in a Mogwai shirt, and guess he'll be happy) there are four who very much don't.

Cheers to Boom for the photo; see what I mean?

The lady seated next to me, in bobbly cardigan and neatly set grey hair, asks what the music will be like: "it won't be all crash-bang will it?" Remembering the last time we saw this show, again in a film festival environment in Jersey, and the tutting and covering ears and walking out that ensued during the rather noisy and atonal "Spearing The Sunfish" section, I warn her there might be a few loud bits but mostly it's quite gentle with lots of cello and stuff. She seems reassured, and I'm hoping not wrongly so.

And then the lights dim, and we try and pretend not to notice the film's slightly out of focus and the band - performing, as they tend to with this, facing the screen (do they struggle with monitors, or is this a deliberate attempt to focus attention on the music more than the performers? Who knows?) are obscuring the subtitles slightly - but soon these minor concerns are forgotten as the majestic ambient-to-full-on sweeps of strings and cymbal rushes blend with the grainy landscapes. It seems a shame that the programme on our seats depicts only the four original members, as it's multi-instrumentalist Phil who seems to be the focal point in this venture whilst Abi's viola takes the lead for large parts of it. What might be incredible is the way this band, used to playing it fast and loose, now perform the piece as an orchestra would a symphony; I say might be because seven years or more after they first caught my attention I really wouldn't consider there to be a great deal they couldn't do if they wanted to. And that's not to say it's always the same - it isn't; possibly mindful of that Jersey audience "Spearing The Sunfish" stays clear of an all-out white-noise attack here, opting instead for a Mogwai-ish layered intensity.

It works. As the end credits roll the standing ovation applause goes on for a long time, and I turn with some trepidation to cardigan lady; enjoy that? "Oh it was wonderful" she smiles "and that lovely boy on drums, I could just take him home with me..."

It's something of a relief, then, to see Woody alive and well the following night in Melbourne.

We flew out of Perth at 9am on what we believe to be Friday, although it's that mid-trip time where the days of the week become meaningless and the whole timezone thing is somewhat unclear. We had not long left Perth when the dusty gold beneath us gave way to the deep blood red of iron country, and as we touch down to refuel and exchange passengers with connecting flights it glows around us. The local paper, the Kalgoorlie Miner, is delivered on board: the usual smalltown fare of a local cheque fraud scam, baby photo contest and adverts for sheds is interspersed with a telling insight into this still active mining town. Not just the full page of mining and oil stocks, but the two columns of the personal ads page reserved for "Amanda, 21, busty, friendly, good service, massage $60" and her ilk...

Melbourne itself, another couple of hours' flight away, reminds us of New York, its super-highrise skyline approaching as the bus heads for Southern Cross Station - and then the tortuous gridlock into which our yellow cab pulls out. But then it is Friday evening rush hour. Yep, we've "lost" another three hours. We think we're on GMT+11 now but we're far from certain. And our Travelodge hasn't been built yet. By the time we find our replacement accommodation - a rather swanky apartment that probably costs twice as much but that we won't have time to appreciate (although having a toaster to light fags off later when I discover I've lost my second lighter in two days is useful) it's too late to pay a visit to the "Neighbours" Tour & Sightseeing office next door (we initially find this baffling, before remembering that back home in Manchester tourists lap up the Coronation Street tour), and it takes some unravelling of the incomprehensible metro system before we reach Richmond.

The main drag (photo again c/o Boom, cheers, I think I was too stressed to remember to get one) has that "cool place to go out" vibe of Manchester's Northern Quarter or Camden, and the posters covering The Corner Hotel reveal it as a popular stop for pretty much any decent indie band who can afford to get themselves to Australia - at last, a normal gig, with supports and everything... although oddly they play not on the main stage, curtained off ready for the headliners, but on a little platform in the corner.

First on it is one Nick Huggins, who does kind of lofi poetic ambling folk with a guitar, some effects and a subtly used looper. His near-whispered words meanwhile are wistful small town thoughts about wasted days and the way people don't look at each other at the local swimming pool. Cultural references aside he seems quite un-Australian; during one particularly delicate tune two blokes accost him: "we fackin' love you!" and he just smiles shyly and carries on. Next, Seagull are in fact three blokes, of which one has a young Brian Eno island-and-dangly-bits haircut and an accordian, another a guitar, and the third an initially rather Thom Yorke-ish voice and a floor tom with a very wonky leg. As the set progresses they shift away from the sort of folky thing into more indie-pop territory but are rarely more than very mildly diverting.

British Sea Power kick off with a more traditional opening attack of "Lights Out", "Apologies" and "Remember Me" but find themselves struggling against technical difficulties that see their guitar tech crawling around onstage for what seems like much of the set - at one point Yan finds himself reciting a self-penned limerick about Paul Hogan while things are fixed. Not that this bothers the decent sized crowd - it serves to remember that British Sea Power on a (slightly) off night are still a cut above the vast majority of bands. Oddly it's "Canvey Island" that really gets the crowd moving as it builds to its climax, after which it's a "business as usual" performance complete with Noble finding something improbable to climb up.

The reason for my somewhat hazy recollection is not, on this occasion, alcohol related - although I do need a stiff drink after returning the mysterious phone call I got during the gig. It's my bank (it being mid morning back home). Was I aware my credit card may have been stolen? Well, um, no, considering it's (quick check) in my pocket right now. Yes, in Australia. Not in the UK, where it's apparently been used several times to try and purchase National Express coach tickets of a combined value of £47.20. Whilst I don't doubt that this is correct (despite having no idea how and when anyone could have cloned it, but I've not used National Express myself this year) I do find this a rather bizarre and oddly modest use of a stolen card number with a four figure credit limit - takes all sorts though. Yeah, put a stop on it, no harm done... bugger. I now have to make it through the rest of the holiday solely on the contents of my bank account. Thank god it's payday. Needless to say the three weeks betwen arriving home and next payday are going to be a little lean, to say the least...

We're finally relaxing over breakfast the next morning when my phone rings again. This time it's Virgin Blue, the airline on which we're booked on an early afternoon flight - except now we're not. Our flight has been "downgraded" - whatever that means - and we have to go an hour earlier or later. With visions of the later one being overbooked with passengers who didn't get the message in time and another frantic dash to make the evening's gig (or worse) we plump for the earlier one, which gives us approximately half an hour to get to the airport. Grab the luggage, march the the bus station, attach ourselves to dreadlocked studenty type for queue jumping purposes, on the bus, off the bus, done. At least we can leave Melbourne and its 20 hours of end-to-end chaos behind us. Except... the flight time comes and goes. The boards aren't telling us much. The flight reappears, delayed by half an hour. Then an hour. It is, in fact, flying at precisely the time the original one should have done. The original one is also doing this. I'm not sure I understand, but realise that Virgin Blue is basically Australia's Ryanair in terms of service: your only guarantee is that at some point a plane will fly you to where you're going, um, probably. Whatever. Arriving in Sydney we discover our hotel is effectively a glorified youth hostel - but hey, at least we've got one. Boom, who has left some aspects of the trip rather to the last minute and has been booking hotels on arrival in each place, hasn't. Not at the Hilton, the backpacker hostel dormitory, or anything in between. There is not a room to be had anywhere in the city - which given that it's a Saturday night in a place packed with the sort of business hotels that usually have rooms going begging at weekends, is rather odd.

As we take his bags to our room so he can head off trying to find somewhere "off-internet", we notice many of out fellow guests are wearing AC/DC shirts. Yes, it's only Australia's biggest ever band's first homeland tour in about a million years. Seventy thousand people a night, many of them travelling from across the country and further afield. Ah. That explains the hotel situation then. Oh, and the wrestling's on. And it's Mardi Gras soon. Two hours later Boom texts us to say he's given up but he has found a great pub with a band on - so soon we're paying the first of many visits over the next few days to the excellent Lansdowne Hotel. As we wait to cross the road (I've not mentioned this yet, but here in Australia we're finding you have to wait anything up to five minutes after pressing the button for a few microseconds of crossing permission) we can hear what sounds very much like "Ring Of Fire". We're not wrong. As I said, there's a big culture here of cover bands playing the bars - often doing a starter set in the early evening, and it's a brilliant way to warm up for your particular main event, whatever that may be. Partcularly if it's the absolutely spot-on and wonderfully named Cash Only...

We're very glad they do "Jackson" just as we're about to head off, it somehow bodes well for a great night. Unlike the taxi we flag down, who seems somewhat vague as to the location of the university social building (students' union, in UK terms), and we end up having to direct him despite having been in Sydney for about four hours. The bar, when we find it, is relatively quiet - but by the time we've got drinks in we've hooked up with a bunch of local fans - and a fellow awaydayer.

For us northern Europeans, long-haul awaydaying is an indulgence. You don't really need to do it. No Manchester date on Wooden Shjips' imminent brief visit to our shores? Leeds it is then, an hour on the train. If a band isn't playing your town you go and see them in another town, another country even: two hours out of Manchester by train takes you to London and another three or four to Paris or Brussels. Devoted fans of bands from far-flung lands might make the occasional pilgrimage - Ernst's Church trips, or the global confluence of Chameleons fans that descended on their Middleton home in 2001- the rest is just a great excuse for a holiday and to experience a band you love somewhere different. But what if you live in Brisbane? Those cities all look quite close down the eastern coast - but even Sydney is a 14 hour trek or a couple of hours on a plane. Kara, longtime BSP fan from Brisbane, was a little disappointed they weren't visiting (as were we: that's real Go-Betweens country, and we left plenty of slack ion our schedule in case something came up but sadly it never did) so has opted for the latter, and when we meet her in the foyer of the University's Manning Bar we've rarely seen anyone so excited about a gig - her first chance to see her favourite band in the flesh.

"I feel like I'm tripping!" says BSP's Noble when we catch him at the bar. The band have had a couple of days less to adjust to the time differences than we have, and very little sleep. Remembering the surreal haze through which I've watched bands in New York and Atlanta whilst fresh off the plane I'm kind of surprised by how non-hazy this feels; it's Saturday night and we're out to see a band. Although it is still warm enought to not need a coat even out on the terrace, despite being February - and Orion is upside down in the southern sky. We manage to completely miss the support, although one of the local crew tells us they're not much cop anyway so I won't lose any sleep over that. Inside, the excitement levels in the crowd are tangible - and they're rewarded with one of the best British Sea Power performances I've seen.

No technical issues tonight, as the band pull out what can only be described as an outstanding set. Reading the set-list back a couple of weeks later there's nothing about it that really marks it as a classic, the long overdue return of a beautiful "Blackout" notwithstanding, but those unquantifiables, the atmosphere and the energy, are spot on. And if the Perth and Melbourne crowds enjoyed the sets, here they absolutely fucking love it. With British Sea Power this does make a difference, as band and crowd energise each other into a big feedback loop. It peaks during the brilliant career-spanning attack that is "Zeus" (probably the best reception I've ever seen for an unknown song in a set otherwise all released) / "Waving Flags" / "Remember Me" / "Apologies", after which it takes a certain level of genius to finish the main set on an extended version of atmospheric instrumental "The Great Skua" complete with bird migration projections. With nothing particularly stupid to climb up here, Noble resorts to his other, newer, favourite end-of-encore game of attaching people to each other with enormous lengths of sticky tape - band, audience, anyone who gets in his way really. The bouncers look completely flummoxed.

The bar's shut by the time they finish, which is how we end up back at the Lansdowne which seems to have transformed over our absence into a sort of unofficial AC/DC aftershow - yes, there was another, rather bigger, gig in Sydney tonight and the bar is packed with hairy middle-aged men with official merch carrier bags. They've laid on some suitably noisy bands for the occasion: The Battery Kids are actually from Adelaide, touring to promote their debut album.

They're loud and abrasive but not without tunes: think maybe a young, hungry Muse had they been reared on a combined diet of grunge, hardcore metal and video games instead of prog and indie. Aggressive guitar crunches overlay frenzied bleeps and breakneck drums as the skinny youngsters ricohcet around the tiny stage as if they're taking their name literally. I'm not, as I've said many times, much of an authority on rock/metal in any of its guises but I'm watching them thinking actually they're at least as good as plenty of European and American acts of a similar ilk who sell records by the truckload. We end up chatting to some of the travelling AC/DC fans, explaining how yeah we're variously from England and Brisbane and we're in town for a gig too, but a different gig, a little indie band, probably not really their thing, and I'm struck by how the differences in music taste don't matter one bit because we're all effectively doing the same thing. It's past 2am by the time we fall out of there; Boom ends up sleeping at the airport. Which does foruitously give him a head start looking for a hire car in the morning, because we've thus far failed to locate one and come Sunday we have places to be...

"I have a car, it's a long story". The text from Boom when we've barely woken up is great news. Turns out after sleeping at the airport he was waiting in the rental car zone when it opened in the morning, eventually negotiating with one company to drive off in a car they'd just had returned - and even better, as they've not had time to clean it, they knock a good few dollars off the price. This is good, as by the time he's made the 15 minute drive to our accommodation he's managed to spill coffee on the front seat. I mean, um, he's noticed the coffee the previous hirer spilt on the front seat (not that I am expecting a Sydney car hire company to be reading this shite, but you never know...). The directions I printed off the festival website seem a bit vague, but as we follow them to the letter they turn out to be perfectly adequate. There's always a moment on an away trip into the unknown, whether it's in the far reaches of Cornwall or the conurbation around the West Midlands or here in a country we've never visisted before, where you see the first road sign mentioning your ultimate destination and it's cheers all round, and an hour or so north of Sydney along country roads with kangaroo warning signs (not that we actually see one) there it is, the sign to Wiseman's Ferry. Result.

The small town is named after Solomon Wiseman, a former convict who received a land grant in the area and established a ferry service on the Hawkesbury River in 1827 for the transport of produce and provisions to the convicts building the Great North Road; on the fringe of two National Parks the scenery is breathtaking as wooded banks tower high above the creek. A pretty amazing location for a festival then (Reading centre this most definitely is not!) and moreover one that's unlikely to draw many noise complaints unless the local kangaroos have a hotline to the council. Parking up in the most blistering heat we've experienced yet on this continent we're directed to a jetty for the 20 minute cruise to the site. Playground Weekender has already been going for three days, and when the boat arrives, those staggering off have that thousand-yard stare noted in workplaces across Britain on the Tuesday after Glastonbury. The ferry sweeps round wide river bends until eventually we hear distant beats, catch sight of a row of rent-a-yurts; we're here and... bloody hell it's hot.

No, really hot. So hot Australians think it's hot; I'm no judge of such things but if the 37 degrees reported on a beach information board down at Bondi the following (less hot) day is correct, we're talking easily the other side of 40. The festival is at least 50% a dance type event, with a couple of dedicated DJ tents and big-name sets scattered across the other stages, and just the Filth Stage reserved for up-and-coming bands; the main stage features a quite bewildering line-up which last night was probably the only time anyone will book Bjorn Again and The Brian Jonestown Massacre in the same place.

As we enter we're drawn to the Filth Stage by some classic "Antipodean Underground" sounds: Sierra Fin have that Nick Cave via dark-end Veils desert blues vibe that's completely at odds spiritually with the blistering sunshine and yet carries a kind of scorched-earth feel you just don't get in European bands. There's a real sense of vision here, a sense that this could be the next great Australian band I'm watching at a privileged early stage. Later I discover they have ambition, too: their album, due some time this year, will be "a concept album, a symphonic work where every song is linked to each other and forms part of a linear story, utilising an orchestra for almost it's entirety". That's their debut album. And yes, I believe they are good enough to pull it off.

Time for a wander: there's a tiny hop-hop stage where two lads in big shorts are rapping in unconvincing American accents over old soul-pop hit "Gimme The Night" (was that George Benson? If so, why do I even know this?). The main stage has no bands on for much of the afternoon, just Norman Jay DJing to a handful of rather bemused looking people. We suspect a fair few weekenders have started to drift away already. We find ourselves eating some lovely if rather odd Turkish pancakes. But the weirdest thing is - it's half three in the afternoon at a festival and hardly anyone has beer. The mainstage bar staff stand bored. Aside from a few hardy souls - largely male and with sun-faded tattoos - it's just too bloody hot. A bottle of water goes nowhere; a massive cup of multicoloured synthetic fruit slush little further. Add to that the fact that most here are on day four of this, and you'd have to be insane.

Boom took this excellent photo - across the festival site any area of shade is popular, which is why we spend a lot of the afternoon around the Filth Stage, or more accurately under the canopy in front of it. Dimity Claire And Bleeding Hearts is a slight exaggeration, as there's just her and a bloke, although research implies there's usually a horn section. Not today. He strums, she sings, with a cheap drum machine backing what they probably consider quirky lo-fi, but most people under the canopy seem to consider a bit rubbish. The lads behind us shout dryly "Yeah. That's... really... good." Untutored would be a polite description of both parties - although when they introduce a "new one" at the end that's more Regina-ish spike-poppy, I suspect they just need to rehearse the less-old ones a little more. Afterwards, the PA blasts out Johnny Cash's "Ring Of Fire". We are officially being stalked from beyond the grave...

And the lads who'd been sat behind us are in fact the next band, Royal Chant, who do classic bar-to-road Springsteeny American rock with a bit of a Teenage Fanclub / Lemonheads pop side that makes much more sense here than it ever has before.The lads who'd been sat behind us are in fact the next band, Royal Chant, who do classic bar-to-road Springsteeny American rock with a bit of a Teenage Fanclub / Lemonheads pop side that makes much more sense here than it ever has before; some of their tunes actually sound like the sort of ride down a cool freeway in the midday heat that we had getting here.

Ten minutes before British Sea Power's slot the area around the main stage is somewhat underpopulated to say the least. Headed down early for a good spot we've found ourselves surrounded by space and a handful of people lazily batting a beachball; another five minutes and two older ladies have pulled up deckchairs front centre. We rather hope a few more arrive. People, that is, not necessarily with deckchairs.

Starting with "True Adventures" the band draw the attention of the assembled few towards them, which is a start. The sound is ridiculously bassy (which at least bodes well for tonight's headliners) and the crowd very chilled to the point of being mostly sat down (that said, it is about a million degrees out here) but the band seem untroubled. Even when they're engulfed by the product of the biggest smoke machine ever. Never a standout on record, "Atom" is a clear highlight early on with a few people up and dancing, and Noble playing his guitar with a cushion someone's thrown onstage. As the song ends he chucks it back at the crowd. It's back at his feet seconds later. Perhaps it's got a boomerang concealed in it or something. "Blackout" and "No Lucifer" lead into "Carrion" and a short "Rock In..." and - that can't be it, can it? It's not. the last song British Sea Power play on Australian soil, this time round at least, is a stunning "Great Skua" just as the sun starts to fall behind the trees, a moment so beautiful it's actually indescribable.

Once again it feels like a privilege to be here (and it is, really; thanks again to Dave and the band for access) - over the course of five gigs we've seen all the different sides of British Sea Power, bounced around to favourites now approaching a decade old and seen tasters that assure us the fifth album will be another masterpiece (and how many bands can you say that about these days?); the rest is just holiday, although there's a few hours of music left to be had here and it's finally cooled down to the level where walking about is feasible without having to down half a pint of water every hundred yards. But how do you follow that? Don't really want to head straight off and watch some random band just yet, so we plump instead for Chips On A Stick, an early contender for Festival Snack Of The Year: cheap, equal parts ingenious and ridiculous, and unlike Primavera's now legendary Pizza Cones they're actually really nice.

Unlike Sound Casino, who (back on the Filth Stage) start off doing quite American stoner rock'n'roll; their bassist (who was watching British Sea Power) looks so wasted he might fall over any minute. They then proceed to get less interesting as the set goes on, but there's a good few very tanned and underdressed people (of both sexes) dancing wildly. Indeed, if you had a rock cliche bingo card ("keep awwn", "yeeeeeeaaaaaaaaw!" unnecessary bits of soloing, a last song with an audience-participation "woh-oh-oh-ohhh" chorus, etc) they'd serve you well. That there are more people dancing to this tripe than British Sea Power is faintly depressing, really, but then this is after all the country that gave us Jet. Thankfully Underlights have a much more subtle, melodic approach - mainstream end of atmospheric indie with some nice sweeping guitars and yearning, understated vocals; the sun's all but set now and it works rather well amongst the long shadows, but it's time to head back to the main stage...

Orbital: two middle-aged Englishmen with torches on their heads and a synth rig that looks like an Apollo lander. Getting that lot across the river must have been a laugh. They have, not surprisingly, drawn the majority of the weekend survivors. As we noted earlier the festival seems slightly more biased towards dance music (a meaningless term, I know, but you know what I mean) than rock, and for the Hartnoll brothers it must be quite refreshing to do festivals and play to a crowd young enough to have been their offspring - many of whom seem to be sporting cartoon "Red Indian" feather headdresses. We even spotted a security guard wearing one earlier; couldn't see the likes of Showsec tolerating such frivolity back home.

The set is much the same as the one they were touring last year, a Greatest Hits sort of thing with the emphasis foimly on the more rave-worthy end of their repertoire, which is fair enough: this really isn't the time or the place for weird electronica, but it's very much the time and place for a load of rapidly tiring, half-sunstroked party animals to find one last burst of energy to fling their arms in the air and shout along to "SATAN! SATAN! SATAN! SATAN!". "I'm giving you a feather from my arse" says a rather wasted looking lad dancing next to me, and indeed he does (from his back pocket, anyway). The screens flicker, the smoke machine goes into overdrive, the bass vibrates possibly to the very core of the earth, and when they merge "Halcyon" gradually but perfectly into "Chime" under the clear moonlit sky it's the second completely sublime moment of the day - and a fitting time to leave. We love this place but we don't fancy spending the night here so we head back to the ferry before the rush.

As we drift back up the river away from the festival lights we look up and have never seen so many stars; the Milky Way strectches visibly across the sky and I suddenly get what The Church were on about all those years ago, when Australia was just some far-off place that somehow gave birth to a whole load of inspiring music. Boom's off on his own adventure now, he's going to hang onto the hire car and head on up towards Brisbane to see what happens. Kara's home now, saying Saturday was one of the best nights of her life. And we have a couple more days in Sydney before staring the long journey home, and the part of this trip I've been looking forward to almost as much as the gigs: that's a proper awayday for you, though, the gigs are just the starting point.

Monday morning we run into Yan and guitar tech Paul down by the harbour: Yan's off home soon, and not looking forward to having to wear a coat again. He has a point - I've had a text from my mum telling of four inches of snow back in Manchester and as I tell him this with the sun blazing in our eyes it does seem like another world. Paul, meanwhile, finally gets the night off he's been waiting for tonight and the chance to see his beloved AC/DC on home turf on the last of their three nights here. He's already been to pay respect at Bon Scott's grave; I'm guessing it's had a good few visitors this weekend. Paul grew up in rural Wales with the love of rock'n'roll flowing through his veins; he's been in bands himself and roadied, guitar tech-ed and tour managed all over the world for numerous bands across the genres; even with his previously traditional rocker hair now cut short he is every bit the classic roadie as depicted in films and TV shows aplenty over the years, and now through a miracle of timing his work has allowed him to be a fan again for one night. Hope you enjoyed the gig mate...

So it's snowing at home, and we're here - Bondi Beach, one of the most famous stretches of sand in the world. I'm so glad we decided not to go home straight after the tour. I don't want to go home ever, right now. That said, it seems tough enough trying to get back to Sydney; after the third bus blasts past without even slowing, one of our fellow prospective passengers suggests four of us take a cab. Sounds reasonable. He has a blue Mohican, a strong German accent and a Cradle Of Filth T-shirt on. A young local studentish girl agrees to join us. The punk downs almost a full bottle of beer from his plastic bag and the girl looks scared. I try not to judge by appearances; anyway the whole Black Metal thing is still in my head, and I was amused by the book's reports that many hardcore fans of the genre considered Cradle Of Filth a bit wussy; they'd never even burnt a church down. I also happen to know that singer Dani Filth is a thoroughly nice and well brought up chap, as a mate of mine went out with his sister for a couple of years; there were civilised family dinners and stuff. We get chatting about the licensing laws and how restrictive they are in this otherwise pretty laissez-faire country and the conversation drifts towards London's late-night booze emporia... and the fact that many of such are run by Middle Easterners... oh. I won't repeat the next bit, but let's just say sharing a cab with an extremely polite but virulently racist German is just the sort of thing that happens on Awaydays. We get out when the girl does, feeling almost as relieved as she is quite blatantly looking.

Tuesday the clouds start to come in - it's easy to think (as you may well do just from what I've written thus far) that it's always blazing sunshine in Australia, but a little over a week ago there was torrential rain and flooding here. Never mind, we have just one more day here which we spend touring the harbour by boat and taking all those pictures everyone does when they visit Sydney with which I won't bore you. And a final evening in the Lansdowne which tonight is entertaining its guests not with music but with a rather deranged "pub quiz" in which participants are given a lump of plasticene and asked to submit a sculpture depicting Tiger Woods' recent extramarital indiscretions. Thee are some exceptional entries (ahem). Wednesday we check out of the hotel, have a long breakfast in one of the wonderful cafes down Glebe Point Road which I'm quite certain will be - alongside the Lansdowne - our first port of call should we ever find the money and the inspiration to return here (and more than anywhere I've been over the past few years' rock'n'roll tourism, I very much do) and begin the journey home. We are, as we have already established, a very long way from Perth. But I feel you can't really say you've seen a country if all you've done is hop from city to city on aircraft; we fly home early on Sunday morning and to get there by train you have to leave early Wednesday afternoon. Never having had enough money as a student to do the InterRail thing the longest I've spent on a train journey is probably the eight hours (and that includes Eurostar check-in time) from Manchester to Brussels. It's roughly 700km from Manchester to Brussels; from Perth 700km isn't even half way to the next town.

The first Indian Pacific service left Sydney on 23rd February 1970, and was the first direct train across the Australian continent, made possible by the completion of a east-west standard gauge route a few months earlier. It arrived in Perth early on the morning of the 27th, as indeed it will this year. Improvements in tracks and reduction in the time needed to change locomotives and crew mean it takes a day less than it did then. This is one of the most famous railway journeys in the world, and through that randomness of awayday timing, nothing more than the fact that it's the first service running on the route after the gigs had finished, we're on board for its 40th anniversary trip. For three days we'll be living in a cabin round about the size of an en-suite bathroom, and not the big posh sort, but it doesn't matter. The fold-down beds are a lot more comfortable than you'd initially think; the on-board food is reasonably priced, and outside the windows is an ever shifting vista which will stay with me for ever.

The first hour of Sydney suburbia soon gives way to the wide open space I dreamed about all those years ago when Grant McLennan retreated into his country-kid past. The Blue Mountains are indeed quite blue (courtesy of the mist from millions of eucalyptus trees), although the Megalong Valley isn't that long. (Sorry. Look, it amused me, OK?). Attempting to capture the beauty of the landscape on camera from a moving train is almost impossible, but to be honest you'd struggle to capture it if you were standing still here: the sun catching the road that runs parallel to the twisting train track in the foreground, the hundreds of shades of blue and green receding into the evening mist, to the faint outline of the mountains - miles into the distance; it's hard to even say how many miles. Sitting towards the back of the train, around tighter corners you can see the sleek silver-grey front carriages snaking through the scenery, its functional simplicity more suited to its surroundings than the garish paint schemes of lesser beasts. As evening falls and the long shadows around Bathurst (some vague motor racing connotations I can't quite remember) shift into twilight across endless farmland I find my internal jukebox playing a mish-mash of McLennan songs.

Waking briefly at 4am I'm not sure what's happening. We seem to be surrounded by a million points of light... I try and focus my eyes and wind the blind up a little, and to coin an old phrase: my god, it's full of stars. Never realised they could be so bright when there's nothing illuminating the surroundings but the dim lights of a passing train. And the horizon here is just that - no buildings, no mountains, just the curve of the earth, and the stars reach all the way down to it. Not for the first or indeed last time on this trip my mind's kind of blown.

The first stop, early Thursday morning, is in the old mining town of Broken Hill; unlike Kalgoorlie the minerals here have run almost dry and the town's main industry is residential care for the elderly; the street sign above illustrating its past and present perfectly. We take a trip up to the top of the miles long slag-heap, now a memorial for the hundreds of miners who lost their lives here - the commemorations run up to quite recently, but it's notable that they reduce dramatically between the start and the middle of the last century. Broken Hill was the birthplace of the Australian trade union movement, our driver tells us. His own feelings about trade unions are quite clear as he tells of sacrifices made and battles won for the good of miners here and across the land, the significant safety improvements and shortening of underground shifts that resulted from Broken Hill's pioneering collective bargaining. However he throws in the odd caveat that "things were a lot harder then" - presumably in case there are any Americans or other overprivileged / self-serving at the expense of others (I tend to find those opposed to unionism fall into at least one of these categories) people on board. As we wait for the party stragglers I have a quiet chat with him, and he confirms his position. "They gave so much to get those shifts down from nine hours to seven" he sighs "and now it's all twelve..." - the "all" in this case being the 400 miners remaining from a workforce that even two decades ago was ten times that. Some things are universal. I wonder how things are going back home, but only for a minute.

The Nullarbor ("No Trees") Plain is aptly named; its Aboriginal name also translating to something close to "fuck all". It's basically a massive piece of limestone which is, the train manager tells us, four times the size of Belgium. I'm pleased to see the recognised international unit of geographical area is still in use here, a hemisphere away.

This is Cook, population - well, according to the Indian Pacific brochure I downloaded towards the end of 2009, seven. The onboard magazine dated January 2010 says five. The commentary meanwhile says just four. You don't like to ask. However many of them there are, they're twelve hours from the nearest town in any direction, the nine hole golf course is apparently unique for its possession of not a single blade of grass. The town was created in 1917 when the railway was built and is named after the sixth Prime Minister of Australia, Joseph Cook. The town depended on the Tea and Sugar Train for the delivery of supplies, and is on the longest stretch of straight railway in the world, 478 km which stretches from Ooldea to beyond Loongana. This is the genuine outback, and something the airport to airport city hoppers will never see; by day, surrounded by a hundred of our fellow tourists (as well as several million flies) it's an oddity; at night we can only begin to imagine how quiet it gets.

For most of the twentieth century the population numbered a couple of hundred, but the town was effectively closed in 1997 when the railways were privatised and the new owners did not need a support town there, although the diesel refuelling facilities remain, and there is overnight accommodation for train drivers. I can't help thinking how weird it must be for the kids who grew up there, went to the school and swam in the pool, to come back now if they ever do. Many houses are much as their departing owners left them: stripped of personal effects but an old bed or table not worth carrying can still be seen through the dusty windows.

The stationmaster's wife, quoted in a womens' magazine article, says she's heard ghosts: the chatter and laughter of children around three in the afternoon as they leave the little schoolhouse which stands much as it did the day the last lesson was taught there, a handful of plastic chairs and a couple of pasters on the walls about the environment and global warming. The subject wasn't discussed a great deal in 1997 outside of political, scientific and environmentalist circles, but here water has always been in rather short supply. When the town was active, water was pumped from an underground Artesian aquifer but now all water is carried in by train, costing as much per litre as fuel. Attempts have apparently been made to introduce trees and other vegetation, but these have not been massively successful.

The train pulls away and leaves the stationmaster and his wife and the two service crew to their silent desert home, until the next train passes. There's another eight or nine hours of nothing to Kalgoorlie; the sparse trees pretty much stop after an hour. A person (and they have ventured here; this train track didn't lay itself, nor the parallel fibre-optic cable and the remnants of the telegraph posts it superseded) would have hours, not days, out here. There hasn't been a phone signal since Port Augusta, a good fifteen hours ago. The red earth is scattered with saltbush amongst the rocks, the occasional scrubby little green shrub; a solitary eagle flaps in the distance, there's the remnants of a limestone mine, and that's about it.

Then suddenly there are trees everywhere; a sign indicates the edge of the Nullarbor Plain and the ground springs into life. A couple of kangaroos bounce past. Midnight Oil's lines about how the "Western Desert lives and breathes" flash through my mind. Peter Garrett is all over the news today with his career in shreds and the rest of the Kevin Rudd government (I don't know why, but I just can't imagine Britain ever having a PM called Kevin) not far behind him. His ambitious carbon-cutting plans to fit every household in the country with loft insulation (apparently some parts do have winter and heating and stuff, hard as that is to believe right now) hit the world's biggest backlash when shoddy operators grabbed the contract cash, cutting corners off corners and leaving homes in a dangerous state; "four deaths of insulation installers have been linked to the programme since October, and 96 house fires. Emergency inspections have also had to be ordered in tens of thousands of homes because of the risk of electrification from foil insulation that was incorrectly installed" - this I learn a few hours later from the BBC News website, sitting in a railway siding an hour east of Kalgoorlie while the train refuels. Probably the only time Australian politics has ever been in the news back home outside of general elections; it seems Garrett has today been stripped of much of his responsibility. A terrible mess and no mistake, but I can't help but feel for him a little. Midnight Oil were still a relatively big draw, here (remember, again, how separate the country's music scene is from the rest of the world's), when he walked away from the rock star life to try and practice what he'd been preaching. You don't see Bono, Sting or their unspeakable understudies Thom Yorke and Chris Martin making that kind of sacrifice for the beliefs they continually wag their fat fingers at the rest of us about, do you?

The afternoon drags. The longest daytime stint and the least interesting scenery - whether the afternoon has been expanded by one-and-a-half or two-and-a-half hours is still unclear as we pass the Western Standard Time timing points an hour "ahead" of schedule thanks to Perth's determination to be awkward with respect to Daylight Saving Time. I can handle the idea that a large country may have several timezones, as the US and others do, but surely allowing them to decide independently exactly what they are is asking for trouble. Then the Train Manager tells us we will be arriving into Kalgoorlie at 7pm as timetabled. I give up. Not much to do for this indeterminate time other than read, anyway. I've just finished Jah Wobble's autobiography, he's another bloke I respect a great deal even if I don't have much of his actual music myself. Rather easier going than the Scandinavian stuff and a good read; never realised just how many albums he'd made, immersing himself in the music of a hundred cultures. Not just cherry-picking, the way pop stars usually do when they get the "world music" bug. Now I'm onto "Perverted By Language - Fiction Inspired By The Fall" and it's as weird and screwed up as that implies, and oddly brilliant. I don't often read fiction and almost certainly wouldn't have this if it weren't for its bizarre premise; my head's going to be somewhere very strange by the time we get to Kalgoorlie. Mind you if the impression we got of the place from its local paper this time last week (which seems, incidentally, like months ago) is anything close to reality it's gonna need to be...

This is the biggest open cast mine in the Southern hemisphere, our tour guide informs us in between brilliant anecdotes about how you still occasionally find a gold nugget here - her neighbours did, a couple of years ago, in their back yard, and it paid for the extension they were building. It's Friday night, payday weekend, and Kalgoorlie is drinking. Heavily. The streets are lined with pubs, some open since eight in the morning to cater for those finishing night shifts, all advertising the best "skimpies" - these being the topless barmaids for which the townis well known. "We local girls don't mind much" explains the guide, a former digger driver who looks like she could snap a man's neck with her bare hands should she ever need to, "but it'd be better if they actually could pull a beer properly". She then directs the coach down the street where the brothels are situated. A rather strange thing to note on a whistle-stop tour, but it seems Kalgoorlie has realised the tourism potential in both its indigenous industries. Those stopping longer can have a tour of the goldmine followed by a tour of one of these hostelries; our tour guide's been and she says it's not for the faint-hearted but her husband was quite interested in some of the things she learnt. Not much you can say to that, really. Back on the train we're exhausted, but then we are back on Perth time now so it's been a long day.

Breakfast, and the scenery has changed again. We're almost back where we started now; it's been just eight days since we left Perth but seems like a lifetime.

We spend a day up at the park overlooking the city, listen to Health soundchecking down at the festival stage (we can't actually go to the gig as we need a very early night and have pretty much run out of money anyway), one last evening meal in Northbridge, and then back to the place that seems to be the last port of call for any foreign awayday for a few hours' rest.

4am at Perth airport, and still last night in the UK we're 24 hours' travel away from returning to. There's a free internet kiosk so I log on to Facebook to pass the time, and there, just posted, is an update from John Robb: "RIP Larry Cassidy, Section 25". I'm stunned, he wasn't that old and I never knew he was ill. Section 25's "Looking From A Hill Top" was used by Tony Michelides as a sort of theme music to his radio show nack in the 80s and shares many an old cassette in a box somewhere at home with the sounds of The Go-Betweens and The Triffids, whose David McComb also passed on some years ago now. It's a strange feeling, a stark reminder of the passing years. I think of Grant McLennan and the fields of cattle and cane, and find myself suddenly very sad I never got to write that ultimate piece of fan-mail: "this country is incredible, and I came here partly because of words you wrote all those years ago".

The flight home seems to take much longer than it did coming out; back into the chaos of Dubai, switch planes, another eight hours plus an extra one for delays, and at a 9pm that's already five o'clock tomorrow morning where we came from (and feels it) we step out into the Manchester cold, pulling on coats that haven't seen action for a fortnight but relieved there's no actual snow on the ground. It's always summer somewhere but it's a long wait until our own; I feel like I might never have any money again, but I've seen so much these two weeks. Because for people like us, the seasoned awaydayers with our ever more ambitious plans, the music is the starting point; everything else is what you make of it.

Band Links

http://www.myspace.com/nickhugginsmusic

http://www.myspace.com/seagullmusic

http://www.myspace.com/sierrafin

http://www.myspace.com/dcandthebleedinghearts

http://www.myspace.com/royalchant

http://www.myspace.com/soundcasino

http://www.myspace.com/underlightsband

http://www.myspace.com/orbitalofficial

http://www.myspace.com/thebatterykids

* Many thanks to Dave Taylor for gig access and Boom for great company and driving *

2009 - From Where I Was Standing

2010-01-03T13:50:00.000-08:00

Hello, good evening and welcome to my Review Of The Year 2009. I don't claim to be in any way objective, but I don't consider myself any less so than a great many people who actually get paid for writing about music. Indeed, 2009 was the year in which I stopped buying NME after 23 years because I consider my own opinions on all things musical to be vastly superior to the majority of hair-gelled chipmunks who hang around the supposed Next Big Thing in trendy parts of London. So here goes then, this is the music I was listening to in 2009, along with 17 gigs you'll wish you'd been at (unless you were, of course).

It's a year in which five of the best live bands I saw comprised two men and a pile of electronics, but spanned the decades in terms of both physical age and musical longevity: Orbital could easily be worriedaboutsatan's dads, with Fuck Buttons their mates, Maps their slightly older cousins and The Pet Shop Boys their strange uncles. Meanwhile the likes of Air Cav, Daniel Land And The Modern Painters, various insane Japanese people and trusty perennials British Sea Power proved there was still life in guitars if you knew what to do with them. All potential contenders for band of the year - so I awarded that to someone else entirely, being the contrary sort that I am.

This was 2009, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did...

ALBUMS OF 2009

Don't know about anyone else but I genuinely reckon this was either the best year for albums (a) since 1989 or (b) ever. Given that unlike the lucky souls who write for professional media outlets I actually have to buy most of my albums, the pool I have to choose from is somewhat limited to stuff I thought I'd like anyway (or stuff friends forced on me) - I could spend three hours a night on Spotify chasing up recommendations but I'd rather be out watching bands and finding the next generation. But whilst I might not agree with the actual albums rated by every other review page, there's one theme that's crossed genres and tastes this year - as I wrote in Incendiary in September, reviewing the album which I already sort of 90% knew was going to be my album of the year, "Unless you've been living under a rock, you might have noticed that the music press has already crowned 2009 The Year Second Albums Stopped Being Shite. We could pontificate for ages on the accuracy or otherwise of this typically sweeping generalisation (and its resultant increase in use of the ghastly word "s*ph*m*re") but you all know the much-cited examples already. But let's be honest, how hard exactly was it going to be for The Horrors to make a better album than Strange House? The average llama could have made a better album than Strange House...."

The aforementioned Horrors album came out relatively early in the year, and I rashly declared it "probably top five of 2009". That's how unprepared I was for the year's rich pickings. It's here, not in the top ten but somewhere down in the 10 to 20 rankings - and I still maintain that in pretty much any other year of the past decade or two it would have been top five. As would, possibly, quite a few of the rest of these...

NOT QUITE THE TOP TEN

The Phantom Band - Checkmate Savage

Engineers - Three Fact Fader

The Horrors - Primary Colours

The Duckworth Lewis Method (self titled)

Flowers Of Hell - Hell Or High Water

Rival Consoles - io

Grammatics (self titled)

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart (self titled)

The Twilight Sad - Forget The Night Ahead

Wooden Shjips - Dos

Morton Valence - Bob and Veronica Ride Again

SO WHAT DID MAKE THE TOP TEN THEN?

10. Sad Day For Puppets – Unknown Colors

Courtesy of Sonic Cathedral, who were on something of a roll following their also excellent compilation of their first 11 single releases, Sad Day For Puppets arrived in Manchester on a rainy Wednesday, carrying their instruments on their backs because they couldn't even afford a van for their UK tour. Chorlton Irish Club, venue for that evening's gig, was just clearing up after a wake. Far from being deterred by this somewhat disconcerting welcome, by the time we arrived with the amps they were borrowing from support band Air Cav they were happily tucking into the left-over sausage rolls. So began my review of this album for Incendiary and in a way it does matter, because you probably couldn't give a better illustration of the sunny, optimistic vibe of this lovely young Swedish pop band. More Sarah Records than shoegaze, they sounded like shrebet dabs and picnics and sunshine; it might have been a year dominated by electronics but if there was life left in guitar indie, Sonic Cathedral was going to find it.

9. Liam Frost - We Ain’t Got No Money Honey But We Got Rain

It would take a very special "one man and his guitar" act to get past my filters in 2009 - and this is that man. Admittedly with a band, and indeed Martha Wainwright helping out vocally on one track, but this is still basically man-and-guitar storytelling in the finest Mancunian tradition . Yes, I know, other cities have troubadours, but they haven't got George Borowski or Johnny Bramwell or this lastest addition to the esteemed list. Which is interesting, because on one track he sings "I'm not doing this to join my city's leading lights and luminaries" - just one highlight of an album packed with some of the most evocative and poignant lyrics you'll hear anywhere this year. To some of us, Liam, you already are.

8. Brakes - Rock is Dodelijk

It is a truth almost universally acknowledged that live albums are crap, so what the hell's a live album doing here, especially when Brakes also released a studio album this year ("Touchdown")? Well, basically, Brakes are a live band. One of the very best. And amazingly this album captures all the fun and energy and borderline insanity of a Brakes gig (two, actually) and just listening to it makes me happy. For added experience, get extremely pissed before listening, jump around the living room, and get a mate to throw a whole real pineapple at your head. Whilst dressed in a Mexican poncho.

7. British Sea Power - Man Of Aran

In which the most original and inspired indie band of the 21st century follow up the relatively commercial "Do You Like Rock Music" with a largely instrumental ambient post-rock album crafted to soundtrack a 1930s film. Some more traditionalist fans initially refused to countenance it as a "proper" BSP album (so, um, what is it then?) but the idea itself - the refusal to conform to a straight path - is what makes them great. As a piece of music alone it demands comparison with the greats of the genre (my 2008 album of the year, Laymar's "In Strange Lines And Distances", for example) and doesn't quite measure up, but still stands rather better than most.

6. Doves - Kingdom of Rust

If there's one thing more exciting than a new band making an amazing album, it's an old band making an amazing album - and this was the sort of return to form every established band should aspire to. From the title track's amazing blend of Johnny Cash and Ennio Morricone to the mad funk of "Compulsion" it's Doves at their very best. Even if it did take them about a million years to make it. It's a faintly depressing thought that we'll probably be three years into a Tory government by the time they release the next one.

5. Daniel Land And The Modern Painters - Love Songs For The Chemical Generation

As I have said before, 2009's stunning haul of long-players means anything from hereon in would have probably topped the pile in previous years. Described by NME as "Slowdive reimagined by Phil Spector" this is basically an hour-long flotation tank trip of traditional shoegaze which manages a feat almost unheard-of in genre-revival stakes: it's actually better than most of what inspired it. Think about that for a minute. It's like if Interpol had been better than The Chameleons. This sort of thing just doesn't happen usually, does it? All the more remarkable for the fact that it was made without a studio, label or any financial backing. In fucking Northenden. Truly astonishing.

4. Fuck Buttons - Tarot Sport

OK - first things first: of course there is nothing on here quite as amazing as "Sweet Love For Planet Earth". This is OK, as there have probably been less than 25 tracks as amazing as "Sweet Love For Planet Earth" made by anyone ever. And "The Lisbon Maru" and leading single "Surf Solar" are actually not far off. The best thing about it is that it sounds exactly like what it is - an album by one of the most creative and imaginative bands of the decade stuck through the Andy Weatherall machine. A match made in Heaven. (Literally, in October. The club, that is. More on which later...)

3. worriedaboutsatan - Arrivals

Yes, it's another band comprising two slightly bewildered looking young men and a table full of Stuff. This is a quite outstanding journey through modern electronica, touching on techno, abstract, ambient, dubstep, glitchy and atmospheric variants. It is the sort of album that makes it hard not to use words like "glacial" and "dystopian" and I am guilty on both counts. Best experienced (and yes, we have tried this) in a darkened room accompanied by the film "13 (Tzameti)" - which is how the boys have generally played live this year. Probably more than anyone on this list I'm thoroughly excited to see where they go next.

THE FINALISTS

And it's a close call on the top two, which between them have probably had about 30% of my stereo time in the second half of the year. Considering the high quality that makes up the rest of the top ten that's saying something. I'm going to reproduce my own reviews for both of them - courtesy of my regular online homes ManchesterMusic and Incendiary - so you can see why.

2. THE LONGCUT - OPEN HEARTS

(Review from manchestermusic.co.uk, 29 June 2009)

You've got to hand it to them, haven't you? Sometime on Sunday night, four words appeared on the computer screens of anyone who happened to be looking: me I'm checking my own Myspace page, and where it used to say The Longcut by the little picture in my favourite bands panel are now the words: "The Longcut - New Album Out Tomorrow". Sorry, what? It's three years almost to the day since the trio released "A Call And Response"; three years in which they parted company with their label and - well, there have been live shows, although these have been pretty sparse the last couple of years. Some demos which unexpectedly found their way into MM's hands following a particularly deranged night out in late 2007 sounded promising, and then it all went worryingly quiet again for most of 2008. 2009 started with a glorious live return sometime after midnight at the Friends Of Manchester all-dayer; opening with three new tracks, there was evidence of a progression, a shift towards a more electronic sound; that second album was going to be good, we knew then, but when we'd actually get to hear it was anybody's guess. Another quiet Sunday night wandering round the internet, and... no, refresh the page, I didn't imagine that did I? No. Here we are less than 24 hours later with a serious contender for that albums of the year list.

It's like The Longcut we knew and loved, only more so. Angrier, harder, more fucked up but more heartfelt. Beats that could blast holes in concrete, brittle guitar lines, quiet sections that ache with poignancy - and that's just the first track. It's called "Out At The Roots" and it takes everything that's ever been great about The Longcut and doubles it. As indeed does the rest of the album. There's so much more ambition here: lyrics seem less vague and more personal - I guess the clue is in the name, and the title track itself is almost anthemic; there are great towers of fuzz and distortion in "Mary Bloody Sunshine", whilst "Something Inside" and "Repeated" link back to the debut, only with a load more squalling white noise in the former and acres of that bleak post-industrial atmosphere in the latter. You want something even more epic? "Tell You So" starts with the sort of spiralling guitars popularised by the likes of I Like Trains (who of course were barely out of the, er, platforms three years ago) then there's one of those moments where it suddenly shifts direction, all thundering drums, and you just know this is the bit where onstage Stuart will make one of his legendary microphone to drumkit sprints, but rather than leaving it there it slips off into some sort of widescreen post-rock landscape worthy of 65daysofstatic. Elsewhere, "Evil Dance" should be pretty well known to anyone who's been at one of those gigs; it's the one that goes "I thought that I was lost and I was scared as hell, I'm happy I was wrong" - a sentiment which might well be widely echoed tonight as those files are unzipped.

The thing is, it gets even better. Throughout, "Open Hearts" feels like it's building up to something. And it seems it was. In these days of isolated tracks and cherrypicked downloads, where some bands (hello, Ash) can't even be bothered to make proper long-players any more, credit is due to any band who remembers the ancient art of album closure. And here, in the stunning "The Last Ones Here", The Longcut unveil what could be their finest moment yet, a fractured elegy of love and death and defiance all wrapped in rippling electronics and stadium-sized chord structures which soar across the senses before melting away with a whisper. Recent times have seen the phrase "long-awaited" applied to pretty much every move the band have made, but it doesn't matter now. This is more than worth the wait.

1. MAPS - TURNING THE MIND

(Review from Incendiary Magazine, September 2009)

I started, as you read somewhere near the start of this section, by saying that some artists were going to find it rather easier to exceed their debut albums than others....

For Maps, however, there was a somewhat higher watermark to exceed. Trailblazing from a Northamptonshire bedroom via Iceland all the way to the 2007 Mercury nomination list, We Can Create was about as perfect a debut album as anyone's made in recent years, so a few months back when James Chapman started firing off blog posts about how this one was going to basically walk all over it, we so wanted to believe him, but... well, nine times out of ten when someone starts saying things like that you steel yourself for some indulgent folly. Thing is we always had an inkling this wasn't going to be like that. And then he walked out on stage at (Liverpool's long-running electro night) EVOL and slipped his coat off to reveal the album's title tattooed bold and black down the length of his pale skinny forearm and it was like yep, he means it all right.

"Oh my god, where are the guitars!!?" - the voice of a retreating clutch of shivering shoegazers, as the download-only single Let Go Of The Fear slipped out quietly in May. We downloaded, we pressed play... and four minutes of glorious Technicolor techno later we scraped ourselves off the ceiling. Then there were live shows in July - the response to which was kind of mixed. Going all electro-rave was fair enough, said the general consensus, but what about the genius pop anthems? Where's the descendant of, say, You Don't Know Her Name? Yeah, whatever, blah, blah; actually, pop kids, it's right here, it's called Everything is Shattering and it is capable of breaking your heart into little pieces and making you grin like an axolotl (Google it) all at the same time. And the rest of the album? Well, he was right. End to end, this is stunning.

Better than We Can Create? You better believe it. However much Incendiary loves that debut (which is a lot) it did seem just a little bit, well, flavoured. As in, there was quite a bit of Valgeir Sigurdsson going on in there. This, however, is the unfettered musical manifesto of one man and his vision (co-producer Tim Holmes serves only to enhance and help realise the ideas), of stunningly beautiful songs interspersed with deliciously vibrant techno pieces. Twelve tracks, not a turkey among them. Start at the beginning - the title track opens with a vulnerable near-whisper, and the raw emotions come flooding out followed by washes of synthesised euphoria, and that's this album all over, really. States of mind and glorious symphonic electronica, sometimes at odds with each other, sometimes coinciding, but all melting together beautifully. Valium In The Sunshine is as lyrically blissed out as the title suggests whilst musically almost elegiac - it's a trick he pulled before on early single Don't Fear and nobody does it better, whilst lead single I Dream Of Crystal has some harsh words for someone set to a sun-blazed trip that recalls the wide-eyed wonder of Primal Scream's Come Together. In fact the highs and lows of Turning The Mind as a whole echo Screamadelica; here too you'll find thundering calls to the dance-floor (the trance-infused Love Will Come) alongside lonely journeys into the soul (Nothing). By the time it fades out with the forward-looking Without You no emotion has been left uncharted.

We hear there are still people out there who do not consider music made with silicon chips to be "real" or as valid as that made with guitars, and this album is unlikely to change their viewpoint, especially as they're probably all sat in their caves mourning Oasis whilst trying to craft rudimentary tools from bits of flint or something. For anyone who's still not quite sure, though, this is your way in: amongst the chips and wires and beats and bleeps is one of the most human records you'll hear this year.

The Finalists: maybe this entire venture was just an excuse to post this picture again - taken after the Shelter benefit gig in Oxford in October - because it never fails to make me smile.

NOT ALBUM OF THE YEAR AT ALL

My good friend and man of taste Liam reckons Julian Plenti Is Skyscraper has redeeming features; I've not found them. It is now over seven years since Interpol made the stunning "Turn On The Bright Lights" and probably about five or something since the decent follow-up "Antics" - maybe I should just let go. Why I spent actual hard cash on Paul Banks's pseudonymous solo effort is a mystery to me, although not quite as much of a mystery as who exactly told him it was worth releasing in the first place, and why.

And while I'm in cynical mode (don't worry, I'll cheer up again soon)...

I JUST DON'T GET IT!

You love music, I love music. You love these bands, I'm left looking around for whatever it is I clearly missed.

The Boxer Rebellion. Much beloved of a great many of my music fan mates, especially in the Chameleons, Puressence and Exit Calm crews: me, I can't understand how anyone who loves the true greats of indie/guitar music can even be arsed with this bunch of me-too's. Nice back story, certainly: I'd go as far as to say it's a blueprint for any band dropped by a label and still loved by fans - just a shame about the really average and uninspiringly derivative tunes.

Editors - see above, only minus back story and plus several zillion units shifted. The ultimate photocopy band, or at least I thought so until they sprung their own photocopy in the form of White Lies. The latter are not included here on the grounds that I don't think I know anyone who takes them seriously.

M83. A band so unfeasibly boring I can't even think of anything to write about them, except that after several years of being completely underwhelmed by their recordings following recommendations from a great many people whose taste I respect I finally ended up seeing them live. Or at least seeing them on a stage. "Live" would imply some form of spontaneity, diversion from the recorded material, humanity or performance - there wasn't.

Animal Collective. Doesn't the very mention of their name make you want to yawn?

Them Crooked Vultures. Supergroups were possibly acceptable in the 1970s when someone had the deluded idea that if you got a load of people who were all amazingly technically proficient on their instrument then the result would be a really great band. When anyone with half a brain could have told them it would actually be the most unbearable pile of muso-wank ever as it's the flaws and the humanity that makes great music great. So it's hardly surprising that this particular trio's multitude of talents resulted in really boring heavy metal, only that so many people - some of them even under the age of 40 - gave a shit.

La Roux. Looks ridiculous, in a good way, like pop stars did when we were kids when they were like some sort of exotic alien beings and not just the dim girls who work in Top Shop. Plus there's the inherently funny June Ackland Off The Bill Is Her Mum thing. Oh, I so wanted to like her, but the weak nothingy voice and below-average tunes prevented this.

All these, however, can be put down to personal taste. You have to dig somewhat further into the depths of when I had to put up with between the good bits this year to find the truly awful....

WORST BAND OF 2009

Oh god, there are a few contenders here. Innumerable mate-rock bands with a copy of the Noel Gallagher Book Of Cliches and 30 pals who wouldn't know decent music if it popped out of their held-aloft pint pots: for the most part these acts are hidden away in provincial pubs and the pay-to-play circuit but the odd one has cropped up here and there, both Air Cav and Exit Calm have suffered the indignity of sharing a bill with them, but I can't remember their names and that's half the point. What's worse is those bands that clearly believe they are a notch or two above such dross, and then get on stage and do something so shockingly bad it almost defies belief.

This happened, somewhat memorably, very late on the second night of a rather underwhelming In The City when like various other scene commentators I wandered into Ruby Lounge because it was the last place with a band on, and the band in question had quite a funny name. God Is In The TV Zine's Simon Jay Catling reported it thus: "they’re a boy band right? Sure, they’ve got a couple of guys in the back messing about with laptops and samplers; but the vocalists at the front might as well be X-Factor’s John & Edward. Maybe they are. I spot Cath Aubergine again (Catling's review of the weekend included several references to the fact that we were at a lot of the same shows, and mostly the good ones), she looks as shocked as me. This cheesy 80s pop repellent is awful; flat vocals and a complete lack of hooks. They’ll be huge in no time."

Meanwhile, this was my concurrently written and astonishingly similar assessment for MM: "Ou Est Le Swimming Pool would have been probably best off left as a comedy name on the schedule: the reality is rather disappointing. Unless you're a fan of rubbish 80s disco pop. The first track sounds like The Scissor Sisters without any of the charm: instead of flamboyant androgynous New York City club queens we get a bunch of Shoreditch scenesters-by-numbers. The backing tracks - provided by a serious-looking type in a suit and a slightly less serious looking one with a multicoloured scarf wrapped round his head - are decent enough, but the frontmen let the side down: the bleach-haired singer attempts the old high-pitched disco thing but is lacking in any sort of soul, and I can't work out what the other one's even there for. I just can't lose the overriding feeling that I've landed in a suburban Nite Klub circa 1986, possibly called Cinderellas or something. Maybe I'm being a party pooper but no, this is grade one Emperor's New Clothes. They will probably be massive in about three weeks."

So far, they're not. Let's keep it that way. So where do we go from here?

GIGS OF THE YEAR

How about some of the more enjoyable live performances of 2009? Of which I was privileged to see a great many. In total, 654 sets by 445 different bands/artists at 250 gigs. Fewer on all counts than the last three years, but still an almighty task to choose the best... especially when undoubtedly the greatest gig I went to this year was one I co-promoted and tour managed....

AIR CAV + DANIEL LAND AND THE MODERN PAINTERS, Groningen Vera, 18th April

The first night had gone well. Better than any of us had dared hope. A few minutes before Air Cav's opening bars at Leiden's SUB071, the only people milling around the wonderful squat venue were members of the touring party and the hippies (meant here in the nicest sense) who lived there. Suddenly it was filling, then full; both bands played excellent sets and the party continued well into Saturday morning. Perhaps as well then that despite Groningen being technically at the other end of the country, it's not exactly a massive conuntry. Vera is one of the world's most renowned venues, its upstairs hospitality quarters wallpapered with posters and flyers of thsoe who have graced its stages. I could list them but why not just find a History Of Alternative Music 1980s To Present Day. Holly Golightly was headlining the main room on this particular night, but there was no elitism; she and her band chilled and hung out and ate Chinese takeaway with two up and coming bands from Manchester whose minds were already most of the way to blown. And the great thing about Vera is that the smaller room doesn't even start until the big one's pretty much finished. I'm going to hand over to my Incendiary colleagues for the next bit...

Bathed in the kind of red light normally reserved for cheap horror movies and certain seedy local districts with large windows, both bands were welcomed with warm applause and boy did they deliver their side of the bargain. Daniel and his painters delivered a blistering set. Beautiful, haunting and completely overwhelming. The vaulted roof could barely contain the noise, the floor began to tremble and, in the toilets, the mirrors began to shake, which caused one Incendiary reporter to almost have a complete heart attack when his face started to vibrate in front of him. The crowd were simply beaten into submission. There was no escape from this onslaught of noise and scores of people found themselves wandering downstairs, in search of a nicotine fix, and hanging around instead, shocked at the sheer force of what they were confronted with. Then, in the spirit of not giving a fuck, the band finished their set with the kind of white noise-infused wig out that My Bloody Valentine would have creamed themselves over. It was monumental. As their epic closing number faded into the distance Vera realized that it had witnessed something truly powerful. Holy fuck this had been worth the trip and we still had Air Cav to come.

Air Cav; bloody hell. On this showing, they were something else. If they were good the night before, they were amazing in Vera. To say they stood up to the plate would be an understatement. They took to the stage as if it really fucking meant something. This was important to them and by Christ it felt important to us too. This was one of those gigs that you were simply glad to witness. No fuck ups here, no dodgy wiring, no misplaced footsteps, just a full on assault, every member playing at full power. They were so much more impassioned, so much more alive and so much more up for it than they had been the night before. You could tell that Chris was getting into it. The sweat was pouring out of him and, on more than one occasion, he started beating the ceiling with his fist, just to release the adrenalin flowing through him. The crowd, which was a fucking ridiculous size by now, fucking loved them. Girls started pushing to the front, just to get a better look, blokes stared longingly at Sophie. There was even a bit of bizarre floor tom worshipping going on too, by a spirited local, which drew a classic Mancunian snarling retort from Mr. Nield: “If you’re gonna hit it, hit it! But don’t fanny about with it!” (Words by Damian Leslie).

It's been eight months since that weekend and both bands have gone on to play some outstanding gigs: Daniel Land And The Modern Painters' album launch at the Roadhouse in November and Air Cav's Christmas show at the Unitarian Chapel are both worthy of note - both promoted by the bands themselves, too - as is the November night both bands played at Birmingham's excellent Sound Of Confusion session. But some nights transcend the mere description as a gig. And this was one of those.

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS (in chronological order only)...

Magazine, Manchester Academy 1 (14th and 17th February)

It's not often you see a large number of large middle aged men in tears, at least not outside of sporting events, but for two nights in February that was Manchester Academy. Here's what I wrote for MM at the time.

There's a long introduction, the graceful instrumental "The Thin Air" (of which you'd have thought they could have found a CD that didn't jump) seguing into the arch, disembodied voice of Howard Devoto, introducing the comeback along the boundary of fact and fiction whilst Barry Adamson, Noko (Devoto's one-time partmer in Luxuria, in place of John McGeoch who passed away a few years ago), John Doyle and Dave Formula - their very names part of the fabric of this city's musical heritage - slip onstage shadow like, beneath the wall-sized looming grimaces of the "Real Life" sleeve art; but if you're going to return after 28 years, I guess you earn the right to milk it a bit. The anticipation is tangible. And then on he bounds, your slightly sinister uncle in a carnation-pink suit jacket; already likened to Austin Powers' Dr.Evil by those who've been at the preceding London gigs and not without reason. Formula's Hammond sweeps into "The Light Pours Out Of Me" and the first words, after a generation away, are "Time flies... time crawls..." - it's been 28 years in which knowingly pompous, rather melodramatic black-humoured alternative pop has had several days in the sun and many more in the shade, and you realise how ahead of their time this band were. The Killers may or may not even know it but these songs were their ancestors and it's a remarkably contemporary sounding flavour of nostalgia.

Nostalgia it is, though. The front pit is enthusiastic if rather tame due to the age of the participants, and it's possible the date caused all manner of domestics - in front of us a bored looking woman tuts when hubby allows himself a little on-the-spot pogo and many more old fans have probably been forced to go for a "nice dinner". And it's exquisitely presented nostalgia - attendees of the London gigs tell us everything including Devoto's skewed between-song proclamations is being effectively played to a script. Yet this seems to work - Magazine always had a sort of theatrical quality that stood out from their sweaty punk contemporaries. That backdrop; Barry Adamson's shiny shirt and fob-chained waistcoat; the way the Mary Quant-a-like singer from support band Ipso Facto - also providing backing vocals for the headliners - sits on a chair leafing through a newspaper in between her lines. It's there when Devoto narrates oddball spoken-word B-side "The Book", lit by a single blue spotlight, and in the way his eyes narrow as he sings the "I am an insect" line from "A Song From Under The Floorboards". One of Manchester's greatest ever singles, tonight it sees hard looking 40something men's eyes moisten. And, yes, that's why this works.

These are still, three decades on, absolutely incredible songs."You Never Knew Me" reminds us the band were quite capable of writing brilliant mainstream pop; "Permafrost" - Dave Formula's synth is breathtaking here - reminds us they did disturbing bleakness better than the copious number of contemporaries and followers doing so; main set closer "Shot By Both Sides" reminds us they did punk better than most punk bands too. The applause goes on and on and on; we know there'll be an encore because it's in the script but nobody could doubt it was earned - it's a crowd-pleasing package of "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)", "Motorcade" and "I Love You You Big Dummy". And then the five elder statesmen - and all looking pretty well for it, I might add - take a bow and depart. Noko almost manages a smile - he, after all, had the toughest job as the non-original stepping into McGeoch's not inconsiderably sized shoes, but the general consensus is that he very much did the job. They all did. We're going again on Tuesday, even though we know the script now...

Exit Calm, Barnsley Polish Club (1st May)

Barnsley. BARNSLEY. What are you thinking? The miners' strike? That run of amusing Cup upsets a couple of years back? Grim northern stereotypes? Yeah, yeah, well you mark my words, if things carry on at the rate they have in 2009 then by the end of 2010 the town will be synonymous with one thing: one of the biggest live bands in the country. After building a fanbase over a couple of years, on the 1st May we came from far and wide for that ever-important event for any up and coming band from outside of the big cities: the hometown headliner. From my own blog:

Exit Calm are soon to set off on a national tour supporting The Sunshine Underground, and with many dates sold out before they confirmed a few fans suggested the band did a little warm-up date. Being affable chaps, they agreed; a hometown show was mooted, and with Barnsley not exactly being overburdened with decent venues since the closure of Carters No.7 (Air Cav were one of the last bands to play there but it's not our fault, I checked) someone came up with the exceptional idea of having it in the local Polish club. It's already shaping up to be quite an event before a note has been struck. People have travelled up from London and further south, Jam and Pedro have flown in from Spain; pretty much everyone who's been a part of the band's story so far is there. There's nothing like a proper away crew party; old friends greeting each other with hugs and beer (the frighteningly fizzy Lech bringing back memories of last year's visit to Poland) and others meeting for the first time. I briefly think back to British Sea Power's legendary gig at Cargo, five years ago this very week, and in a way this feels like that. There are a couple of support bands, but I'm too busy catching up with people I don't see half often enough.

Fittingly, the band pull out one of their greatest ever performances. Opening track "Hearts And Minds" seems to be regarded by many of the regulars (myself included) as their finest musical moment to date, and tonight's rendition is nothing short of spectacular - which might have left people wondering where they could go from there, had anyone touched down for long enough to wonder. We don't get the chance. They're straight off into the epic "We're On Our Own" - AKA one of those "Greatest Spiritualized Songs Spiritualized Never Wrote" moments. I'm standing right in front of bassist Simon Lindley, whose rolling rhythms are the band's secret weapon and foundation stone, and I've rarely seen anyone so completely absorbed in the music they're creating. The euphoria doesn't let up for the whole set; it's one of those classic feedback loop things with the band playing harder and harder as the delighted crowd shout back every word to them in between outbreaks of air-drumming and shoulder-hoisting; I find myself on the floor at one point due to a combination of said very reasonably priced Polish beverages and the sheer enthusiasm of those around me but I'm soon pulled to my feet and back into it. And later, as a handful of us sit in a takewaway trying to work out where we are and how far it is back to our various accommodation, we already know we've been at one of those gigs that people wil talk about in years to come.

Doves, Leeds Academy (8th May)

I've already written about what a delight it was to see the longst serving of my favourite bands come up with the goods on album number four. Live, they were on brilliant form all six times I saw them in 2009, from one of their first gigs back on the road at Coventry Kasbah (which is where this picture came from, as I forgot to take a camera to Leeds) to the heroic GMex in December via a wonderful summer evening in Delamere Forest. This one, though, was a cut above even those. I had not even originaly intended to go; I was busy elsewhere on the night they should have played a sold-out Leeds Academy, but when the date was postponed due to a band member's illness there were a few ticket returns and I bagged a couple.

Leeds O2 Academy, to give it its full title, is what used to be Leeds Town And Country. It reopened in late 2007 under the Academy brand (Carling, as was) and after visiting the chain's pretty nondescript venues in Sheffield, Birmingham and Liverpool we're pleasantly surprised as soon as we walk into the place. According to Wikipedia the building was originally opened in 1885 by Prince Albert and is a grade I listed gothic building; known originally as the Coliseum it hosted many different events during the early 20th century such as political meetings and circus shows, and then between the 1930s and 1990s the building accommodated a cinema, television studio and bingo hall. According to me it looks like a church, with lovely exposed brickwork around the high balcony. And it's got an excellent sound system. Which is completely wasted on the stodgy efforts of tour support Malakai - even a concerted effort to miss them by getting a later train than we normally would for a gig in Leeds has failed, and we end up seeing three songs, which is three more than anyone should have to. It's worth it though to get a decent front spot for Doves; I hadn't expected this, so didn't have a camera on me - but you know what they look like anyway...

It starts with a jetplane flying over; on the projection screen and from the speakers; the audio-visual aspect of Doves gigs is often overlooked but this is right up there with the now legendary "popping next door to the pub" film from Apollo gigs past, and the band walk on to massive cheers and launch into "Jetstream" as the noise dies down; simple but sublime. "Snowden" sounds massive and I have to admit these days to finding many things to love about the "Some Cities" album which I did not at the time of release; the band look happy, the crowd are enthusiastic without being stupid about it... and then four or five tracks in an exceptional version of "Pounding" sends the whole thing up another level or two, from which it never comes down. Even songs that never did much for me before are hitting the spot - "Ambition" is gorgeous, fragile and moving. And the encore is something else. Down in the front ranks we've found ourselves in a lively bit of Friday night three-beers-merry jumping about and the song - still probably the greatest, most assertive second-album-trailer single there ever was - is immense. We don't want it to end. They don't want to stop. Come on... yes, traditionally "Space Face" is just for Manchester and special occasions, but what's this if it's not special? And so the tour is seen out with a bang; by the time the train home's passed Dewsbury I'm thanking whoever or whatever it was made a band member ill two weeks ago and making the sort of rash-sounding statement that here, four days later, I'm prepared to stand by: that was the best Doves gig I have seen in over six years, and for a band that's been going for twice that long (or three times that if you count Sub Sub days) I can't tell you how astonishing and delightful it is to be able to write that.

Daniel Land And The Modern Painters, The Lucid Dream, Yucatan, Chorlton Abode (6th June)

I know I don't usually allow bands a second slot in my end-of-year reviews, but this was no ordinary night. The Canteen ran for most of 2008 giving Chorlton free live music every Saturday night and for this alone deserves recognition, but at the height of summer they pulled out something quite remarkable with a line-up any of the "premium" shoegaze/space nights would have been immensely proud of. As a free entry gig I am under no obligation to review for MM, but it would have seemed rather ungrateful not to. The picture is (I think) of Yucatan, but seems to sum up the whole evening quite well...

The sound of violins slips across the noisy bar like birds taking flight; guitars follow; gradually drinks are put down on tables, conversations stop. Yucatan have that effect. Somewhere between early Spiritualized and Sigur Ros, they have a strange otherworldliness about them, an icy expansive beauty that makes it almost impossible to describe without tumbling into post-rock cliche. They come from a place where the sky goes on for ever, both musically and indeed physically - as their Myspace claims, "Cwm Llwm, Antarctica". It's actually rather closer to home, in the middle of Denbighshire, but you sort of know what they mean. Leader Dilwyn Llwyd, an almost elfin character in a bobble hat which isn't removed all night, could easily pass for Icelandic; his hushed Welsh vocals like some secret language half heard on the breeze. And then it all builds, drums gather pace across washes of keyboard and those sweeping violins, like Hope Of The States at their most majestic and anthemic. Each track has a soul of its own, and the last is nothing short of magnificent. Everyone from the bar staff to my mate's 68-year-old mum is under their incredible spell, and you wonder how the hell such an outstanding band have not been more widely heard.

By this point there are people sitting on the floor, oil wheel projections cutting across the smoke machine - have we somehow transported back to a Spacemen 3 gig in the late 80s? It's been a year since we first caught The Lucid Dream's tentative early steps at Night & Day; hailing from Carlisle and barely six gigs old there was already something about them that said this band is special - and how far they have come since then. Supports with Spectrum must have had Sonic Boom wondering if he was on a particularly intense out-of-body flashback, because close your eyes and this could indeed be that early Spacemen gig. Not to say there's any plagiarism as such; more a feeling that they have come from the same headspace, growing up in a forgotten town with a pile of 13th Floor Elevators and Velvet Underground records and discovering the euphoria that comes from playing one chord for longer than conventional wisdom would recommend. We suspect it would actually not be phyiscally possible to have more reverb on the vocal; it's like listening to lost 1969 garage classics through a flotation tank.

We've had the orchestral majesty and the spaced out rock'n'roll; time for the third point on the dreamsonic triangle - the Supermassive Effects Pile-Up. A couple of miles down the road from here, in an old cottage with fortuitously thick walls, Daniel Land And The Modern Painters are crafting what looks like being one of Manchester's albums of the year; tonight they'll be showcasing it in full. Sonic Cathedral single - in more ways than one - "Within The Boundaries" is their opening missive, like Slowdive powered by a jet engine its magic ingredient is the glorious bridge between the instrumental track and the few lines of vocal towards the end; if this is how it starts then it sets the standards pretty high. Personal circumstances have seen the band trimmed to a five piece at many recent gigs; this however is the full-blooded six-strong line-up, with powerhouse Marcus Mayes and craftsman Jason Magee alternating on the drums, the other adding percussion, and I'm thinking what if one day this band could afford two drum kits - they'd be hard pushed to fit them in here though. What Abode might lack in space however is more than made up for in its sound quality; every track sounds shimmeringly beautiful tonight, and the cluster of people sitting on the floor are soaked in it.

God only knows what someone walking in off the street, perhaps after a few pints and a kebab, just looking for a bar with a late licence, would think right now. "This is a shoegaze song" says Daniel at one point - um, as opposed to what?? As one track bleeds beautifully into the next - punctuated only by guitarist Graeme Meikle - who has possibly been drinking - throwing in the odd 80s cheese-metal riff between songs (who said shoegazers were humourless?) it slips way past midnight, the bar rings for last orders, and still the crowd is entranced; then as the last track descends into a single euphoric wave that lasts - I don't know, three, five, ten minutes? people are on their feet, arms aloft and around each other. This is likely to be the last Manchester gig for the band until November, by which time that album should be in your hands - and on the strength of tonight's preview, it looks like it's going to be something pretty special. And let's just say this again - this gig was free to get in. You almost feel like you stole something.

Kraftwerk, Manchester Velodrome (2nd July)

Several million years into their career Kraftwerk - now reduced to just one original member - hit upon the great idea of playing venues that reflected their album themes. A power station, a factory, and on the opening night of Manchester International Festival, in homage to their "Tour De France" era and a lifelong love of cycling, they came to the Velodrome with some very special guests. This is from my blog.

It doesn't, we all agree quite early on, matter that much that when the four uniformed members of the veteran ensemble take to the stage to their familiar backdrop and signature tune "Man-Machine" there's only Ralf Hutter left of the foursome who made the album. Karl Bartos and Wolfgang Flur are many years adrift - the latter leaving us with one of the greatest and funniest rock autobiographies I've ever read (this will be the first of two book recommendations in this blog; I'm going all multimedia!) - whilst long-serving founder Florian Schneider finally called it quits a year or so back to be replaced in the live line-up by the band's lighting technician. There's some cliche about German efficiency there.

There's not exactly been a great deal of new music coming out of Kling Klang Studios in the past decade or two either, and those classic albums are so well known it feels basically like a Greatest Hits set which is absolutely fine. This is the band who influenced the music of our city at least as much as any other; most of the golden-age line-up of Factory Records and our early adoption of techno, right up to present day bands such as The Whip and Delphic who play live electronic music of substance. And they've got a trick or two up their meticulously-pressed sleeves as well... bloody hell, it's only the medal-winning British Olympic cycling team! They do a few laps during "Tour De France", causing me to text my cycling-obsessed sister who's actually ridden here herself - probably the first time since we were giggling over Duran Duran ages ten and six that our passions have collided. At the end Hutter introduces the team "and their German coach" - deadpan as hell. Elsewhere "Autobahn" sounds like a vocoder barbershop quartet, "Neon Lights"is as evocatve of a late night city as anything you'll hear, and "The Model" an exercise in icy beauty. Someone comments it's much the same set he saw at the Free Trade Hall in 1981, but the music is timeless.

The 3D glasses come with instructions that they should be used at 9.30pm, but things got off to a late start and it's actually 9.51pm when the band return for either a second set or extended encore. And... fucking hell! Radiation symbols and waves flicker in the ether to the beatiful "Radioactivity", whilst "Vitamin" sees tablets effervesce in glasses of water somewhere in mid-air whilst two-colour capsules float down from the sky and disappear just above the heads of the people about three rows in front of us. It doesn't feel like a gig, but then it doesn't really feel like anything familiar. And if the aim of the Manchester International Festival is to push boundaries, then this is a pretty good start.

British Sea Power: Port Eliot Festival, Cornwall; Tunbridge Wells High Rocks Inn and London Regents Park (25th July and 2nd & 16th August)

Still probably the best consistently astounding live band in the country, British Sea Power didn't tour in the regular sense in 2009, appearing instead at a variety of offbeat festivals and special events, some of their own creation. I saw them on about 10 consecutive weekends in the summer, and wouldn't really want to be pushed to choose between three such remarkable and unique nights out. This, in case you were wondering, is why we do this.

PORT ELIOT

This is no ordinary festival. This, my friends, is Port Eliot Festival, a literary affair where poetry and readings are more the order of the day than amplified popular music; the majority of the audience look like teachers and their families, and the security presence is unobtrusive as it is largely unnecessary. Following great afternoon sets from Neil Halstead and Edwyn Collins, we are not sure what the expect from British Sea Power - they were billed as playing a soundtrack to "Winged Migration" but there doesn't appear to be a screen in the tent they're playing in; earlier in the evening we'd run into Scott who told us "I think we're going to do some... songs." This would probably be a good idea.

And what songs! Scott starts by picking up a bass, which in itself is a sign of something a bit different - few BSP gigs start fronted by Neil, and it's rare live outings for "The Smallest Church in Sussex" and "The Land Beyond" which are first on the list, followed by their cover of "Come Wander with Me", the only sung track on the recent "Man of Aran" album. A glorious gift to the ten of us regulars who have made the trip and a relatively gentle start for the majority of the crowd who are probably not as familiar with the band's work anyway and wouldn't know a B-side from a single. But then it's all guns blazing into "Remember Me" and - you can't start a moshpit at a literary festival... can you? We have a go. It's not hugely successful, although a few people near us who are indeed seeing the band for the first time look like they're enjoying the set. After that it's pretty much business as usual, although the ever developing nature of some of the older songs is very apparent tonight - the odd Krautrock middle section that "Spirit Of St Louis" has acquired over the past couple of years actually ends up in dub bass territory tonight, whilst the euphoric coda of "Carrion" has pretty much mutated into "Another Girl Another Planet" to the point where you can actually sing the last verse of the latter along to it and it ends at the right time. "Waving Flags" is an odd choice as the band are lacking keyboard and cornet man Phil, off on his honeymoon, but Noble asks the crowd to sing the absent sampled choir part - "just follow Geordie Mark". Mark has been drinking all day, and nobody could follow him if they tried, but it was worth a shot I suppose. And "Lately", the much-maligned opus with which even the most devoted fans got rather bored a few years back when it ended every single gig, sounds fragile and beautiful tonight as its ending does deranged. How Mark manages to get covered in duct tape is completely beyond me, but I'm not surprised to hear that Noble was involved. It's my favourite BSP set for at least a year, possibly more - and well worth the ridiculous effort involved to get here.

HIGH ROCKS

Just outside Tunbridge Wells is a beautiful English country lane of the sort we urbanites sometimes forget even exists any more, with every shade of green picked out in the warm afternoon sun. The authentically preserved steam train that runs from the town down to the Inn rattles past, and on it is Geordie Mark, one of our regulars. I'll let him take up the story for a minute: "As the greenery flashed past the window I was taken right back in time on the short journey, and as we slowed down approaching High Rocks I could hear people chattering and I saw fingers pointing at a small gathering on a trianglibout (editor's note: presumably a creative Geordie word for a traffic island in the middle of a T-junction). "Ooh they must be filming something" one person said. "They've got some birds there as well! Can't be Harry Potter can it?". At this point I recognised a few smiling faces looking toward the train, small sherry glass in one hand, samosa in the other..."

Let me explain. Hardcore BSP regulars Mark (another one) and Yaz - well over 300 gigs between them - are celebrating their 22nd wedding anniversary. On a traffic island. Two plastic decoy birds are perched on the roadsign; there are trestle tables with a selection of fine sherries, a cheeseboard, plates of Yaz's home-made samosas (which are better than any I've eaten in any restaurant or takeaway) and an I-pod docked into a speaker blasting out old-school classics such as The Skids' "Into The Valley" and SLF's "Alternative Ulster". There, that makes a lot more sense, doesn't it? It does to us.

British Sea Power have sound problems, technical problems, you name it - but still manage to put in a top level performance. There's one new song in the set, with a working title of "7/4" which is the time signature for bits of it - erk, they really have gone prog/post-rock haven't they!? Well no, it's more of a post-punk-ish kind of thing. The other bit everyone is talking about for days afterwards is one of those things that, well, this is how online mag http://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk reported it and I think I'll let them tell the tale from the outside, so to speak... "There are many reasons that British Sea Power have raised the bar in providing novel and vivifying experiences for their fans, but halfway through a set in a barn deep in Kent countryside, my admiration for them reached its latest zenith. An interlude like this has never taken place anywhere, I'm sure of it. Whilst sticksman Woody tends to mending his ailing snaredrum, his bandmates are keen to invite an audibly drunk, ruddy, stout Geordie fan familiar to them to clamber up on stage. After grabbing the mic to loudly tell everyone off for not jumping up and down, he launches into an oompah-style chant of 'Joom oop and down everybody! Jump oop and down!', whilst the band back him with some jaunty improvised guitar. The Geordie guy calls the shots about when to end the song. 'He used to be in Cypress Hill,' announces Noble. This must be seen for the full beauty to take effect - the band's faces were a picture of dropped jaws and wide laughing yet overwhelmed eyes. Personally, I had to wipe away tears of pure laughter."

You're not the only one, mate. Well done Mark. You will never be allowed to forget this... The band recover to finish their set, and a lively moshpit develops whose average age is considerably older than me. The ending is suitably chaotic, and Scott defies all common sense and health and safety concerns by taking a liking to one of the beams. It has the feel of one of those raucously insane gigs from the early days, only with a set drawing the best from across their career - what more could you ask for for your Sherry And Samosas Wedding Anniversary? Or indeed for any Sunday afternoon.

REGENTS PARK

This evening we will be entertained in the extremely bizarre surroundings of Regents Park Open Air Theatre. Bizarre, because it does exactly what it says on the tin: it's a permanent stage with semicircular stalls seating and a foyer bar, but it's in the open air. It does not usually play host to rock bands and their fans. We, however, are of course a very civilised bunch and thus start the festivities with a picnic. Yep - for the second time in three weekends. Only this time the soundtrack is provided not by a boom-box but by British Sea Power themselves soundchecking, we've got sherry and cheese and olives, both BSP drummer Woody and one of the regular fans have brought their babies along, and it really is like some sort of family gathering. A good few of us make it inside for the second support, though, because after their astonishing set at last October's Roundhouse gig we're looking forward to seeing them again and they don't exactly get outside of the capital much...

It's the London Bulgarian Choir! Once again they are amazing, their haunting and eerie tones rather at odds with the sometimes rather bawdy subject matter - no, I haven't suddenly learnt Bulgarian; their leader explains each song, in the course of which we learn the wonderful new euphemism "planting the pepper", which means exactly what you think it does.

The stage is set - well, not exactly short of foliage round here. And as with pretty much every gig in this astonishing summer season, British Sea Power are on fire. As befits the more sedate atmosphere, they go with the "Polite Version" opening salvo - as tried and tested at Port Eliot - of Hamilton's haunting "Smallest Church In Sussex" and the viola-led "Land Beyond", after which it feels a bit strange to be seated for "Lights Out" - and it's just not going to last. It's not so much a question of whether it's going to go off as when, and the opening chords to "Remember Me" are the not especially surprising catalyst. Legendary regular fan Scottish Bill, a man made entirely of white hair and red wine, is up and dancing. Two or three of us follow. Then some more. The security look nervous, but figure there's not much they can do so long as nobody's actually causing trouble. Alfie and I look at each other, and at the handy little set of steps up to the side of the stage, and nothing needs to be said.

The band dish out a perfect set, with the back stairs of the stage often filled by the choir adding their voices ; this means a rare outing for the debut album opener "Men Together Today" as well as a brilliantly augmented "No Lucifer" during which the idea of a score of Bulgarians chanting an old wrestling refrain ("Easy! Easy!") doesn't sound half as bizarre as it does writing it down. They depart after a beautiful version of the shoegazey instrumental "Great Skua", but it's early and nobody's clearing anything away, and anyway, they usually pull out something pretty special for the encore at their showcase gigs. Yep - welcome back to seven foot bear Ursine Ultra, with bog roll. The choir are back for "All In It", and then Woody pounds that bass drum four to the floor and we know it's going to go crazy. Alfie and I have edged out to the side, we smile at twelve year old Archie, a veteran of pretty much every all-ages gig the band have played since the age of five; his dad nods back at us as if to say "You go first, we'll be right behind you". Band and bear are throwing branches into the crowd as fast as the bouncers can snatch them back, and when the fabled beast (containing, on this occasion, TV actor Matthew Horne) provides a distraction by almost lurching right off the centre of the stage...The speed with which we are literally thrown from the stage and wrestled to the floor rather puts Archie and his dad off following suit, but unlike Bill we manage to avoid ejection from the venue and rejoing the happy branch-waving hordes down the front. The bouncers just look really pissed off. I'm guessing they don't get that kind of thing at their Shakespeare plays. We all walk out of there grinning from ear to ear knowing the greatest live guitar band in the world have pulled it off again.

Wooden Shjips + GNOD, Salford Islington Mill (20th August)

With pretty much all my regular favourites on blistering form this year, is there actually any room for anyone else in this list? Of course there is. Just a few days after Regents Park we're at what could possibly be the socio-geographical opposite - an old mill in the near no-mans-land end of central Salford. I'm on MM duty for this one which means staying relatively sober, but by the end of it feel like I've had a truckload of something or other...

Just two bands on? That's not like Wotgodforgot... ah, yeah, but thing is both of them are quite capable of playing for, oh, anything up to about three days. If our last visit to our longtime favourite live club night was all about abstract sound sculpture ("Whalesong Through a Pitchshifter", Live Reviews, 23rd July) then this one's all about psychedelia. And obviously, being Wotgodforgot we're not talking pretty boys in paisley shirts with a Syd Barrett record kind of psychedelia, no, this is your full-on whoah-I-think-the-walls-are-liquifying wig-out sort of psychedelia.

GNOD are, of course, Wotgodforgot veterans. We first saw them at one of WGF's earliest forays back in the Star & Garter where they basically made us feel like we'd done loads and loads of drugs. We hadn't. And they've done much the same many times since, rarely repeating themselves. Tonight's trip into GNODworld is one of their best yet. It starts as a sort of amorphous mass of sounds, wibbling analogue keyboards, rattles of drums and handbells, chant-like mantras, until gradually things start emerging like early life-forms from the primordial soup - a rumble of deep dub bass, a heavy beat, and we're off. And instantly transported into some underground Krautrock "happening", where we will be staying for the rest of the evening. One of them wanders around the space in front of the growing crowd, not so much singing as preaching echoey vocal vibes a la Damo Suzuki and occasionally blowing into a melodica as the trip gathers pace; fifteen minutes or so in there's a brief stop for air before we're plunged back into a throbbing Spacemen 3 dream. They're off after half an hour. What? Ah well, the day GNOD get predictable is the day they're not GNOD any more...

This is probably Wotgodforgot's biggest crowd to date, and the reason is a very rare visit to these shores by Wooden Shjips. Hailing from San Francisco they exist on the outer edge of the American spacehead scene, releasing albums with just five or six tracks of bubbling psych-drone; live, however, they're a whole lot... louder. The ingredients are simple: the most basic drum kit ever (bass, snare, cymbals, no frills) hammers out hypnotic primitive rhythms; the guitar and bass change chords only when absolutely necessary (and rarely more than a couple of times in any given track). The organ (wrapped, for some reason - in tinfoil) sounds like the wind through a selection of interesting rock formations, and the vocals sort of drift over the top of it all from behind a badger-stripe beard. Actually it's something of a surprise that two of them don't have beards.

On paper it doesn't sound like much, but at blisteringly loud volume it permeates every pore. It's like they've found some secret recipe for intoxication by sound alone and then doubled all the quantities. You'd swear the room was full of hash smoke and incense clouds. My eyes have gone out of focus. My brain's gone out of focus. My ears are going to tell me off in the morning. People are dancing at the front, standing on the furniture at the back. I look around and see the same expression reflected from everywhere; entranced euphoria. And as they reach a climax with a "We Ask You To Ride" that makes the recorded version sound like a quiet Sunday stroll in the park they can feel it too; this band who are sometimes accused of being a little apathetic live are anything but. The crowd demand them back and they're clearly delighted to comply; by the sound when they finally finish they could have kept them there for a good while longer.

I Like Trains, Leeds Cockpit (16th October)

Dropped by their label and back in day jobs, I Like Trains are not a band to give up that easily. If last year's Christmas Tree Ship EP hinted at an expanding sound, then October's tour showed them at the top of their game. Liverpool on the Wednesday was pretty good; Manchester on the Thursday excellent (again, the picture's from that gig rather than the one I'm writing about, as Mancunians wil instantly recognise from Deaf Institute's ridiculous wallpaper), and with In The City just a day or two away it seemed almost wrong to bugger off to Leeds but I needed one more...

Friday night sees the band return home to Leeds Cockpit. I didn't actually buy a ticket as I really didn't know if I was going to be able to go - or indeed if I was going to want to do three in a row. I've always liked the band but they've never been one of those where I feel the urge to go all over watching them; this isn't all over, really, though, it's a quick train ride away and after the last two nights I very much do and am so glad it was still possible to get one on the door... turns out to be the right decision, as if Liverpool was good and Manchester great then this turns out to be the best ILT gig I've seen in a very long time and continues the most exciting run of form I've seen them on since maybe 2006. It's been much the same over the three nights, the odd change of order, but tonight I don't know if it's the hometown vibe or just that they are really getting into their stride, but everythig sounds perfect. "Sea of Regrets" is astonishingly good, but it would be a tough call between that and "Father's Son" as my pick of the "new" (as in post-album) stuff; to be honest though it's all pretty immense and I really don't want it to end.

Bo Ningen + Asakusa Jinta, Manchester TV21 (20th October)

Best show of In The City? Um, some local heroes maybe? Some hotly tipped young firebrands? Truth be told ITC09 wasn't a vintage year, but on the final night, at the ridiculously early hour of 6.30pm in a basement at the far end of the Northern Quarter near the bus depot, I'm about to have my brain re-wired...

Right, so there's no official Japanese showcase this year, but I seem to have found the unofficial one. Brilliant! It's brought to us by all-ages promoters XOX (leave your drinks at the door) down at TV21 and, well, there's two Japanese bands in a row so I suppose it sort of counts.

We first encountered Bo Ningen at this September at the ultra-hip Offset festival - I'd like to say "saw them" but in reality I could barely poke my head inside the overstuffed tent. This excuses me having thought hyperactive, helium-yelping singer/bassist Taigen was a girl - which here in his skinny bare-chested glory he clearly isn't, although he does have a girl's haircut. Two, in fact, simultaneously - a pretty 60s fringe and bob at the front and luxuriantly long and straight tresses at the back. Guitarists Kohhei and Yuki and drummer Mon-chan have equally long, straight hair and some of them appear to be wearing 1970s pyjamas; they're like four baby Damo Suzukis and the noise they make is every bit as insane. Blisteringly loud guitars do prog, post-rock and metal often within the space of one song, whilst Mon-chan just about steals this year's Animal From The Muppets Award For Drummer Insanity (beating yesterday's Heels Catch Fire into a distant second place) as he appears to be drumming with his head as much as any sticks or accessories. The other three bounce off the amps and pillars and each other as Taigen alternates between Damo-esque rambles and frenzied punk attacks; each track is like a brilliant swirling full-on psychedelic wig-out compressed into a few minutes and with everything turned up to 11. As is often the case with international showcases there's a decent ex-pat contingent down watching them and they're going crazy too, whilst the bloke standing next to me just appears to have his eyes out on stalks for the entire thing. It later transpires he is Ezra Bang whose band's on later and is possibly wondering how the hell they're going to follow this. By the end of the set Taigen is crouching with his legs splayed simulating sex with his bass and Kohhei and Yuki are throwing themselves and their guitars into the drumkit while Mon-chan continues battering it and them, until they all fall over and lie there grinning. Set of the weekend, no contest.

I've long had a theory that there's something about the highly ordered and reguated nature of Japanese society which makes all bands from over there do whatever it is they do about 30 times more intensely than tneir Western counterparts. Japanese punks have the tallest, most colourful Mohicans; indie bands the tightest blackest jeans and most perfect fringes; rappers the biggest gold chains and baggiest sportswear; metallers the most piercings and wildest tattoos... and what happens next makes Bo Ningen look relatively sane.

They're called Asakusa Jinta and there's a raspberry-haired girl blowing a tenor sax whilst pogoing, an older lad with a moustache and a double-neck guitar; others have a trumpet, electric double bass and large curly horn thing respectively (as regular MM readers will know, I've never been any good at identifying brass instruments). In the tiny space in front of the stage there are two tiny Japanese girls trying to start a ska knees-up moshpit. Oh yeah, the music? Just your average everyday mixture of Glenn Miller big band, Bad Manners lunatic ska, a military parade, cartoon punk and soul revue. Proportions of the above vary from one track to the next, although it's hard to keep up as the whole lot is administered at roughly 300 miles an hour. They do something that sounds like "In The Mood" but not quite, and raspberry haired girl is leading the crowd in a sort of one-potato-two-potato hand dance. They do something that vaguely resembles a rocket-powered Can-Can and several of the end up in the audience. And the last of my brain, the bit Bo Ningen didn't melt, holds up a little white flag.

Later I look them up online and discover that "Their base is Asakusa, Tokyo's old downtown, an area reminiscent of traditional Japan. They love this town and people who live there love the band as they are known as a marching band playing on the shopping streets or for weeklong parades." I don't think there's a lot more to be said about this, really. Just try and hold that image.

Worriedaboutsatan, (with Daniel Land And The Modern Painters, Exit Calm, 93millionmilesfromthesun and more), Nottingham Bunkers Hill (25th October).

Not content with hosting Dot To Dot in May, October sees Nottingham's sort of edgier all-day venue-hop, the Hockley Hustle. Hockley being the road most of the venues are on. Not Hockley Road or anything, just Hockley. The bargain-tastic £10 ticket (£7.50 if you bought it far enough ahead) allows access to 20 different venues, where the discerning music fan could experience such delights as Spam Chop, Pee Wee's Funk Salad, You're Smiling Now But We'll All Turn Into Demons, Ocean Bottom Nightmare, the Yeah I'll Play It Later DJs and - our favourite - Arse Full Of Chips. The variety of genres on offer is far greater than these all-dayers usually afford: indie, drum'n'bass, dubstep, samba, hip-hop, rock/metal and whatever the hell Arse Full Of Chips do (we guess at grotty pub punk) and you have to hand it to them for co-ordinating such a mammoth task - but I had quite enough venue-hopping during In The City. At the top end of Hockley, DrownedInSound have colonised a nice pub called Bunker's Hill, the sort of place that offers a 15p discount on its real ales to CAMRA members, and stuffed it full of shoegaze and space-rock of various sub-genres.

(Other bands played well, sure, but it was the Yorkshire duo who really stepped up a gear or two here...)

...next, Worriedaboutsatan. With the clocks having gone back last night, even their relatively early slot sees darkness outside - and inside, too, as the rather sweetly unassuming looking pair are lit by just their regular backdrop of Géla Babluani's "13 Tzameti" plus a single swinging bare lightbulb which seems oddly fitting. Now I always knew they were good, but sometimes they are so much more and tonight seems like one of those nights. You think Fuck Buttons' introsuction of techno to their post-prog recipes was a good idea? These guys did it first. Only they threw in a third dimension, too; the creepy, Burial-esque dark end of dubstep. During their continuous piece guitars are bowed and fed through boxes until they don't sound like guitars any more, waves of synth rise and fall, and a thousand little clicks and pops fill the spaces. They finish, and at first there's silence. Then applause. "More!" shouts someone. They've had their 30 minutes, but it's not like they've a drumkit to strip before the next band... the shouts are growing now. This may be their first ever encore. It's a piece of deep fluid techno, like Ulrich Schnauss in dancefloor mode. It's brilliant.

Maps, Manchester Warehouse Project / Southampton Joiners / Brighton Digital (2rd, 25th, 30th October)

In 2009 I saw Maps live more than any other band except Air Cav - 19 times each - and frankly there weren't many I didn't thoroughly enjoy. After a handful of promising dates in May with Serafina Steer on keyboards, Maps 2009 pared down to the crackshot duo of mainman James Chapman and wild-eyed Danish techno DJ August Jakobsen, cranked eveything up to 11 and proved once and for all that you don't need guitars, bass or drums to play a blistering live set. October saw three brilliant examples of such.

MANCHESTER

Once inside we're pleasantly surprised that the drinks prices aren't as colossal as they could probably have got away with, and the unadorned arches do give the place a very Hacienda-like feel. By the time we've had chance to check out the other rooms - and the festival-like Portaloo compound (in which much later on I will open the door of an unlocked cubicle and interrupt two rather pilled-up looking girls mid sexual act; my male companions are all keen to know exactly which cubicle, for some reason...) - it's time for Maps.

This is how Maps should be seen and heard. Not in the indie clubs and pub upstairs rooms that comprise most of the rest of the tour, not in the overly well-lit Deaf Institute, but in a proper rave atmosphere where people are actually dancing and strobes are bouncing off brick walls. Smoke billowing behind them, I swear "It Will Find You" has never sounded so perfect - and the thing about this crowd, too, is unlike the regular "indie" gig crowds we've seen elsewhere and doubtless will again as the week goes on, they don't give a shit that there are no guitars or bass or drums; they don't care that there's not a lot off the first album here; because a fair few of them probably have no idea who they're watching or less still care. They just know a fucking great thundering electro tune when they hear one, and when the end bit of "Papercuts" breaks into something Balearic there's a sea of hands in the air. More people pile in (the place is open til 5 but last entry's half eleven so a lot are coming in to beat the post-pub scramble) and feels like a full-on party now with James and August gleefully at the helm. August says something incomprehensible. "Um, he's Danish" explains James. I get the feeling this might become a tour in-joke. By the time they finish on a truly brickwork-trembling version of "Love Will Come" they basically own the place. Yeah, they should have been on later, shoul have had a longer set, but this was a half hour of euphoria of the very highest order. This band should be out there on the LCD / Soulwax circuit. This band was made to play in railway arches and warehouses and air raid shelters. This is one of the many reasons why I love them.

SOUTHAMPTON

OK, look, I do love Maps and I do love awaydaying but there was no way I was going to go all the way to Southampton. That would be silly. As such, a couple of weeks ago I checked TheTrainline in order that the extravagant prices charged by rail companies these days would be the final nail in that idea. (Un)fortunately, the cheapest available ticket was 15 quid and I'd bought it before the common sense bit of my brain had chance to intervene... Southampton is weird. I'm not sure I ever found the city centre. None of the roads on my Multimap print appear to exist in reality, Gadgetphone's SatNav has gone mental and refuses to believe I am not at Bristol Parkway railway station (the last place, I guess, I used it) and the locals polite but astonishingly useless at giving directions around their own city. I give up and get a taxi, and having located the venue settle in a nearby gay bar, on the grounds that it's the only pub in the close vicinity of Joiners that doesn't look like a stabbing waiting to happen.

It may not be a strobe-addled rave in an undergound car park but it's kind of space-age in a different way: by the time Maps walk onstage there is so much dry-ice billowing round the room all we see is two silhouettes working their banks of machines, in whatever lurid shade the spotlights decide. It slowly disperses to reveal our deliriously happy looking protagonists, still buzzing (and in one case possibly still actually up) from last night. This is the full-length set and it flows beautifully, travelling through space towards the euphoric climax and once again the slight worries of the summer, that audiences might not connect with the guitar-free format, are roundly dispelled. The inclusion of "You Don't Know Her Name" is a good idea - probably the closest thing to a hit from the first album's haul of great singles - but what strikes me is the fact that this beautiful sun-blazed song, my official Festival Anthem Of The Summer 2007 which I don't think I went a day without listening to from about May to September that year, is actually one of the lesser moments here. By the end people are dancing again and Southampton on a Saturday night doesn't seem too bad a place to be.

A couple of days later I'll visit a friend in Nottingham who used to live in Southampton a few years back. She confirms that I was correct in identifying at least one of the nearby pubs as scary. Working in the betting shop over the road, sometimes went in the pub after befriending some of the locals, including one nice polite chap... whom she eventually discovered had served 20 years for killing someone with a machete...

BRIGHTON

I didn't actually bother writing anything about Brighton, but suffice to say it was well worth a second trip to the south coast in under a week.

Fuck Buttons, Heaven (27th October)

So if you are following the chronology here, I left home early on the Saturday morning after the Warehouse Project; went to Southampton for Maps, back up to Nottingham Sunday for the Hockley thing, and back to London Monday for Maps again. It wasn't one of their best gigs and more frustratingly for me my trusty phone breathed its last. I am exhausted and wish I could go home, but I have another gig ticket in my pocket I don't want to waste, and I'm glad I didn't...

I dunno, you wait all your life for a pair of blokes with a load of cables and then three come along at once - tonight's is Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power, collectively Fuck Buttons, and from the volume of the Andy Weatherall DJ set I can heard from said foyer while the staff faff about being really not very good at finding anyone's name on the door pick-up tickets list, they are going to be seriously bloody loud. Inside we're impressed with the quality of the sound system; loud it may be but clean as anything. The venue itself is beautiful, too.

When they eventually start (we're thinking they're actually getting too big now to be doing all their own cable-plugging-in in full view of the audience: if you can't trust roadies to do it maybe get a curtain?) the sound is spot on, "Surf Solar" alone feels like a joyride in a spaceship, and for the second time in two nights I witness people at a gig in London dancing! Lasers fire, strobes flicker and the duo do their trademark bouncing their heads up and down while facing each other across their control panel thing. Only occasionally do I have to do a double-take and wonder how the hell this peculiar band, two geeky looking boys seemingly weaned on the less melodic end of Krautrock, have got to be this successful? That they have can only be a good thing. I did a lot of my growing up in techno clubs and indeed to Andy Weatherall's beats; I think Fuck Buttons have made a great success of blending these sounds into their existing musical vocabulary and "Tarot Sport" is a great album (probably top five, even in this quite astonishing year for albums). But when they come back for an encore and that eerie bleakly repetitive drone cuts across the brickwork arch, accompanied at first by just a single green laser beam, this is when they are truly sublime. It is, of course, "Sweet Love For Planet Earth", one of the greatest tracks released this decade, and it still sounds like little else before or since. I shouldn't hold it against them that they've not quite equalled it yet.

OTHER GIGS WORTHY OF SOME RECOLLECTION...

The Tamborines, Notting Hill Arts Club (Jan)

Daniel Land And The Modern Painters, Caernarfon Morgan Lloyd (April)

My Bloody Valentine, Primavera Festival, Barcelona (May)

Pet Shop Boys, Manchester Apollo (June)

The Durutti Column, Manchester International Festival (July)

Orbital + Delphic, Manchester Academy 1 (September)

The Longcut, Manchester Academy 3 (October)

Maps + The Longcut (+ Remember Remember, Bronnt Industries Kapital, Talons, Bilge Pump and more), Oxford Jericho Tavern (October)

The Twilight Sad, Manchester Ruby Lounge (October)

Daniel Land And The Modern Painters, Manchester Roadhouse (November)

Brakes, Leeds The Well, November

Half Man Half Biscuit, Sheffield Boardwalk, December

Air Cav, Manchester Unitarian Chapel, December

All of which has thrown up a pretty large shortlist of contenders for the Band Of The Year. Previous incumbents made a good showing: Daniel Land And The Modern Painters (2008) came good with that album and their first headline tour; Maps (2007) should probably win on points whilst I Like Trains (2006) returned with new typesetting and their best material yet, although little of it's actually been recorded and released yet: album of the year 2010? We'll see. Meanwhile my hardiest of perennials British Sea Power continued to push boundaries in every direction. And Fuck Buttons and Worriedaboutsatan can have a tie for the Breakthrough Band title with both proving there was more to them than slightly silly names and interesting tables of stuff - but this year I'm going to break with tradition and award my personal honours not to a new band who exploded onto the scene, but to a much older one whose return to form was no less exciting....

BAND OF THE YEAR 2009: DOVES

My life as a band: teenage love for Manchester's 80s indie greats; young adulthood Madchester-raved out, the long twentysomething hangover nineties, then as the millennium approaches a last mad surge of youth. And we're still here. After a handful of beautiful ten-inch singles at the tail end of the last century, Doves welcomed in 2000 with "Lost Souls", setting the bar high for all the rest of the decade's releases. I had no idea at this point that the 2000s would see such a revival in great music and my love of it; less still that the band who kicked it off would still be there at the end, one of the last bands I saw live in the closing stages of 2009.

The six times I have seen them this year have been among the best, whilst "Kingdom Of Rust" and its title track single made most younger cooler bands - and indeed their more critically acclaimed contemporaries Elbow - look pale in comparison. Mild disappointment at their Mercury list omission was soon replaced by relief that I didn't have to give a shit about it this year. Jimi, Jez and Andy: if it were up to me, it'd have been all yours.

Nearly done now, but before I go I just want to pay tribute to some people who are as crazy about music as I am, and for three years tried their best to introduce the rest of the world to it...

RIP CHANNEL M MUSIC

In May, Manchester and the alternative music loving world (at least those with the right satellite or cable boxes) lost somethig special. This is what I wrote at the time; occasionally we flick past the channel late at night and catch sight of a re-run of one of these shows, and wish they'd found a way to carry on...

When I say I don't do telly it's not strictly true, but breakfast news, two or three primetime series a year and whichever Formula 1 races I can be bothered to get out of bed for barely justifies the licence fee, never mind the extra people pay for satellite or cable. Mates of ours round the corner have got one or the other and going round for drinks often involves a flick through the 20 or 30 music channels available to them - and to coin a well-worn phrase, it says nothing to me about my life. "Come On Eileen" or "Take On Me" will usually be airing somewhere, as the golden age of 80s pop videos is celebrated by replaying them until any glimmer of nostalgic enjoyment has shrivelled and died. There will be some heavy rock, usually of the modern-day Kerrang variety impenetrable to anyone over the age of 18; twenty infinitesimally different r'n'b blingfests; and if you're really lucky some "modern" "indie" of the lowest common denominator about-as-indie-as-Tesco variety. You're certainly not likely to see live studio performances from the likes of Puressence, Maps, Holy Fuck, even under-the-radar acts like The Tides; interviews with bands yet to sign a record deal (or indeed local pretend music writers); local cult legend Frank Sidebottom interviewing fellow local cult legend Johnny Bramwell from I Am Kloot, or a full half hour of live gig footage from a band such as Air Cav. Or at least you wouldn't expect to - and yet all these things have indeed been broadcast in the past three years and for people in some areas of Manchester you didn't even need cable or satellite to see them; they came courtesy of Channel M Music, and if for the local music fan that seemed just too good to be true, then sadly it seems it was.

Last week Channel M announced large scale redundancies, following news that the channel - largely run out of Urbis on a budget considerably less than any one of those nonsense r'n'b blingfest videos - was losing a couple of hundred thousand pounds a month. Camera operators, technicians and admin staff are waiting to see which third of them survive to continue the channel's output of local news and sport programming, but for some of us it's the end of an era. Channel M Music is being wound up.

As well as knowing a few people who work(ed) there both in front of and behind the scenes I've been present at a good few live recordings and the almost maverick operation of the whole thing was nothing short of heartwarming. As a "talking head" guest once on City Centre Social I've seen first-hand how a one-hour music and chat show was recorded in its entirety - including live studio performances from three quite different bands - in under three hours. Which included the time needed to convert the one-room studio from newsroom to talk show set and back. They had to. The news was broadcast live at six and ten o'clock and City Centre Social got the time in between; the footage edited into an hour-long programme and broadcast within a couple of days. You watch episodes now though and they're no less professional than the magazine shows on far richer channels.

As a punter, I've seen some classic moments too. The experience of gliding up on the escalators through three floors of casino for those live sessions at Manchester235 never stopped being faintly surreal; the influx of a hundred typically scruffy Puressence fans into the well-dressed establishment almost felt like class war, even if the drinks prices did remind us of the old casino rule that the house always wins in the end - even if you're not actually playing the games. And Channel M music staff still remember Jimmy's standard requests for the lights to be turned down, until eventually someone reminded him it was for TV and they couldn't be. Later sessions within the Urbis HQ itself were no less bizarre, whether it was Frank Sidebottom's mini-gameshow The Squid Is Correct! or guest presenter Clint Boon getting Holy Fuck to record mini-electrosquelches to blank out the "fuck"s in his links for pre-watershed transmissions.

All good things must come to an end though, and yes, in the real world market forces are everything. I'm not about to write long tracts of semi-informed opinion about what could and should have been done to make the channel as a whole more commercially viable as I don't know all the facts. But from the point of view of a Manchester based music fan who knows first, second and third hand just how difficult it can be for a whole lot of amazing bands to get any form of media exposure at all, it'll be a gaping hole I hope someone has the guts and the budget to fill.

And that was 2009.

2010

Don't ask me. I'm never right about these things. Make a new year resolution to see at least one band a week or month (depending on your financial and logsitical ability) that you haven't seen before. Refuse to go to nights (and festivals) where "promoters" force bands to sell tickets upfront before they can play. Go and see a band you love in a strange town you've never visited before. Your new favourite band is out there somewhere and they might not be mine, but you won't know if you don't keep your eyes and ears open.

Love as ever to anyone who has been a part of this...

Cath Aubergine, 03/01/10

DECADE or How One Thing Led To Another

2010-01-01T13:04:00.000-08:00

Manchester - New York - Brighton - Athens - Llandudno - Hamburg - Northampton - Northenden - Everywhere

My decade began on 3rd June 2000.

As the clocks chimed for the new millennium I had been at a friend's house in Gatley helping her decide if we should lock her brother in the shed or not as he'd got to a level of drunkenness where he was starting to turn psychotic. Not an unusual occurrence for him, unfortunately. We'd all been pretty wild in our younger days but we were in our mid to late 20s now and most of us had settled down, got grown-up jobs and mortgages and pension plans; I'd recently passed a diploma in management and was thinking about doing a higher degree in engineering. Tom, my student-days housemate, was talking about starting his own business, a music production studio. Our mate's brother was still going out getting wasted all the time like he was still 19. There was probably one of those conversations in the early hours where we thought about what we'd be doing in ten years' time; we probably worried, even if we never said as much, that his excesses might have taken him by then, whilst I doubt I ever considered that I would be in the same relatively low level job. Ten years down the line, Airtight Studios is pretty well known although Tom largely works on the video production side now. My mate's brother is happily married with two children and rarely drinks. And me? Well, I kind of went backwards.

On 3rd June 2000 something changed: The Chameleons headlined a sold-out Manchester Academy. It remains one of the greatest gigs I have ever been to, and there have been quite a few since then. I don't know how many. 1600 maybe. Something like that. But without that single event one rainy summer Saturday it's possible none of this would have happened at all. I might have stuck at that higher degree, might have been in a £40k job, although I've no idea what I'd have been spending it on. I'd been driving home from work sometime that February or March when I spotted the poster on Travis Street bridge under Piccadilly Station: The Chameleons. Playing at Ashton Witchwood sometime in May. They'd been my favourite band for as long as I could remember but they'd split before I got to see them (I was only about 15) - were they back together? Couldn't be. They hated each other, didn't they? Must be one or two of them playing on the name. By the time we found out that yes, it was the whole band, all the gigs had sold out. Ah well. When the Academy 1 was confirmed I bought tickets immediately - and there I felt that buzz again. That wash of emotion, that feeling you only get when completely absorbed in the whole experience of watching great live music. And obviously there could never be a band as good as The Chameleons (could there?) but it was definitely time to start going out watching more bands again. Had to be better than telly. Sure, I went to the odd gig in the late 90s and early 2000. Not many. Mostly old bands, or new bands with a distinct appeal to people who mostly liked old bands, such as Doves or I Am Kloot. Ten years on I still go and see Doves and I Am Kloot whenever possible; that much hasn't changed. Everything else did.

Radio Space had started broadcasting in the late 90s, just for four weeks twice a year. Based in the emerging Northern Quarter they played a lot of local bands, many of them unsigned. It had been there, on ex-Inspiral Carpet Graham Lambert's show, that I'd first heard Doves and actually started getting back into new guitar music after spending much of the decade listening to my old 80s indie records or going to techno, trance and acid/rave clubs. I blame Britpop for that, and the long hangover which cast a shadow over Manchester's music scene following the heady days of 1988-90. One day a work colleague told me her mate was in a band, Red Vinyl Fur. I'd heard them on Space and went to see them with her. They were great, and so were the other bands on the bill, Monomania and Moco. I started going to see them all. Mostly they seemed to play at a club night called Chairsmissing at the Roadhouse which was co-ordinated by the local music website manchestermusic.co.uk and I was soon a Chairsmissing regular. And started thinking about getting a computer - mostly for my coursework, obviously, although this new internet thing looked like it could be interesting.

We knew the Chameleons' Academy gig was being filmed for a video. Video? Yeah, a great big VHS spool tape in a box. They look weird, now, don't they? One day a few months after the gig I asked about it in Piccadilly Records. They said it wasn't out yet, but had I seen the new album? I hadn't. It turned out to be a collection of acoustic versions of the band's old tunes plus one newly written one, so I bought it, and on the back it said www.thechameleons.com . We'd just got the internet enabled on desk PCs at work, and the next couple of weeks' worth of dinner times were spent reading Mik Foggin's extremely comprehensive fan site, which had become the band's official site when they reformed and is still going now. It had a guestbook on it where people would write "Great site!" a lot. Occasionally someone would write something a little more substantial, and I noticed sometimes they replied to each other. There was "PEDRO" (his capitalisation) from Barcelona whose English swearing was exemplary; "arse" whom I presumed was a bloke and was very dry-humoured, "gaztop" whom I wondered if it was the 80s TV presenter of that name (it wasn't), "ekko" AKA Ernst who was Dutch but lived in Norway, and "Diana" who sometimes posted up dirty jokes. I replied to one of her posts. I can't remember the details, or if she emailed me or I emailed her, but it was probably the most important email I ever sent: I was "chatting" to a "friend" I had "met" on the internet. Within months Foggin had installed a "forum" on the website and we were all "talking" to each other. And planning to meet up at gigs. Which meant - going to more than one gig on a tour?

I'd done it in my younger days, of course; awaydaying (the same derivation as Kevin Sampson's book and the recent film - a cheap train ticket) was a Manchester habit since The Stone Roses had Pied Pipered half the city's teenagers to Blackpool in 1989; I'd spent much of 1991 and 1992 hitch-hiking around the country and sleeping in car parks in the vicinity of gigs by ex-Spacemen 3 bands Spectrum and Spiritualized, but this was different. This was... organised. We'd meet up, 10 or 20 or 30 of us in a pub nominated by a local or simply because it was there. It was weird - did you introduce yourself by internet name or real name? By mid 2001 I had a computer - and the internet - at home. In a pub in Leeds before a gig, a large bloke with glasses and sideburns came over to me, and said "Didn't you used to be Cath Aubergine?" I recognised him as Alex Staszko, legendary Mancunian gig-goer and bootlegger, we'd hung around with the same crew back in '89-'90 (just the other week on a drive over to Sheffield for a gig we spent some time trying to work out exactly which hill we'd managed to get a large coach stuck up when he diverted an away trip towards a cheap off-licence he knew; the first time we met) but I was surprised he remembered me and my old fanzine-writing name. By late 2002 I had seen The Chameleons live 35 times and made a load of friends doing so. Some turned out to be transient mates, of course. Diana actually ended up going out with drummer John Lever for a while but drifted away after the relationship and the band broke up. But Ernst, Gaz and Pedro remain amongst my best friends and we see each other quite often, and I last met up with Rob at a gig in Bristol in October; he doesn't seem to call himself "arse" any more, and lives with his Dutch girlfriend whom he first met via the forum.

The most important month of the decade, and that which defined pretty much everything that followed, was October 2002.

Something very weird was happening: growing up, the bands we loved were untouchable; on the internet, though, things were different. Members of The Chameleons posted on their own message board, and gradually we got to know each other. The first significant occurrence of this crazy month (October always is, if you love music) was the night Mark Burgess ended up crashing on my sofa after a gig at Jillys: no more heroes, anymore. The second was the demented idea hatched by me, Gaz and a few other "Chameleons" mates sometime that summer to go and watch the band in New York. Gradually the idea took shape and we ended up actually doing it. The first sight of the Manhattan skyline from our taxi is something I will never forget; we met up with a load of the US fans and crammed so many new experiences into one week we came home feeling we'd experienced a parallel universe. The gigs were something else, too - the buzz of being in new and far-flung places, watching a band you love play to a different crowd; the incredulous questioning - "what, you came all the way from England?" - and the sound of unfamiliar accents calling for familiar songs. It was my first foreign away trip - the first of a great many.

I wrote extensive travel reports on the band's forum. People there seemed to like stuff I wrote; a couple of them guessed that I had a long-lost past as a fanzine writer. Never had any formal training; I could just always write. Fuck knows why I ended up studying sciences - I think I thought English was a wussy girly subject and I was never into all the old literary books you were meant to read. I could write about music, though. There was a section on the forum where members could write about other bands they liked, and I started reviewing local gigs I had been to. I don't know why, but it led me to the third and - although I didn't know it at the time - most significant of October 2002's milestone events. The week after I got back from America I went to the Roadhouse to see a new band I'd recently got into called Interpol, and with nothing better to do the night after I headed down to Brighton to see them again with one of my "Chameleons" mates Brett and his Belgian girlfriend Carine, another couple who met via the forum (and married this summer just gone). I'd been having a difficult time for various reasons, but as soon as I stepped off the train in Brighton I just felt calm and happy, as if everything was going to be OK. Seven years on I frequently refer to Brighton as my Second City - I feel at home there, and whatever's going on in my head the walk down Queens Road from the station to the sea has an uncanny way of sorting it out. I've spent a lot of time there, and it's arguably largely thanks to a tall slim girl who pushed a flyer into my hand as we left the Interpol gig.

The flyer said "British Sea Power - All You Will Need This Winter" and it didn't look like any flyer I had ever seen. A couple of people had mentioned the band to me; they were based in Brighton but originally from the north, and were about to embark on a headline tour which was visiting Night & Day in Manchester a couple of days later. I went, they were absolutely amazing, and I wrote about it on the Chameleons forum. Up the road near Whitefield, Jon, the editor of manchestermusic.co.uk - a Chameleons fan himself - chanced upon my writing there. He got in touch via a mutual friend to see if I wanted to do the odd live review. In January 2003 I filed my first copy, a review of local electro-punks Nylon Pylon who were one of my favourite up-and-coming bands. He published it unedited - it was a while before I found out he rarely did this. Wary of work finding out what I was up to when I wasn't there, I had it credited to my old fanzine name Cath Aubergine and it stuck. I didn't know I was going to end up writing so much, and that people would eventually know who I was. It is a daft name, but it does I suppose afford me some privacy. Most people at work now know what I do, to an extent: it was only a matter of time before the lives crossed and when in 2008 one of our shift operators walked onstage at Dry Bar with his band and I found myself having to write a review of someone I more usually saw in the canteen, a line was crossed. Maybe it doesn't matter so much, now - although the occasional threatening message I get from bitter going-nowhere bands about whom I have written less than glowing appraisals reminds me there's a more important reason for keeping my parents' rather uncommon surname quiet.

I wrote a couple more reviews for MM. It seemed like a handy way of reducing my gig-going expenditure.

The least successful awayday of the decade occurred in early April 2003 when The Chameleons splintered on the eve of a gig in Athens to which me and a bunch of mates were already on our way. Manchestermusic.co.uk asked if I wanted to do a news story about it, but I was too close to it all. We still don't know if The Chameleons were actually the first band to split up "live" on their own internet forum, tearing strips off each other in a public display of bile that made for harrowing reading for fans and friends, but Jon reported it as such when he broke the news. It was quite definitely the 21st century by now, but the new rules of engagement in this cyberworld were still under construction. Meanwhile, sad that we may never see our new American friends again without this common purpose, a smaller number of us returned to New York and New Jersey in July of that year when Mark Burgess played some solo dates. One of these people was Frazer, from Leeds - one of the people whose enthusiasm for British Sea Power had pricked my interest in them. I'd seen them once since that Night & Day gig, and by this point their debut album had been released; it was incredible, and they'd sort of become my favourite band by default. British Sea Power were playing a gig a couple of nights after we got home, in Kendal, Cumbria, where three of the band had grown up. Not far, really - we should go. But Frazer hadn't yet got a mobile phone, and when we stepped bleary-eyed off the plane we forgot to make any plans. As I drove out of work that evening I felt a pull, a calling, to turn right towards the motorway, but I was tired, still jetlagged, I turned left towards home. By eight o'clock I was regretting the decision, but it was too late - and in a way, this gig I did not attend was arguably as significant in defining my decade as any I actually did. I made a pact with myself that night that in future I would follow my heart where such things were concerned. Which is how I ended up a couple of months later standing in a breezeblock shed on the outskirts of Hamburg with tears streaming down my face.

I wasn't about to stop doing daft away trips just because The Chameleons had gone. August bank holiday 2003, Nick and Alex and I planned one of the daftest - the Five Nations, as it became known. Interpol were playing Edinburgh, Belfast, Dublin and Manchester on four consecutive nights and it was that golden age, the brief window between Ryanair et al decreasing the cost or air travel to less than the price of a day-saver bus ticket, and the words "carbon footprint" and climate guilt impinging on the general consciousness. Had to be done, really. Five nations? Yep, Doves were playing in Llandudno the night before. We largely went because the idea of doing the five nations amused us - and you don't get that many chances to clock up Llandudno on the gig calendar. I've never been since. It wasn't one of their greatest gigs, although the sound of the traditional "Manchester, la la la" chant rendered in strong Welsh accents is something I'll never forget, and yet again it proved to be significant for other reasons: I'd recently bitten the bullet and joined another forum - British Sea Power's - and in a tatty seafront bar I exchanged a few words with a tall blonde girl called Zoe from Nottingham who was one of the forum's regulars as well as a massive Doves fan; she seemed really nice and encouraged me to post a bit more on there and within weeks I was getting to know the so-called Third Battalion, BSP's hardcore fan crew, and arranging to meet some of them at forthcoming gigs. I liked British Sea Power, Doves and Interpol but not in the way I did The Chameleons - and it didn't actually matter. The buzz of the awayday is as much a part of it all as the gigs themselves, although I maintain that Interpol's performance at Belfast Limelight that weekend was one of the best I ever saw them. And somewhere along the way we acquired another favourite new band.

It had been cheaper to fly to Scotland the day before the Interpol gig and spend an extra night in a cheap B&B in Leith than to fly up on the day. It was Edinburgh Festival time, and the organisers of T In The Park were in charge of the music side of things. We'd heard a track or two by a new band called Hope Of The States, and discovered they were supporting Grandaddy (a band none of us were particularly interested in) at the Liquid Rooms. It was well sold out, but we had nothing to lose by trying, did we? The lad on the door was from Manchester, a Chameleons fan and a City fan, and he said he would see what he could do. Came back minutes later and said as it was an early show we could go in for HOTS so long as we promised to leave straight afterwards; he banked on some people not turning up til the main act were due on so we wouldn't be infringing fire regulations. We were good as our word, and Hope Of The States were incredible: I knew I'd be going to see them again and clocked up 15 gigs across Britain before their unexpected split in 2006. Another reason why I rarely regret a gig I have been to and often regret those I didn't manage, and never take a band's existence for granted: you never know when you might never see them again.

Just two weeks after that came the awayday that changed everything: 15th September 2003. A day I remember almost photographically; I'd say "as if it were yesterday" but to be honest I remember it far better than I remember yesterday or last week. The Chameleons were history, but there would be one final gathering of those of us they had brought together. A wake for our beloved band and one last night together before our lives all diverged again. Mark Burgess would play a special gig for friends and fans in the unremarkable German town of Duisburg. One gig expanded to a week-long tour; and British Sea Power were playing in Germany around the same time. An initial plan for a three day trip to Duisburg and Köln somehow expanded into a couple of BSP gigs, a few days' holiday then a few of Mark's gigs. Mark was living in Hamburg at this point and had kindly offered to put us up for the night of BSP's gig there. The train ride from Berlin took us through endless forest, and I began to get a picture of just how big this country actually was. I remember us walking up to the concrete warehouse which showed no sign of a gig or indeed life. Inside the warehouse the walls were bare grey breezeblock and the bar a plank of wood balanced on two fridges, but there were tables - and every table, and the bar itself, had been sprinkled with leaves; all five varieties from the band's recent debut album cover seemed to be there. In the live room the towering PA had been bedecked with trails of ivy, at the front some small shrub cuttings, this was the fourth time I had seen British Sea Power and I was familiar with their foliage stage decoration, I'd also seen lots of pictures of other gigs, but I had never seen anything like this. A couple of strings of fairy lights were draped across the back of the stage and a small smoke machine puffed weakly; it was like some sort of magical grotto.

There were about 50 people there in total, although only 20 seemed really interested in the band. Even the 20 who seemed to care stood well back, and didn't move. I walked up to the front and stood there on my own, and when they played "Blackout" something happened inside me. The rest of the world stopped turning; other people further back ceased to exist, and I felt there was nothing in the world except me and this music. Some sort of calm descended on me. I felt lighter than air, and when the song finished I realised I had tears all down my face. I turned round to where Mark was standing, the singer of my lifelong and sorely missed favourite band, and he was clapping wildly and I realised this band, these strange little wide-eyed boys in thick woollen socks ("the bastard sons of Michael Palin", Mark said later), were quite simply the greatest band I had ever seen. What, even more than... yeah, I think so. Bloody hell.

The next day I walked out into the city and suddenly realised I was outside the venue where I had last seen the Chameleons ten months before. It was closed down now, and I knew one part of my life had ended and another begun. I walked up the road to the street corner where the tour bus had been parked, where Ernst and I had shaken John Lever's hand, still bloodied from the intensity of his drumming, and headed off into the freezing fog of the night half knowing, although reluctant to admit to each other or even ourselves, that we would probably never see the band play together again. On the corner the cybercafe where we'd had strong espressos before that last gig was still open; I went in, logged on and looked where British Sea Power were playing the next day, cancelled our planned trip to Berlin, called on my then quite reasonable grasp of German and made a couple of phone calls, and got on a train to Munich because I had to see them again and it couldn't wait until next week. The last two gigs of the tour, in Köln and Wurzburg, remain among my favourites - and by the time we rejoined Mark's own tour something had changed. The old Chameleons songs suddenly seemed like history. I sat in an internet cafe in Berlin and calmly bought tickets to every one of British Sea Power's forthcoming UK dates which I could conceivably get to that I hadn't got tickets for yet. Over the next four years I would never again miss a gig by the band on European soil that it was practically and financially possible for me to get to. And further afield, too: within weeks of hooking up with the hardcore away crew I was using my prior awayday experience and Chameleons-hewn Stateside connections convincing a few of them that it was perfectly reasonable to fly to Washington and New York for the weekend for two gigs, a weekend so high in the awayday surreal events factor (an internet cafe that was also a Chinese hospital? A crackhead scenester with a car stacked top to bottom with mysterious cardboard boxes? An Amtrak train service delayed slightly because its wheels were on fire? A lunar eclipse over Frank Sinatra Park in Hoboken?) that none of us will ever forget it. The bits we actually remember...

In between all this, I was still doing live reviews for manchestermusic and in August 2004 I agreed to cover the early shift at D:Percussion, a rather wonderful multi-stage multi-genre free music festival down in Castlefield Arena which ran from 1997 until 2007 and is still very much missed in Manchester's live calendar. There were maybe fifty or a hundred early arrivals soaking up the blistering sun as the first band walked out onto the main stage and I couldn't believe what I was watching. They were kids - literally, aged fourteen to sixteen I later found out, and managed by Blowout promoter and that year's main stage curator Graham Thomas, who'd figured it'd be good to give them a runout in the quiet early stages: their name was Fear Of Music, they sounded like Muse and the Manics and Sonic Youth, their songwriting and playing was in a league well beyond their years - why hadn't I heard of them? The answer was it was only their fifth gig, and first in the city centre. I phoned Jon, we were onto something here, and went off to watch some other bands. And then I collapsed. I'd been having what I called "blackouts" for a couple of years, as my extremely low blood pressure left me more prone to rapid dehydration than most people, and the midsummer heat and a couple of smuggled-in cans of lager and my firing adrenaline had combined to do just that; this was the most severe and prolonged one I'd had to date. Completely blind apart from coloured flashes I lay on the amphitheatre steps; in the background the sound of The Longcut, another up-and-coming local act and the band I had actually come down to see that afternoon. By the time my friends had got enough water inside me for me to see and sit up again they'd finished. Bugger.

Within weeks of my Fear of Music review being published they were all over the Evening News, Granada Reports, you name it, and soon the NME and record labels were onto them. I've never been arrogant enough to think these things wouldn't have happened anyway, but the buzz of being there from the start, of helping a band to their first big break, was a rush. Their debut EP was the first time I've ever had a credit on a band's sleevenotes, and remains one of my proudest moments. And suddenly people around town were asking me who my next tips were. Fuck, I have no idea. But you don't find the jewels without digging, so I was just going to have to start going to a hell of a lot more gigs: trawling the local unsigned nights, always watching supports. I eventually got to see The Longcut a couple of weeks later and on discovering they were probably the best band Manchester had produced in years I kicked myself for not making the effort earlier (and missing them when I finally did). This was never going to happen again - from now on nothing would happen in Manchester's music scene without my knowing about it. I was becoming known to the local promoters, so I rarely had to pay to get in anywhere when I was on scouting and reviewing duty - Manchester was my playground and this was my calling. Rustling out exciting new bands at the earliest stage and writing about them in such a way that people would take notice. I was too late to get a press pass for In The City that year so I spent the weekend dashing around the free entry stuff or blagging the individual event promoters. I rushed home between bands to type up my discoveries. In subsequent years, of course, they gave me a press pass: I held an unbroken record from 2004 to 2008 for the most bands reviewed at the event by an individual. This year my MM colleague Jon finally beat me into a close second place, but then he did all four days of the event and I only did three, having been away the first night watching The Longcut for the 26th time, along with another artist who won't turn up in this story for a couple more years yet: my best friend, he calls me "a machine"; means it in a nice way. In The City 2004 was where the machine really started, prior to that was just warm-ups.

I took my reviewing seriously. If a promoter had been good enough to stick me on the list for a night I'd make the effort to watch all the bands. A fleeting and not very good band-of-the-moment called The Bravery were headlining High Voltage one night in November 2004 and when MM's reviewer pulled out at the last minute I agreed to cover it. There were maybe 20 people in the Roadhouse when the first band went on: at first glance another exponent of the spiky-spiky sound of the day, but they had more secret weapons than your average terror-cell. The drummer, a pretty young blonde girl who barely looked old enough to be in the venue, blew my mind with a relentless battery of split beats and twisting time signatures, playing so hard her drumkit started to disintegrate, whilst the singer was this feral creature, hurling his scrawny little body into every line with wild hair and wilder eyes. They were Forward Russia from Leeds, this was their first gig outside of West Yorkshire, and I remember little about The Bravery because they didn't stand a chance after that. It's amazing that Forward Russia did, to be honest: three days earlier I'd been standing in some rough cafe bar further into the Northern Quarter, again with about 20 people, watching 65daysofstatic for the first time: I had picked up their recently released debut album "The Fall Of Math" in Piccadilly Records a few weeks earlier, drawn to it simply by the name and the song titles and figuring £7.99 was a worthwhile gamble. It became, and remains, one of my all-time favourite albums and live they did not disappoint. I would go on to see both bands rather a lot of times...

My level of British Sea Power gig attendance, meanwhile, was becoming legendary: I'd just seen them for the 50th time (I'd thought my 35 Chameleons gigs was quite a lot) and on 11th September 2004 (weird isn't it how if you do anything on "September 11th", any year, you never forget the date, even now) I sat in the tattoo shop, next door to Night & Day where just under two years earlier I had seen them for the first time, and had the five leaves from the "Decline Of..." artwork inked around my shoulder. As I've tried to explain a few times, it's not just about British Sea Power, it's a symbol of a life lived increasingly through the music that surrounded me; I was never a one-band person, and these were exciting times. Looking back over my list of gigs attended this century, I've highlighted when I first saw the bands who became important to me - and it's interesting to note that they often come in clusters; the summer to autumn of 2004 being a pretty heavy one. One afternoon during In The City I found an escape from the increasingly samey indie sounds of the time when local space-rockers The Second Floor shared a bill with Barnsley psychedelics Lycasleep. I'd seen both bands once before, but this time they were both spectacular and something clicked: sounds of a long-past youth, and the dirty word shoegazing. Time for a revival, I reckoned. Somewhere down south a man called Nathaniel Cramp was thinking the same thing and started a shoegaze / dreampop / spacerock club night called Sonic Cathedral, although it would be some years yet before our paths would cross.

In 2005 I broke a personal record, which I suspect will stand for the rest of my life: number of times I've seen any one band in any one calendar year. In 2005 I saw British Sea Power 48 times. Three years of foreign awayday practice and I'd got ambitious - that year's holiday involved following the route of the band's tour up the east coast of North America, from Atlanta to Washington DC; Philadelphia and New York; Boston and Toronto, catching the gigs in each city as well as visiting friends (many of the old Chameleons crew) and sightseeing. And back home Manchester had hit a real golden age, with the local scene as healthy as I could remember it. Various weeknights had their own Default Settings: a night you could go to and be guaranteed quality bands from Manchester and beyond; the spiritual descendents of Jon's Chairsmissing sessions. Tuesdays were FictionNonFiction at Tiger Lounge, a ramshackle session run by the slightly deranged duo behind local electro-punks TVH3 where anything could happen, albeit rarely before about 10pm. Thursdays were High Voltage, by now established at Music Box, with four bands for a fiver between 8pm and 11pm and no messing about. And Friday night was Blowout, best described as a welcome-to-the-weekend drinking session in Piccadilly's Bierkeller (complete with long Bavarian-style dark wood tables and a painted-on "window" to a daft mountain scene on the far wall - it closed its doors in late 2007 and is still sorely missed) where you might well just catch the next big thing or watch a triumphant beer-soaked home-run by The Longcut or The Whip - the latter being the promising new electro band who'd risen from the ashes of Nylon Pylon. My appetite for new music was almost insatiable. In 2005 I cracked the 200-gigs-in-a-year barrier for the first time - 202 to be precise - and thought that was a lot. But something was about to change, again.

In February 2006 I went down to watch The Longcut at Cargo in London, scene of what's now generally regarded as one of British Sea Power's greatest early gigs a couple of years earlier and a place that will always have special significance for those of us who were there. This particular night wasn't one of the all time great Longcut gigs - at this point they could fill Manchester Academy 3 with sweaty bouncing bodies but struggled to impress Shoreditch's haircut brigade - but the evening turned out to be another unexpected milestone. One of our mates didn't show up, but for some reason we had his hat, and to wind him up we photographed it on the stage, on the bar, in the bogs, you name it. "Let's make the hat its own Myspace page" said my friend Cindy, at whose flat I was staying. I'd heard of Myspace, but I wasn't really sure what it could do for me. Back at hers she showed me her page, and how it linked to her favourite bands' pages. I looked up a couple of my local unsigned favourites and everything was there - gig dates, background information, a few tunes. This was a resource I very much needed, and on the train home ideas came to me as to how I could use it. I went home and tentatively signed up, sending friend requests to every band I could think of (and a few people, too). The blog function looked useful: I could use it to collate weekly all the gig reviews I'd done for MM, like a sort of online portfolio. And what about the other gigs I went to, the ones where I wasn't "working"? The awayday reports people always loved on bands' forums? My rants about this and that in the music industry? It could all go here! Wouldn't take too long, would it? A couple of hours each Sunday? (I kind of underestimated that bit). In early March 2006 I published my first Myspace blog. Two days later I got my first friend request and message from a band I didn't know: Amida. Would I come and review their gig this week? I clicked through to their page and pressed Play; liked what I heard. Went to the gig. Reviewed it. The page had already started to take on a life of its own, and in some ways take over mine...

May 2006 saw another cluster. I'd met Pete, co-promoter of the fledgling PopCult night and fanzine, through watching British Sea Power although he was much more of a Hope Of The States fan; either way I considered his taste pretty reliable, so when he excitedly told me he'd bagged the Manchester date of the Tired Irie / Cats+Cats+Cats double-header tour I agreed to help publicise and indeed review it, even though neither band name meant a thing to me. Opening the night, in the draughty blackness of the Star & Garter, was a local band called Air Cav whose name I'd seen on listings for a while and never got round to checking out. They sounded like the missing link between HOTS and Spiritualized. The touring bands were good, too, but it was Air Cav I just had to go and see again. Which I did, the following week. In between times High Voltage finally afforded me a chance to see another band whose name had been on my list for a while (there's never actually been a physical list) largely thanks to the enthusiasm of HOTS fans: iLiKETRAiNS. I'd missed them at In The City 05 because I was the wrong end of town; they'd pulled out of their next Manchester fixture (an event which provided me with one of my favourite ever lines of a review I've written: "After a last minute cancellation from I Like Trains, who clearly don’t like trains enough to pop over the Pennines tonight, we’ve got The Pedestrians, who presumably walked here") but finally they were coming to High Voltage. I thought they were right miserable bastards, but in a good way. Both bands were quickly in my repeat-viewing league. And at that year's In The City, The Second Floor - who had become another of my regular favourites - once again shared a bill with some space-dreamers from Barnsley. Reports of Lycasleep's split had, it seems, been slightly exaggerated: yes, they had parted ways with their singer, found a replacement, ditched their entire set, written a load of new songs and changed their name - but the hypnotic interplay between Rob Marshall's atmopsheric guitar sounds and Simon Lindley's dub-rolled bass was still present and correct in Exit Calm.

I never thought it could happen, but by the end of 2006 I was getting bored with British Sea Power. I hadn't intended to do their full 20-date autumn tour, it just kind of happened. Rather than taking one support band along for the ride, they had a few bands doing four or five dates each, and iLiKETRAiNS were mostly doing the nights I'd thought about missing: I ended up doing the lot. Towards the end I realised BSP no longer thrilled me the way they had; my fault, I suppose, for having seen them about 130 times by this point. It wasn't just that, though; I'd heard nothing in the new material they'd been testing out which really blew me away. I needed something new. Could it be Air Cav, iLiKETRAiNS, The Second Floor, Exit Calm? After all, British Sea Power didn't actually blow my head off til the fourth time I saw them. Maybe I was just looking too hard, the way I had been when The Chameleons imploded and Interpol turned out not to be my new favourite band but a necessary step on the way. If there was something else out there, it would find me.

Meanwhile the away trips were getting crazier. In 2006 we'd done three dates of Forward Russia around Ireland, and they remain to this day the only band I have ever seen in Galway and Limerick. I actually know music fans who live in Ireland who have never been to a gig in Limerick. And discovering that a couple of my "second tier" favourites Brakes (featuring an ex-member of British Sea Power, but a brilliant live band in their own right) and The Killers (yes, as in the international pop act - I'd first seen them supporting BSP, and up until they got to arena level we used to go watching them everywhere too) were on tour in Europe at the same time in early 07 we did a ridiculous five date three country long weekend trip. By this time I was starting to be affected by "carbon guilt", but that's why the gods gave us Eurostar... no stupid two-hour check-ins, either, and straight off the train into the centre of Paris. Domestic awaydays were getting equally ridiculous: me, Nick, Alex and other regular gig-going mates Liam and Barry went to watch I Am Kloot in Scunthorpe just because we could. Liam and I would pore over bands' tour dates looking for the stupidest places we could go; we were both pretty disappointed when Art Brut (not even a band I'm that much of a fan of, although Liam was) cancelled a gig in Tamworth because we'd never been to a gig in Tamworth, and still haven't. British Sea Power seemed to actively encourage this, by scheduling gigs in Yeovil and Bradford on consecutive nights (check it on a map or train timetable). We had decided between us that 2007 was going to be the daftest year of gig-going ever, and we weren't far wrong. I broke another personal record which will almost certainly never be equalled: I went to 280 gigs in one year. Liam was probably with me for a good hundred of them, as well as doing some spectacular country-hopping awaydays of his own.

Now seems like as good a time as any for a little diversion: there's one band who have been a consistent repeat fixture throughout the decade but whom I haven't mentioned yet. They've never been my Absolute Favourite Band, yet somehow I've managed to see them more times than anyone bar BSP - 56 and counting. A year after The Chameleons' triumphant Academy 1 gig they returned to do it again with a collection of local supports in tow, one of which was Puressence. A name about town since the early 90s I had never paid them much attention; I'd seen them once in about 1993 and they didn't do much for me. This time they were on fire, though, and I soon bought their two existing albums from Vinyl Exchange. Bassist Kev and singer Jimmy were often about when we went out, just part of the gang really, and soon a lot of the Chameleons crowd started going along to their gigs too. When the Chameleons split, Puressence gigs became almost a social event: a drinking session with a band on. A really bloody good band, though. I wouldn't have gone to see them 56 times if they weren't. I wouldn't have gone to see them in bloody Wolverhampton on a snowy night in February 2007 if I didn't really like them.

Manchester was literally freezing when we got back and the last thing on earth I wanted to do was to go out again - but after months of my hoping they would, Sonic Cathedral had finally decided to put on a Manchester session, and my beloved Second Floor were opening. I was less enthusiastic about headliners Long-view, but in between them was Maps. Maps had been on that mythical list since he - apparently it was just one bloke, but with a band for live appearances - did a mutual remix CD with The Longcut, who'd mentioned it on their Myspace in January saying they had a few copies up for grabs. I'd messaged them and told them it was my birthday - which it was - and duly received a copy: I didn't know who this crazy fucker was, but he'd basically turned "Holy Funk" inside out and reshaped it into exactly what The Longcut should sound like, although at this point hadn't quite achieved for themselves. I'd arrived at Night & Day to discover I'd forgotten to put the memory card in my camera, but I'd promised The Second Floor I would take some photos, so I ran home in the snow to get it and arrived back just as they came onstage to play a brilliant set. Exhausted, I stayed at the front and was still there when Maps started. Now this was something special: all the euphoric swirl of the (by now almost overground) shoegaze revival but infused with flickering, pulsing electronics; intricate and beautiful and... I was snapped out of my dreamstate by the contents of the keyboard player's maracas hitting me full in the face. If you've ever wondered what's inside maracas (you haven't? Why not?) it sort of looks like plastic Sugar Puffs, and I was finding it in my bag and clothes for days. Definitely worth going out in sub-zero weather for, though, unlike Long-view, during whose set I somewhat legendarily fell asleep on a sofa near the back.

When I discovered Maps' releases to date were all on ten inch vinyl I was delighted, you'd have to be a certain sort of person to know where I'm coming from there. The next single was called "It Will Find You", and it felt like it had. The band were supporting The Longcut on their March tour - although not on the Manchester date. So I didn't go, and went to Lancaster instead where they were. OK, so the historical truth is that I was committed to reviewing elsewhere that night, but the myth (and what I pointedly told promoters High Voltage) was that I wasn't coming because Maps weren't supporting, so damn well book them for the stage they (HV) were scheduling for that summer's D:Percussion. Or else. They did. I suspect they were probably going to anyway, but I did have a little laugh when I saw the listings. And fortuitously they were booked to play on the same bill as British Sea Power at May 2007's Great Escape festival. I might have got bored with BSP in 2006 but it had been six months and I couldn't wait to see them again. It was sometime the day before when a contact in the BSP camp texted one of our crew and told us the band weren't happy with the venue they'd been assigned - an inflatable tent shaped like an upside-down purple cow - and were in talks to transfer to another bill. My mood darkened. If they got their way, I wouldn't be able to see both bands. On the morning of the gig I went for a walk on the beach. There's something about Brighton beach - as I said before, it's where I go to get my head together, and this was no exception. The answer, when it came to me, actually surprised me: "I'm pissed off I can't go and see both bands" was actually "I'm pissed off I can't go and see Maps". So... what if I did? People would talk, sure, but I remembered the promise I made myself way back in 2003: always follow your heart.

BSP never did manage to swap venues; they'd been right to be wary though. The list of things that were awful about the "venue" would probably double the length of this entire article. Both Maps and British Sea Power played brilliant if slightly curtailed sets, though, and I still hadn't missed a British Sea Power UK headline gig in almost four years. But all that was about to change. A string of dates were announced for October and November - all but the last five coinciding with a long-booked trip to South Africa for some of our oldest friends' wedding. I surprised myself again by being absolutely gutted - I'd thought I'd got bored with the band but gigs had been very thin on the ground in 07. Ah well. Thing is by the time October came, it wasn't BSP's gigs I was gutted about missing.

My fifth Maps gig was in the ancient Church Of The Holy Sepulchre in Northampton. The date was 25th July 2007, it had rained for what felt like weeks, roads were flooded and some of the previous weekend's festivals had been postponed. I stuck my ticket in my bag and went to work, figuring I'd decide later if it was actually feasible to get there. Leaving work I felt a pull, a calling, towards the motorway, just like I had in 2003 with British Sea Power. The rain was torrential, but this time nothing was going to keep me from where I had to be. I was just past Stoke on an M6 so quiet it was almost creepy when the sun broke through, and as I swept round a curve somewhere around Wolverhampton I found myself driving into a rainbow, and another, and another. Onto the M1 and off at Northampton, at which point I realised I had no idea where I was going as in my panic about the weather conditions I'd completely forgotten to print a Multimap off. I know: phone Alex. I knew he wasn't going out that night, so I could ask him to look on the internet and get me directions. I pulled up a quiet side street and stopped - and there was the church right in front of me in the warm evening sunshine. "It will find you". I was already feeling very peaceful: here, unlike Manchester or British Sea Power gigs or Longcut gigs or whatever I knew nobody, I could sit right at the front and enjoy anonymity. The sound was amazing as the band played the album in order: when they got to "It Will Find You" the little electronic flourishes seemed to be channelling right through me then dancing off the inside of the round tower and out to the stars. Just like that fateful night in Hamburg I found my face wet with tears; it had happened again, and afterwards all the colours in the world seemed brighter. I wrote about it in my blog, as I did every gig; somewhere out there in cyberspace, or at least Northampton, Maps AKA James Chapman read it.

Somewhere closer to home but equally unknown to me, legendary Hacienda DJ Dave Haslam had also been reading my writing. And now he wanted my opinion. He was going to start a new club night in Paris in November and wanted to take the hottest Manchester bands over to play there, who did I think would be suitable? I was flattered beyond words that my opinion was valued in this way, and there was only one answer: Air Cav. They were duly booked. And I wanted to be there myself - my first ever foreign awayday for an unsigned band. They were worth it, though. I'd been watching them on an almost weekly basis throughout the year and they were getting better and better. We knew each other vaguely in the way people around town do, and it was sometime around September, I think, when they asked me to go for a drink as they wanted to ask me something. We sat in Fuel in Withington, and I told them I would have little idea how to manage a band because I had never done it before, but I would be honoured to help them out where I could.

Looking back at the list of what I apparently did in October 2007 now, I largely wonder when I had time to sleep - with a week away for the South African trip at the end of the month I couldn't do my perennial trick of simply booking half of October off to accommodate my somewhat unusual idea of what a holiday constitutes. So my by-now-expected level of In The City coverage fitted in between the day job, doing odds and ends for Air Cav, a few dates of a Puressence tour, a bizarre stint with Liam doing Brakes' merch in Hull for reasons that I never worked out, the usual local stuff, and seven dates of the Maps tour. I'd arranged to interview James Chapman for MM at a gig in Stoke, but heavy traffic on the M6 meant I didn't make the soundcheck; I felt terrible about this, and introduced myself afterwards to apologise. I left a couple of hours later without my interview but with a new friend who told me he loved my writing as much as I loved his music. Not everyone was as positive about my efforts, though: a few days further along the tour I was somewhere on an A-road between Nottingham and Colchester when my phone started going crazy. Apparently an innocuous (I'd thought) comment in my blog regarding the departure of a guitarist from a local band had been taken badly by one of the remaining members, who had taken it upon himself to send me strings of abuse and threats. In the space of a few weeks my blog had gone from being something I tossed into cyberspace without much of a thought for what happened next (and never really thought anyone outside of people I knew read, anyway) to something interactive, supplying me with friends, enemies and band management positions. I was on a roll, though, it was all good, wasn't it?

In actual fact my life was spiralling way out of control. Alongside the hedonism which had reached new and (if I think about it now) potentially damaging levels, I was also a senior union rep at work by this point; a position I had somewhat unwittingly inherited after a predecessor collapsed and died of a heart attack in the factory break room. That should have been a warning, really. The Paris gig was a triumph, a show Air Cav still regard as one of their best; a crew had come out from Manchester but the Parisian kids were the ones going wild for them. The crash back into reality two days later was like nothing I had ever experienced. I returned to work to find the place in turmoil; the improbably good pay deal we'd somehow pulled off in between October's wild days had fallen though, the place was on the brink of industrial action and the next year or so of my life was spent desperately trying to balance the various positions of responsibility I'd found myself in.

Air Cav released their debut single in February 2008 with a euphoric, packed gig at Manchester's Roadhouse. I'd booked and promoted the gig myself and it should have been the proudest day of my life - but on the same day things had happened at work which all but destroyed me. I wasn't actually sure who I was any more, and there are large parts of 2008 I barely remember. I'd spent most of the decade doing exactly what the hell I liked with little consideration of the consequences, and now it was time to pay the price. Outwardly it was business as usual, but inside I was hanging onto my sanity by my fingernails. Forward Russia released their second album, a beautiful, sprawling, cathartic piece of work which clicked instantly with the mess in my head, but a lot of those who transiently liked their short, fast, spiky-spiky "number" songs were seriously turned off by its mass of ten minute epics and weirdly evocative song titles. There are few bands I can think of who progressed so far in such a short space of time and it effectively decimated their fanbase whilst not gathering enough of a new one. Had they stuck around, they might have seen a shift in their audiences and a new beginning, but their drummer had a difficult choice to make between sticking with a band that felt like it could be on a downhill slope and accepting a university place; other members were starting to tire of it all, and it seemed like a good time to call an indefinite break. And however much the Roundhouse in October of that year remains one of my top ten per cent of British Sea Power gigs, and however much money I would have wasted had I not used the train and gig tickets and hotel I had booked, there'll always be a part of me that regrets not being in Leeds that night to see them off to the end. The worst gig clash of the decade, no contest.

I Like Trains' record label decided their services were no longer required. My former sort-of-proteges Fear Of Music split, whilst my previously beloved Interpol's third album was, frankly, rubbish. There were occasional lights in the darkness: British Sea Power released their third album, the tracks which hadn't done much for me in 2006 sounded excellent in their eventual form, and it went Top Ten - recognition at last, and a richly deserved Mercury nomination followed. But I was tired and disillusioned, and trudging around the local unsigned nights trying to care about anything felt more like a chore than a pleasure. Some of the bands I was watching, and about half the crowds I was finding myself in, were so young they probably weren't even born when I had my first legal drink. Suddenly I felt old, something I'd never felt before. Too old for this. I'd had a good run, my "youth" extended by a few more years than most people manage - maybe it was time to give it all up. This might well have happened, had it not been for a strange night out in a hitherto unknown-to-me suburb down the end of the 41 bus route. The last thing on earth I was looking for at this point in my life was a new favourite band, but if I had been, the last place on earth I'd have been looking for it would have been Northenden.

Doves wrote a song about Northenden once and it was not especially flattering. They did it a bit of a disservice. Turn off the main street past the world's smallest village green and you could be going back in time: Northenden was listed in the Domesday Book and a thousand years on it may have been swallowed by Manchester and Wythenshawe but there's still something very village-y about it: a church, a little police station, a pub, and an 18th century cottage. In the front room of the cottage, sometime in late 2007, an aspiring musician spotted a post I had made on the Myspace page of German ambient/electronica artist Ulrich Schnauss about his brilliant support slots on the recent Maps tour. And like many before him, the musician wrote to me and asked me to come to his band's gig at the Roadhouse in January 2008. I had nothing better to do that night so I did, and I couldn't quite believe what I was hearing - it was like Slowdive and The Cocteau Twins and "What Does Anything Mean Basically" era Chameleons and My Bloody Valentine all rolled into one. Their name was Daniel Land And The Modern Painters. I saw them a couple more times, at Dry Bar and the Star & Garter and supporting Ulrich Schnauss himself at Salford Sacred Trinity Church - they were good and they were getting better. So when they announced a special "hometown" gig at The Crown, the pub next to the cottage opposite the church, it had to be done, didn't it? I don't think the band expected anyone to turn up except their friends and the not-remotely-shoegazey locals. The landlady laid on a massive bowl of stew and dumplings. It looked outwardly like the sort of Live Music Night that features a fiftysomething couple and a karaoke track, but what Northenden actually got was a good hour of sonically intense brilliance.

I can't remember exactly how me and Richard Foster came up with The Mad Idea. I'd met Foster through watching British Sea Power although which particular occasion it was escapes me, and I was doing odd features and interviews for Incendiary, the rather irreverent music webzine he and a fellow Brit ex-pat ran from a shed in their adopted hometown of Leiden, The Netherlands. I'd asked him to see if he could get Air Cav some dates in Holland for spring 2009 and he came back to me with two dates and the suggestion that we ran it as a Manchester package, with another band on the bill. I put the idea to Daniel Land and he said yes. So we had the bands, we had the venues, all I had to do was the logistics. All I had to do was get nine band members, Danny's mate who helped out, myself, and two bands' gear to Leiden and Groningen with a minimum of cost and time off work required. How hard could it be? I procrastinated through the winter, which in retrospect was the best thing I could have done. Things were going from bad to worse in the day job and by the time I snapped and resigned as a union rep it was too late, my mind was broken and my self-confidence in shreds. I thought about cancelling the Dutch tour, but the bands were already so excited about it and the guys at Incendiary and Subroutine Records had put so much effort in already, how could I let them down? Focus. And the truth is, that's exactly what I needed: focus. I had a splitter van, ferry crossings and a complete itinerary with full driving directions booked with four weeks to spare: all those awaydays watching bands had paid off, tour-managing them was just the next step.

April 2009. Two days before we were due to sail, a group of French fishermen decided to blockade as much of the Channel as they physically could. Kent became a lorry park and Northern France likewise. We could go, but there was no guarantee we'd get there. My dreams were shattering, but - no, there has to be a way. In a flash of desperate inspiration I re-routed the trip via Hull and Zeebrugge; it cost a bit more, but as members of the two bands started to bond on the long outward overnight ferry I figured it was worth it. Danny's mate John Evans did a brilliant job as my second-in-command making sure everyone was where they should be when they should be. Daniel Land And The Modern Painters headlined in Leiden and Air Cav in Groningen, both bands playing out of their skins to packed and enthusiastic crowds in both places. We got paid real money plus as much food and beer and, um, local delicacies as we could handle. Sod playing to four men and a dog in Wakefield, this is where it's at. Everyone arrived home saying it was the best weekend ever, and my life was back on track.

I'm still trying to get my head round the fact that people recognise me and know who I am: a leading light of DrownedInSound approached me at a recent Exit Calm gig and told me Nat from Sonic Cathedral had been talking about my work, whilst my dear friend James Chapman wrote a Myspace blog about me which was so flattering as to be almost embarrassing, but made me smile for days. (A few bits of the next paragraph actually first appeared in a response I wrote to that piece, but they seem to fit in here pretty well so forgive me a little recycling). I wish I could devote more time to the work these people and many more appreciate, but sadly I still have to earn a crust. In a way people like MM and Drownedinsound and Incendiary and many more across the globe who do it primarily for the love of music have usurped the traditional music press; NME is a shameful shadow of its former self, employing fashionistas who seem to know little about music and appreciate it even less, and most of the rest of them have gone under. As I write this I've just heard that Observer Music Monthly, a freebie with the Sunday paper but a far more insightful and intelligent read than most of the ones you'd pay four quid for, and somewhere I'd hoped to target for possible freelance work, is being wound up. I'm probably never going to make a bean writing about music - it's a crowded market, almost as much as music itself these days.

The internet has changed everything. Understatement of the year, I know. Britain has just experienced a Christmas number one hit single which had no physical release and was put there entirely by a viral campaign on a social netowrking site. Had the phrases "viral campaign" and "social networking site" even been invented this time ten years ago? I don't think so. Nor had the concept of TV "reality" show karaoke pop. Yes, there was always manufactured pop, and it could be argued that the shows were at least displaying honesty about the fact that what they were selling was a product as opposed to any pretensions towards artistic value. The vote of confidence in real music over this rubbish is encouraging, but it remains to be seen whether those awakened by the campaign will continue to take action in support of musicians. To overcome the popular antipathy towards paying musicians for their work, and to pile into the draughty upstairs rooms of pubs where real musicians make their first attempts to get off the starting blocks. I've seen some truly awful bands cranking out cliches completely unworthy of public airing but it's been worth it for the diamonds you find in the dust.

And it's true that these days anyone can put their music out there without needing someone to do it for them, but what happens next is still a bit of a lottery. An artist can have thousands of Myspace fans, but to make the step up still needs the existing music industry infrastructure. Booking agents, radio pluggers, distributors, PR. Anyone who says it can be done without these things - at present - has either never tried, or has been extremely lucky. At this year's In The City conference there were considerably fewer A&R knocking about than usual as the recession scythes its way through record company budgets, and every last one of them was sniffing around the same artists, the ones they'd been preconditioned towards. Established bands with a critical-mass fanbase who have found themselves label-less are finding this is no longer the death-knell it once was, but for a new upcoming artist one could argue that the increased level of "background noise" arising from the internet free-for-all means attaining said critical mass from scratch can be very difficult. I have great hope that one day "the good will out", but whilst the industry staggers around this transition period trying to find its place in the new world it's at least as much a minefield as it ever was, and I'll continue picking through it for as long as it gives me a buzz to do so.

I haven't found any more new favourite bands in 2009. I didn't really need any. As the decade drew to a close, most of the bands whose music has shaped it were flying as high as they ever had. At May's Great Escape festival Maps made a live comeback with a brand new all-electronic sound, whilst British Sea Power unveiled some exciting Krautrock influences. They weren't on the same bill, but thankfully no choice between them was required - and no cow-shaped tent in sight. I spent most of the summer weekends watching one or the other or both at a string of gigs and festivals around the country. Sometime in the next year or so I'll probably hit my 200th British Sea Power gig, and they still take me to a level few other bands can manage. Maps' second album came out in September and even setting aside the fact that I'd lived through its creation to a certain extent it was still one of the greatest things I'd heard; a string of live dates in October saw them on brilliant form and there'll be plenty more in 2010. European dates, too, apparently - maybe I'll finally make it back to Germany, it's been far too long.

Elsewhere, The Longcut's second album appeared suddenly and blew the first out of the water, whilst I Like Trains defied their unsigned status and return to day jobs by writing their best material yet. Doves reappeared after four years' absence (and a third album, mid-decade, which I never really got into at the time although it's aged well) with a brilliant fourth album and some of the best live shows of their long career. They finally got to headline GMex (as it's no longer called in reality, but to anyone in Manchester always will be) a couple of weeks before the tenth birthday of their still stunning debut album, released when the decade was just a few freezing days old. Jo Rose from Fear Of Music returned as an alt-country/Americana singer/songwriter; not usually a genre a 21-year-old can attack with much conviction, but Jo's lived through stuff most 21-year-olds haven't and does it very well. Sam Herlihy from Hope Of The States has a new band, The Northwestern, who are a lot more "indie" than HOTS but have some absolutely cracking tunes. The Killers' third album did nothing for me, sadly, but whatever you may have read about the band being arrogant twats is completely untrue: a good four or five years since I last actually spoke to them they never forget those of us who were there in their early days, and they always save us decent seats in the best guest area for their annual-ish visits to the MEN Arena. Brakes, meanwhile, still make me smile more than most bands and in November became the fifth band to equal that Chameleons gig-count of 35 which I once thought unassailable.

In November 2009 manchestermusic.co.uk celebrated its tenth anniversary, which is effectively a lifetime in this modern age. We desperately need to update the scripts and the front-end design, but despite a few hacker attacks we're still here. Red Vinyl Fur went through numerous line-up changes throughout the decade and eventually played their last gig on 10th January 2009; Moco still exist but rarely seem to play outside of their Wigan hometown these days; whilst Monomania split, reformed and split again - singer Rick is still active, and when he needed a drummer I introduced him to one I happened to know who was looking for a band - they seem to be getting on fine and sounding good too. A rejuvenated Second Floor came back to reclaim their place in the space-rock revival, and when Jon decided to revive the old Chairsmissing brand for three nights only to celebrate the tenth anniversary MM they were our first choice to headline the first night. Exit Calm went from strength to strength, gathering fans with a series of high profile support slots and putting the finishing touches to what should be one of the first great albums of the next decade. Daniel Land And The Modern Painters released the last great album of this decade, self-produced and on their own label with a little help from Sonic Cathedral. They launched it with a full national tour, with John Evans at the helm: I'd showed him the ropes in Holland and he was already far exceeding my capabilities. Made me proud, as did seeing my name at the top of the album's credits list. Air Cav may end up doing something similar - the music industry having changed beyond recognition over the past ten years. Watch this space.

And what of the band who started it all, without whom none of this might have even happened? I'd love to say that as the decade drew to a close their differences were set aside for one last triumphant gig, with 80s and reunion era and newer fans crowding a sold-out GMex - but it was never going to happen. John Lever and Mark Burgess started playing together again, sets full of old Chameleons tunes with John's band Bushart filling the guitar parts: a nostalgia show, sure, but it's not for me to criticise the great many people who wanted that and enjoyed it. Me I've moved on, and whilst I'd have gone just for the memories I never made it because all their gigs seemed to clash with prior arrangements involving my 21st century favourite bands - until a the very last week of the decade. It was a great night out with loads of my friends including some of those old regular crew I don't see half often enough, watching the football and drinking; the performance itself did little for me. The forum where I'd cut my reviewing teeth had long since descended into a nest of petty bickering as fans took sides according to which ex-members of the band they'd been talking to. I'd long since stopped visiting when finally, and without warning, on 14th November 2009 someone pulled the plug following one altercation too many between a former band member's girlfriend and the resident troll. A rather sorry end to what had been a formative factor in a lot of lives.

And this is the chance you take - the internet has made those who create the music we love accessible to us in a way that was unimaginable just a few years ago, and when you send that first message you are opening a window which can never be closed. We all love to dream of a chance to see the bands we missed first time round, but like rekindling a long past love affair soon enough the differences and problems will raise their heads again. Heroes with feet of clay: been there, done that, bought the T-shirt.

I look back over what's happened this past ten years and it all seems to have happened organically, a series of small events and decisions - but then that's anyone's life, isn't it? An email sent to a girl I'd never met because I had nothing better to do one dinnertime; a Saturday when I might have had plans with friends in Manchester but didn't so went to Brighton on a whim; whether or not Kendal or Llandudno or Northampton seems like a reasonable place to decide to go for a night out; a joke about a mate's hat that led me to hitherto undiscovered parts of the internet; getting to the Roadhouse or the Star & Garter in time for the unknown opening support band; a quick and quickly forgotten comment left on a German musician's Myspace page. A message left on Facebook a couple of weeks back from an old college mate I haven't seen for a good ten years kind of summed it up: "I'm confused. Last time I saw you I could have sworn you said you were a lab technician. Now you're like Tony Wilson or something..." I'm not, of course, but I was immensely flattered - and if you're reading this, Cherry, I hope it answers your question...

Back in my friend's living room in Gatley as the bells rang out 1999 and rang in 2000, I couldn't even have imagined any of this. So don't ask me where I'll be in ten years' time. In my late 40s, which is a sobering thought - although quite a few of the people I go watching gigs with are already there. We celebrated the first couple of fiftieth birthdays amongst my extended awayday crew in 2009, and a handful of the British Sea Power regulars were hovering around the 40 mark when they got into the band in 02 and 03. I'm still not exactly happy about being closer to 40 than 30 but I suppose I'm getting used to it. So long as the spirit's still there, I will be. So I'm going to finish with a story I have published before, a story about a person I met only briefly, and never even caught her name, but whose words to me one night in London have echoed through this decade.

I only spoke to her once; a few words while we queued for the cloakroom at Highbury Garage. We'd noticed her the first time The Chameleons played there in 2001; we were in the Famous Cock pub over the road by the tube station and she was standing at the bar. I was always one of the youngest of the Chameleons crew - just fifteen and still only just getting into the band when they split for the first time I was one of the few original fans still not yet thirty when they came back. But she was a generation older still than most of them, fiftysomething maybe, and cool looking even before she spoke. Her hair was grey streaked with white and the odd strand still almost black, long and unkempt, framing a face whose signs of ageing enhanced as opposed to detracted from her striking looks. The barman came to her. "A pint of red wine, please". Me and my mate couldn't fail to be impressed, and sometimes mentioned her as we talked about how we weren't getting any younger. Pint Of Red Wine Woman was already a bit of an inspiration.

She was at the next London Chameleons gig as well in Camden, and the one after that back at the Garage in spring 2002, and it was here that the effects of a full afternoon session in the Cock followed by a brilliant and euphoric gig got the better of me as we waited to reclaim our bags. I always see you at the London gigs, I said, and I have to tell you me and my mate were so impressed when you ordered a pint of red wine that time... you a big fan then? Yeah, she said, been watching them pretty much since the start. She'd been well into music as a late-sixties teenager but the seventies did little for her, she thought her gig going days were over and settled into some kind of growing up, but then by chance she saw the young Chameleons in the very early 80s and amazingly at the age of thirty found herself passionate about a new band again. I said I'd just turned thirty myself, and that my twenties too had largely been a time where me and current music had parted ways; and that I, too, had got the spirit back - but I couldn't see myself becoming passionate about any new, young bands at my age; she'd been pretty lucky. We'd reached the front of the queue now. She smiled at me and said "Ah, you will", took her bag and disappeared into the night.

As the clocks chimed for the new decade I found myself once again in the southern suburbs of the city, less than a mile as the crow flies from where I was ten years earlier, in that front room of the cottage in Northenden with one of the great friends I have met purely because he made some music and I wrote some words about it. I guess we'll carry on doing it for a while yet.

Cath Aubergine 01/01/10

Photos used in title bars are all my own except:

(1) Official press shot

(2) by Chris & Karen Brokenwindows

(11) by Clare Neilson

(13) pilfered off somewhere on the internet

(15) by August Jakobsen

LIGHTS OUT FOR DARKER SKIES - PART THREE

2006-09-21T12:00:00.000-07:00

Towards the end of August 2006, British Sea Power set out on a tour that would see them play 18 gigs in 21 days. A number of fans planned to go to most - or in some cases all - of the gigs. This is how I documented it at the time, excavated from my old Myspace blog - I have deliberately copied and pasted the whole thing without editing (from the HTML view so as to preserve as much of the formatting and pictures as possible) so apologies for any typos, links that no longer work or random gremlins... welcome to 2006! You should probably read parts one and two first.

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Thursday 7th September: Day 10 : Leeds. The plot is definitely going. You've probably noticed this craze over the past couple of years for re-appraising shite music. The "Guilty Pleasures" movement. Whereby otherwise perfectly sane music fans are staking claims for sugary pop, pompous prog and excruciating hair-metal. Yeah, students have been doing this for years, but students always claim it's "ironic" whereas this lot seem to be under the impression that theirs is the righteous way and if you still think "Hold The Line" is the bag of wank it clearly is then you're some sort of indie snob. Uncool is the height of cool now, and I can't work out whether this makes my music taste cool, uncool, post-cool, post-uncool or whatever. Good job I don't actually care. But I'm not having it anyway, it's attitudes like this that led to me being woken up this morning by the saccharine slop that is The Scissor Sisters, on bloody 6Music of all places. No, OK? It'll be the David bloody Hasselhoff revival before we know it... what do you mean it's already started? Anyway given my hardline views on such things, I know full well the plot is going when we jump in a taxi outside Leeds station and the radio's playing "Abracadabra" by the Steve Miller Band... and I get the driver to turn it up so we can sing along... I have repented though, really I have. At the time I was just on that momentous high, knowing that I had one half day left to work before a week off...

I have no idea how I have managed never to have been to the Brudenell Social Club until now. Yes, it is what it says on the tin, a traditional working mens club with bar prices to match, but (as anyone acquainted with the Leeds live scene knows) over the past couple of years it's become one of the city's favourite small gig venues, alongside the nearby Faversham (which is, as the name implies, a traditional pub.) The list of gigs I have nearly been to at the Brudenell but not quite made it for whatever reason is extensive. Many of them probably involved Forward Russia. But we're here now, and Nick's more than a little impressed with the pint glass he's been given.

His next pint depicts some Ryder Cup winning team. Frazer's here, Chris and Karen Brokenwindows, my old pre-getting-to-know-the-regulars BSP-watching crew. Jo The Shopkeeper, British Sea Power's merchandise girl, is dishing out chunks of sweets made from chickpeas that look like loft insulation. Oh, and we've managed to miss all but the last half a song of The Seal Cub Clubbing Club's set. They don't sound any more interesting than last time we saw them, or the time before that, etc etc. Then after a while a chant comes through the speakers: "Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!" - yes, it's The Witch And The Robot. Now I love the Lake District, but it has to be said pretty much everyone I've ever met from there's been a bit crackers. The Cumbrian 75% of BSP, like the various vaguely odd Lakelanders I seemed to acquire as mates when I was a student, demonstrate the mild derangement of a Cumbrian upbringing nipped in the bud by moving out of there at 18 to go and study or whatever. The Witch And The Robot are what happens to those who don't escape. A flattened out cardboard box behind lead singer Mr. Goodknight has the pen-scrawled claim "No Dead Men In My Tea", but I'm not sure I believe him. Coloured balloons tell us to "fuck off" or leer at us through sinisterly drawn eyes.

Their music could probably be described as (a) experimental nu-folk with gothic undercurrents (b) borderline impenetrable but rather enjoyable in the same way that some of the weirder shit they stick on the bill at FictionNonFiction and AutoTestPilot is, and (c) a lot more thought-out and rehearsed than an initial exposure to their world would imply. Their finest moment is still the one that solemnly intones "Everyone on the farm is dead" over a single-chord backing, which sounds like Sonic Boom crossed with Nick Cave. Mr. Goodknight and his partner in crime Mr. Venice are soon joined onstage by the papier-mache-headed Mr. Heartbreak, a sort of melancholy, mute Frank Sidebottom today wrapped up warm for the winter. Mr. Goodknight can even make a flute sound scary. Frazer says they remind him of Death in June and more entertainingly his very goth girlfriend, who's pretty much hated every band we've seen with her, quite likes them.

The walls are already dripping long before BSP get near the stage and within a couple of songs the band and crowd are soaked through to the skin. Hamilton is once again demonstrating his quite unique take on dress sense - if it's wearable then it'll do - in a green silky tunic type dress thing. And to think there are still writers who claim this band wear "vintage military uniforms"... The audience is lively to say the least, as seems to be the case at most Leeds gigs I go to, although thankfully without the undercurrent of violence which marred the Longcut's recent Faversham gig. New songs get a good reception here too; I wonder if this is partially due to the fact that people who come to this venue regularly (and there seem to be quite a few "general gig goers" amongst the more specific fans) are used to seeing newer bands here, many of whose songs they might not know. Or maybe it's just that the band are on flying form again.

Noble seems to have brought his entire extended family along (his dad, a thoroughly lovely chap, actually comes to see the band quite a lot anyway) - including his beautiful teenage cousin, who joins the band onstage towards the end of their set with a sign on her back saying "Work Experience" and is later hotly if not entirely successfully pursued by at least one of the regulars' young lad contingent.

Meanwhile Yan has acquired a paper parasol from somewhere and Hamilton's up on the speakers threatening a high impact crowd-surf, and by the time they've finished the front is a mass of dripping collapsed bodies - but all smiling. It's a popular choice for best gig of the tour, marred only (for the Mancunian contingent, all of whom have got work tomorrow) by the train home's decision to do that piss-taking route where it goes out of Huddersfield backwards and spends hours piffling round the countryside only to end up coming in through Salford and Victoria - any Mancunians who regularly go out in Leeds will probably have experienced this at some point and know how fucking annoying it is.

It's only a half day for me on Friday 8th September though. It takes a really long time to get to Glasgow by any means, and I am not hugely fond of the place - so this was another date I'd originally comtemplated missing, but other people have other ideas. Firstly an old mate who used to live near us but has relocated to Scotland has bought a ticket presuming we'e going, even though she's not really a massive fan (Rammstein being more her thing) - and secondly up and coming electropopsters Firebrand Boy, have been slotted in as support in place of the original choice of the unfeasibly dull Field Music. Unfortunately for them most of the listings papers are unaware of this, so anyone coming specifically to see the support (Field Music do seem to be quite popular, although I can't fathom this myself and what with previous BSP supports and a couple of Blowout appearances god only knows I've tried) might be a little pissed off.

Again, arriving in King Tuts after fighting through the large group of smokers clustered around the tiny front yard (I'd forgotten we were in a foreign country until this point!) we manage to just miss the Seal Cub Clubbing Club. I'm intrigued to see how Firebrand Boy come across live, as their records (or at least the backing tracks thereof) are largely made on old computer games machines. The venue is far from full at this point, although most of the BSP regulars have made the effort; after all, their label (Pale Fox) manager Gary's one of our own, and both the design and photography of their single sleeve were done by some of our little community's creative talents. To be honest I'd dreaded getting the single for review - integrity's pretty important to me, what if it was rubbish? (Luckily it wasn't...although personally I do still prefer the JC909 mix to the lads' own.)

It's a strange mix, the dreadlocked club kid Philip Cunningham behind his table with a laptop and the band's trademark Gameboy and at his side the "so well turned out, if you took him home your mum would start to worry you're not being wild enough" singer / acoustic guitar slinger Gordon Turner - Cunningham had been ploughing his own chipbeat furrow for a while before finding his musical foil. What's strange for me is how much, even without JC909's four-to-the-floor beats, this Glaswegian duo remind me of home, musically. Cunningham's more deranged, vocal-free efforts such as single B-side "Three Mile Wish" sound for all the world like one-time Twisted Nerve electronutter Little Miss Trinitron (resisting sticking this refernce in my single review on the grounds of not wanting to sound wilfully obscure I was amazed when online music mag AngryApe used it in theirs!) - whereas the blend of ever-so-slightly-wet but cute little vocal tunes with robo-electro backing elsewhere in the set recalls Alpinestars in their heyday; at other times there's the waywardness of My Computer or the electronic anthems of The Whip. They certainly have the material and can render it live rather well; the only possible drawback being that - as with a lot of largely electronic music - there's not a great deal to watch in the way of performance. Something visual, such as those excellent video projections Alpinestars used to have, or Starfighter Pilot's dancing girls, might be worth considering.

Last time British Sea Power played King Tuts was September 2003, the week "Remember Me" was released; their debut album had been out for two months and however much I knew it was the greatest debut album I'd ever heard, the raft of five-star reviews that had built up as the band became more widely known was pretty stunning. The night before the Tuts gig there'd been a Later With Jools Holland appearance and it seemed beyond doubt that the band were going to go on to pretty massive things; the single was a sure-fire hit. They were just coming to the end of their most successful UK tour to date, and were about to head off to America for a headline tour out there; a last minute decision to go and see them out there in a couple of weeks' time had seen me visiting Glasgow's passport office that morning to get a new passport fast-tracked through. Still exhausted from the previous night's Liverpool gig which had been quite a late one, I'd struggled to force my eyes open for the photos, eventually pulling a rather Hamilton-influenced bug-eyed stare with which I'll be scaring immigration officials for another seven years yet. It was also one of the first large gatherings of the regular fans, as the original and largely Southern-based so-called "Third Batallion" had been joined by me and my little Manchester-Leeds crew as well as a few other ones and twos from around the country and pretty much everyone had come up for a big Glasgow Saturday night out. Earlier in the day we'd got involved in a bizarre transaction with some locals in a pub involving a pumpkin of disputed ownership; it was just one of those days...

King Tuts, October 2003

And I remember sometime before the band went onstage, standing in the ever-cramped bar area chatting to a couple of relatively tall male friends, and noticing Yan (largely unrecognised, then, with a dark jumper on over his trademark stagewear) standing behind them trying to work out how he could get past; me pulling my mates out of his way and him slipping through with a warm, shy smile towards me; I remember being surprised (this being only about my 13th or 14th time seeing the band, and I'd only really talked to Hamilton at this point) that this wild, uninhibited, commanding, sexually-charged, menacing, seemingly arrogant frontman who reminded me of all the best bits of Ian Brown and Iggy Pop put together was so small and so timid offstage; I wondered exactly how he'd cope with the major stardom that couldn't be more than a couple of weeks away. And the crowd went absolutely fucking wild that night. Years of reading music reviews had given me an idea of "The Tuts spirit", the rowdy but friendly crowds and party atmosphere in this most legendary of venues; and back there on my first ever visit to the place I saw it for myself. Of course the big breakthrough never came, the unlikely-indie-band-to-go-mainstream turned out to be Franz Ferdinand, which amazed me given that their summer 03 Interpol support dates had left me completely uninspired; BSP took over a year to get round to a follow-up single and despite a commercial push around the time of the "Open Season" album, remain somewhere under the radar of all but a few music-oriented people. The band have only visited Glasgow once since then, a visit to the rather uninspiring QMU in November 2005 (I seem to remember Field Music were involved there, too) and the crowd tonight, aside from the regulars and a small group of massively enthusiastic local big fans, don't really seem that inspired or inspiring.

Noble has written "New song" and "Old Song" on his palms, and holds up the relevant one before each song. They play well but the crowd largely don't seem to want to know, apart from one rather over-excited fan who hurls his six-foot-plus frame several feet in the air almost constantly throughout, lends his fisherman hat to Noble and attempts to get Captain Riot on his shoulders - if only his enthusiasm could have been more infectious. Old favourite "A Wooden Horse" goes down well, but most of the new songs fall flat on a crowd that can't even be bothered to give them a fair go. The gig brings one of the liveliest encores of the whole tour, with an unhinged "Apologies To Insect Life" leading into fun punky thrashabout "Pelican" - yet afterwards the first comment I hear as we're shovelled unceremoniously quickly out the door (clearly no late licence tonight then) is "the didn't play Lately, I want my money back..." after sizing up that the moaner is bigger than me I decide against smacking him one, but only just.

Not playing "Lately". Oh, shock fucking horror.

Afterwards we fail to find a single bar with a late license and no entry fee - we'd assumed Tuts would be open til 2am but come to think of it we've only ever been there before on Saturdays - so we curse the backwardness of strange towns and turn in via a nightcap in the hotel bar. Half twelve; back home Retrobar would just be getting started...

Saturday 9th September is another day off for the band, who probably have all manner of last-minute preparations to sort out for their most prestigious performance yet the following day. Julie and I had planned to go to London for the 13th Floor clubnight, a feast of 60s garage, pop and psychedelia run by another one of our regulars crew which I've been promising to go to for ages, but her own band's rehearsal schedule means she can't come down until Sunday now and I'm really in two minds myself. But I'd planned to meet an old university mate to go for a meal, and I didn't want to blow her out. I set off at 3pm, and there was no rhyme nor reason, when I came off the bottom of the M6 Toll a couple of hours later, in my decision to take the M40 as opposed to the M1 - bound for Stoke Newington either would have done.

Somewhere near Banbury I come upon stationary traffic. Ah yeah, those bloody roadworks, must have moved north a bit... fifteen minutes later the traffic hasn't shifted an inch and engines have been switched off. The lads in the yellow sportscar alongside me are on the phone; when they hang up I ask them if they know what's happening. A lorry fire apparently; both carriageways are closed. People are getting out of their cars, playing penalty shoot-outs on the hard shoulder, sharing fags and biscuits and water - it's a wonderful scene of classic English resignation to fate. Updates from the trafficlines are shouted from car to car - five miles, eight miles, twelve miles; no idea how far from the scene we are but hey, it'll be a lot worse for them at the back - it's not exactly how I'd have chosen to spend a Saturday afternoon but it's not exactly unpleasant either. Until the traffic moves ahead. At first there's a feeling of relief, we're on the go again! - but it's short-lived. Over the next three hours day becomes night, I almost lose the will to live, and cover four miles before passing the charred heap of cinders that was clearly once a fairly large truck and accelerating to freedom. The hard shoulder is awash with miserable people sitting beside smoke pouring from under bonnets and I thank my trusty little Ka for holding out; with hindsight I do vaguely remember thinking something doesn't quite sound right, but I'm exhausted, I've had to blow out my uni mate, and can't face driving in central London after all that so I dump the car at Riot's secret unofficial park'n'ride space (a residential road in northwest London with no parking restrictions, far more space in front of the large houses than the residents need, and a tube station two minutes' walk away - details on request, if you can keep a secret) and arrive at the club at midnight.

Dan 13th Floor wore this exemplary moustache for only a very short time between losing his beard and going completely cleanshaven - here it is for posterity, in all its glory.

Kevo and Riot's attempts to get here have, remarkably, been even less successful. Having booked an evening flight in order to pursue their regular Scottish-away-trip habit of taking in a lower league football match, they discover said flight is cancelled, and have to spend a night enjoying being "the Easyjet scum" in a hotel rather posher than either of them are accustomed to. I think Stenhousemuir won, but I can't remember. Cindy and Paul and I get tanked on gin; I rather feel I've earned it.

Sunday 10th September, 5pm, Kevo's house, Highbury. Eventually back on English soil after a rather epic journey of their own, Kevo and Riot have rendezvoused with Julie and finally myself; I am standing in the living room wearing a flowery dress. This is not, as you may have gathered, something I do often. But we are off to the West End, darling, yes, to the theatre. Not just any theatre either. The Prince Of Wales Theatre to be precise, and we're told the eponymous royal nutter and la Camilla will indeed be in attendance. I can't believe we are going to this, either. It seemed like a bit of a laugh when we bought the tickets months ago; go and support the lads, or laugh at them, or something... but now we're walking up through Leicester Square and there are crowds of people lining the streets to catch a glimpse of the Royals. But is this any weirder behaviour than following a band on tour, or going to every match your team play home and away? Yeah, we reckon, it is. Not sure why. You wouldn't wait hours by a roadside just to see your fave guitarist or goalie drive past though would you? Well, you might, I suppose. That would be weird too. I wouldn't. Yeah, so fuck only knows why they're here, but this is why we are...

The John Betjeman Gala
in aid of SANE, sponsored by Shell

Sunday 10 September 2006, 7.30pm, at The Prince of Wales Theatre, London.

In the presence of Their Royal Highnesses The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall

A Variety Performance
Compered by Barry Humphries
Directed by Joe Harmston

The cast includes Nick Cave, Jonathan Cecil, Ronnie Corbett, Kenneth Cranham, Sinead Cussack, Joanna David, Edward Fox, Stephen Fry, Richard E Grant, Anne Hart, Jools Holland, Kit and The Widow, Joanna Lumley, Miriam Margolyes, Bill Nighy, Diana Quick, Prunella Scales, Rachel Stirling, Suggs, Timothy West, British Sea Power, and St Pauls Cathedral Choir.

For the second time in two weeks I have to say you don't get a line-up like that every day. I don't think we ever find out who the fuck Jonathan Cecil is. (Google later reveals he's one of those TV light entertainment types who's been in all manner of shite that I have nothing to do with. If you care:- http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0147699/ ).

We've been warned about tight "airport style" security and are faintly surprised at the laxness of the bag searches; if I'd known I'd have sneaked the camera in. Ah well. On the stairs we pass Joanna Lumley and get rather more excited than we probably should. Yeah, there's a certain sort of people who probably do this kind of thing a lot, but for us seeing people off the telly is quite bizarre. Kevo finds himself stood next to Andrew Lloyd Webber at the urinals. Problem is I wouldn't know half these luvvies if I fell over them. I'm guessing the scary tall bearded chap in the black dinner suit is in Nick Cave's band though (and turn out to be right). We've been warned British Sea Power are on first and just doing the one track, so we ensure we're settled in our seats in good time, and amused to discover that whilst about four groups of us bought tickets separately we're all seated fairly close together, with me, Kevo, Julie and Alan on the very back row. Riot's at the other end, and has told us of his plan to watch the BSP slot and then leave.

Chuck and Camilla enter somewhere and we all stand up even though we can't see them, and then the curtain goes up and British Sea Power are onstage, looking smaller than ever. Augmented by Phil on trumpet they perform Betjeman's mildly dirty "Licorice Fields At Pontefract", and Yan looks scared, then they shuffle off. Worth it? Inasmuch as following this band regularly takes us to places we wouldn't normally dream of going, yes. Barry Humphries is compereing as himself, sadly; I slip into a sort of half-pissed-half-stoned trance, and Riot walks out as promised and fucks off for a Chinese with Gary Pale Fox. Nick Cave performs two tracks which are enjoyable; Humphries' turn in costume as his longterm seedy character 'Les Patterson' is about as risque as you can get at a do like this; Ronnie Corbett and his wife singing old music-hall songs is frankly terrifying, the cathedral choir are strangely moving, Suggs is rubbish, and the rest of it consists of smug people off the telly reading Betjeman poems as if they're in some school revue. The whole thing is deeply surreal. Then gets more so at the curtain-call - a rendition of old showtune "After the Ball" by a selection of the evening's performers. Nick Cave and his tall beardy sidekick are getting well into it - is this where you saw yourself one day when you were a howling undernourished goth smackhead then Cavey? Yan is the only member of British Sea Power in the line-up and he looks more terrified than ever, despite being bolstered on each side by Jo Shopkeeper - resplendent in 50s bathing suit and cap - and the still caped Phil who looks like he was born to do this kind of thing. They sway theatrically in time with the other performers; he gets the giggles and barely opens his mouth. Class stuff. We go off in search of a pub and for the second time in two nights realise how spoilt we Mancunians are with our lax licenses, and end up back at Kevo's wondering what on earth just happened.

Monday 11th September. We're on the tube out to my secret parking spot, and pick up a copy of the Evening standard's freesheet version London Lite. Like most of the papers the front cover is dedicated to the day the world changed, five years ago. We get a bit of a shock when we turn a couple more pages though...

As Julie is fond of posting on forums and myspace pages, AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Eleven out of ten Jo. And check out the dirty leer on Charles. We jump into the next carriage when we get off to see if we can collect some more copies. We're giving BSP's sometime managerial assistant (and Yan and Hamilton's elder brother) Roy a lift to the next gig in Bath, and he's equally amused by the paper - and tells us the event was actually slightly more scandalous than the article implies. Clearly Jo is not "in" the band (although with BSP being in the band is sometimes a slightly fluid concept anyway) and her appearance in the curtain call has apparently caused a bit of a security scandal. Miriam Margoyles was apparently heard to exclaim in disgust "Who is that girl?!" - meanwhile Woody, the only member of the band actually addressed by HRH, found himself completely lost for words. A mate of ours who managed to blag the after-party (again, making a mockery of tight security - she did so by being confident and well-dressed enough to get away with it and going out the other door of the toilets) said the band were last seen huddling in a corner. We can't wait to see Jo later.

Kevo has managed to get himself yet another really disturbing B&B. Having booked it online in the normal way and taken down the address, he gets a phone call: what time will he be arriving in Bath? Not having my M4 crystal ball on me we can't say. "Phone me when you get to the station then, and someone will come and meet you." Eh? Seems he is not staying in the B&B at all but in a strange annexe. Maybe it was the last room available. But then Roy decides he needs a B&B too and figures however weird it is at least there'll be two of them, so he phones up... and is placed in the normal B&B on the website address. Kevo's annexe turns out to be part of a monastic abbey, where he is ordered to remove his shoes on arrival and "noise will not be tolerated". Julie and I are somewhat relieved we booked somewhere else weeks ago...

Bath is quite possibly the poshest place we have ever been. Our B&B, the cheapest in town, is at the end of a terrace opposite a garage and in any other town would probably be home to temporarily resident Polish workers, but this is Bath and it's lovely even if the wallpaper's a bit disturbing. And the girl on the desk appears to be on the happy pills. Right, time to get wasted. After a few money-saving drinks in the room while we're getting ready we arrive at the meeting pub to find the band sat outside; they seem in good spirits and it should be a good night. Moles Club is small and late opening, so we decide to get in there as soon as we can which means our tactic of Seal Cub Clubbing Club avoidance has come to an end.

We actually quite enjoy them, partly carried along by local BSP regulars Clare and Alan who are big fans and partly because we are completely shit-faced; I still couldn't tell you much about them. They're slightly psychedelic but don't have your typical Scouse jangly sound; and, er... no, sorry. The stage is very small and about four inches high. This is going to be a bit up-close-and-personal, especially given that the bass-playing side of BSP (where we're stood) are not the world's tallest people. This coupled with Yan's bass technique of standing side-on means that I spend most of the Hamilton-led songs dodging the bass headstock to avoid getting it right in my face.

Actually, it seems Hamilton nearly got me as well here...

The gig's going well until they hit Spirit Of St Louis, which seems to disintegrate half way through. Some of the band can't hear some of the monitors and various plugs are falling out of things; they're losing the flow... they pull it back though, and by the end everyone's on a raucous high, Yan is singing through a cardboard box on his head and I've finally got my hands on the air-raid siren, and give it loads. I'm not going to bother reviewing every gig in detail from hereon in - fans who were there should hopefully remember them (although that's debatable in some cases) and nobody else cares...

Afterwards Shan and Woody produce the world's biggest bottle of vodka which is duly shared between the band and small regular fan contingent. This could explain why I look like shit and Noble's face has gone out of focus...

It appears the venue has been rather generous on the rider front, so Julie and I grab a couple of beers to take back to the B&B, but manage to pass out before we drink them. Breakfast is very tough indeed, and we have to spend a couple of hours lounging in a park before I consider myself capable of driving. But hey, we did learn something...

Heading back to the station to pick up Kevo and Roy, we arrive back at the car to hear a decidedly Mancunian voice yell "Ey, you can't park that here!!" from a nearby van. Morning Shan... soon we find ourselves once again at the mercy of a one-way system, but Bath's small and I've got an A to Z... if we just go down this road here... oh god, that's the venue... and Shan's beaten us to it, the band are packing up their equipment. We're relieved to see they look as rough as us. Right, race you to Birmingham then! Having parked up in a proper car park (Riot warns us you shouldn't leave a car in Digbeth, and he should know - little do I know the car has about eight hours to live at this point) we walk down towards the venue. There is a record shop with a box of vinyl LPs outside labelled "Free, please help yourself" - however a quick flick through reveals they are all by Perry Como. A passing motorist expresses an interest, so Roy hands him a couple through the window. Our next mission is to try and find a pub near the venue that is not completely terrifying; a mission on which Nick and I failed on our previous visit here for Forward Russia in July. We end up in a pseudo-trendy bar which has no coffee, no juice and no fizz in the cola, and really unpleasant taste in disco-house background music. Next door then? A rough Irish pub, it looks OK for one pint, and Julie's got relatives in the Digbeth Irish community anyway, but as we walk through the door the entire clientele (possibly one extended family, ridiculously pissed for 6pm) approach us and sing loud Sinatra-style karaoke right in our faces. Back to the nasty bar it is, then. Any Brummie entrepreneurs reading this (well, you never know!) could do worse than to open a pub somewhere in the vicinity of the new Barfly that the pre-gig crowd might actually want to drink in; you'd clean up. Gradually the rest of the regulars turn up and eventually we can escape to the venue. Tonight sees a return for The Witch And The Robot, who scare the crowd accordingly.

British Sea Power play another of the best gigs of the tour here, and once again have made an effort with their attire: Yan is wearing a black silk dress (he later insists it's not a dress. Rubbish.) and Hamilton, not to be upstaged, is modelling a hessian sack.

They are later joined onstage by TWATR's Mr Heartbreak and his balloons; later that evening the papier-mache'd love machine entices two of our girls to a late night casino session. I don't know whether he still had the head on. Also invading the stage towards the end is Mr.Buckethead - not, as you might presume, another spare member of The Witch And The Robot but, er, a bloke with a bucket on his head who throws fruit into the audience whilst dancing like a gibbon.

A bloke who looks very very much like Roy, the lovely mild-mannered chap who was sat in my car just a few hours ago. Then he chucks the bucket into the crowd, too. An apology appears promptly on the band's forum... I recall that it was just a mile or so up the road at the Carling Academy where on the April 2005 tour a direct hit from the boot heel of a stage-diving Noble left me unconscious for a few seconds then concussed for three days; is there something they don't like about Birmingham?

We head off home soon after the gig; Nick and James both have work in the morning and I could do with some sleep before the final leg of the adventure - and we're making good time up the M6 when just past Keele services I hear a strange rattling sound from the front of the car. Surmising it's that loose cap on the screenwash tank I pull into the middle lane and slow down a bit and it stops. Then starts again. Louder. Then the oil light's come on. Amazingly I am on the only bit of the M6 not to have an inside lane full of lorries; by the time I'm on the hard shoulder we've lost power - this whole process having taken around twelve seconds, and I'm cruising to a silent halt by an orange box to conserve the minimal battery left on my phone, and I know the drill, order Nick and James out of the car and onto the verge, reading out my AA number to the disembodied but reassuringly Brummie voice on the other end in small chunks as the only lighting on this part of the motorway is from the headlights of passing vehicles, and turn round to see smoke pouring from under the bonnet. Sorry lads, I think your early night just got cancelled. I suspect the car isn't fixable but I can't have the beer in my bag in case they send me a hire car to get me home or something; I have no idea how this works. I've only had Relay cover for six weeks. Thank fuck I upgraded. The voice on the phone asks if we have kids with us; later James, aware that he looks about three quarters of his 20 years, comments that we should have said yes, they might have come quicker. The AA man shakes his head and explains that he has to knock off shift soon as his truck is due for service - what, at midnight? - and calls for a local recovery firm. But fails to tell him I have passengers, so the local bloke has to bugger off for another hour to find a truck with a cab big enough for all of us. We push the car into my parking space; it's still there two weeks later. A new engine on top of the bodywork and heater repairs it's been needing for ages would set me back more than the old thing's worth. We crawl into bed at five; Nick somehow gets up for work at 6.30 and I write a long obituary for the car on the BSP forum. Most of the regulars have had lifts in it at one point or another; it's probably "been" to more BSP gigs than most people have although the closest it's got to hearing them's the pre-release cassette of Open Season that's been stuck in the tape deck for a year and a half. My brain is by this point in bits. I've got the rest of the week off... I was meant to be off down to London today but as I've got the rest of the week off maybe I should stay home and get a new car or something... but I've got Andy White's ticket in my pocket... and my hotels for Bristol and Cardiff are pre-booked... dunno how the hell I'm going to get there... train I suppose... fuck it. I'm not going to let a little thing like a deceased car stand in my way. I discover a bottle of champagne of unknown origin in the fridge and lug it across the train and tube to Kevo's to celebrate the fact that it's, er, Wednesday.

We arrive in Camden already so pissed we can't find the pub. No longer constrained by having to be in a fit state to drive every day I will by the end of the tour be possibly in need of the other AA...

The venue assists this by kindly providing a free Jack Daniels for every punter. Actress Hands (yes, that's Phil, above) are back in the support slot allowing us much Phil-heckling; BSP look as tired as I feel, but play another blinding gig; back at Kevo's he puts on the first Suede album before retiring to bed, and I'd forgotten how bloody good it was. Fucking hell, I should have stayed at home and sorted the car out, but I've never seen any band on such consistently brilliant form as this last couple of weeks. Am I going to Bristol then? What do you think!?

A man in a dress. Whatever he says.

If it's Thursday (14th September, I think) then it must be.... Bristol. And in keeping with the eclectic nature of the tour, tonight's venue is a Polish community centre in Clifton. When I phoned up for a ticket (yeah, the band will stick the regulars on the guest list if we get stuck but I don't like to take the piss too much) the nice lady on the phone apologised to me that it would cost me an extra 50p if I wanted it posting to me, and when I dictated my Manchester address to her (this was sometime over the summer) she asked sweetly if I was "a student down here". They really don't know what they're taking on here, I thought. The ticket - itself a beautifully printed little thing harking back to the days before you just got a print-out from whatever agency you used - arrived two days later (are you listening, Seetickets?) with a little photocopied map and a hand-written receipt. Clare lives locally and decided to call in and buy hers directly;she reported back that she'd had some trouble finding the place as it was effectively just a big house on a largely residential street. Pulling up in a taxi I couldn't even see the place, so followed Clare's directions to a nearby hotel bar - there don't appear to be any pubs round here. The hotel bar appears unaccustomed to hosting more than two customers at once and quickly runs out of change, with the barman looking more and more confused with each arriving person. Best go to the venue then. Up the path at the side of the house, passing the leaving Seal Cub Clubbing Club on the way (oops - again!) and through a side door. It is, indeed, a social club / community centre. Not a social club that's reinvented itself as a gig venue like the Brudenell, or some council-funded arts venture like that place in Aldershot, but the sort of place that hosts public meetings or pensioners' dances, or that you hire out for someone's 50th birthday. Pictures of Polish football teams and traditional artwork adorn the walls, and the bar has a wide variety of very reasonably priced vodkas of brands with lots of W's in we've never heard of before.

Morton Valence's wonderfully diverse (both in ethnicity and style) line-up actually looks like it belongs on this stage; I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing. They've got a bag of breezy, ever-so-slightly seedy electropop tunes with the earthiness of a stage-full of real instruments and personalities. For them a potential problem may be that they aren't the easiest band to pigeonhole, and we all know how much the press prefer bands they can pigeonhole. (Laughably, the NME last week ran an entire review of Larrikin Love bemoaning the difficulty in pigeonholing them - very postmodern. I could have helped them though - "pointless crusty revivalists". There. Anyway, back to Morton Valence...) For me the thing that's missing, it's not dissimilar to my only issue with the aforementioned Firebrand Boy, is quite simply that I grew up round Manchester, certain things are in my blood and can't be denied, I prefer my electropop with a fuck-off great thumping beat. From (New Order's) "Temptation" to (The Whip's) "Frustration". maybe Morton Valence should commission a JC909 remix as well. As it is they're still a bloody good band but I can't quite lose myself in it.

After their set one of them comes over to Kevo and apologises that the keyboards were a bit down in the mix; there've been complaints from a local resident, it seems. What the fuck are they going to make of a band with their own air-raid siren, we joke, and get some more wodkas in.

Half Man Half Biscuit, somewhere in some lyric I can't place right now (although it's probably "Breaking News" - a 'list song' detailing everything Nigel finds annoying) have a little sneer at "bands who type out their setlists". Worse still are those which are not only typed but formatted, and titled with the venue name, date and a band logo. British Sea Power have been guilty of this in the past; I have several pieces of evidence of such from their "professional" period of early 2005. Now, however, it's back to cardboard boxes, and like the smaller and weirder venues and rawer sound it all seems like part of a return to what they do best.

The set-list above is followed faithfully up to a point; yet again it's drippingly hot, and I'm stood still exhausted leaning on the speaker Noble-side when a small bloke brandishing a mobile phone taps me on the shoulder and gestures to be let past me. Cheeky git, I think, but he probably just wants to get some photos on his phone. He holds up the phone - maybe it's that age-old trick of sending a bit of the gig to a mate who can't make it. Been there, done that. Not sure I'd have chosen "Pelican" do try that in though, it's just going to sound like a racket to anyone who doesn't know it... and then the song's finishing, and he's beckoning Hamilton over, saying something quietly. I do, however, hear Hamilton's side of the conversation. Firstly "No we can't turn it down, it all comes through the sound desk", secondly "You really can't do that, these people have paid their money" and thirdly something uncharacteristically angry, the general gist of which was that he should have checked all that before booking the gig. It seems the police have now been alerted.

Uh-oh. Hamilton politely explains the situation to the crowd, before leading the band into a bizarrely woozy, half-speed, queitly strummed version of "Mary". Half way through they give up and blast through the song properly and at full pelt, before Yan returns to centre stage. He says we can have either "Spirit Of St Louis" or "Carrion" because they could pull the plug any time; the vote's split, and we get both anyway - each in one of the fastest, loudest, hardest versions ever. It's outstanding. Word comes back via Morton Valence that the complaint is from one little old lady, next door, who's trying to watch some feelgood soap and can't hear her telly And whilst I do have sympathy with her (this is, after all, a slightly different kettle of fich to that twat who moved in near Night & Day and then sought to whinge about the noise; this woman's probably lived there 70 years, it's that kind of street) I can't believe the promoter didn't do his job. He pushes past me again, presumably en route to deliver another telling off to the band, and (somewhat vodka-fortified) I tap him on the shoulder, look him straight in the eye and nod towards the stage with its rudimentary bingo-hall PA and lighting rig, and say "The music stops, and this place gets demolished." I wave or gesture at Clare and Alan down the front, Riot behind me, Julie and Victoria and Mrs Riot who are stood up on a bench at the side. They all smile or wave back - of course there's no conspiracy and they all think I'm just saying hi, and I will say on record and for certain right now that I do not condone violence or vandalism, especially of really nice community centres - but I think I've put the shits up him slightly. Well lad, you should have done your homework, end of.

By this time Phil has rejoined the stage dressed like that (above). I really don't think anyone's going to mess, now. If I didn't know him I'd be scared of him. The fact that I do know him doesn't make me much less scared of him. Beast. Woody and Hamilton have had enough, anyway, and wander off through the fire doors at the back. Noble climbs behind the drums, and amazingly he is really rather good at it. Yan picks up a bass, and heavily tattooed guitar tech Welsh Paul (yes, he whom they had dressed as a cardboard and tinfoil robot at the summer's festivals - poor sod!) picks up a guitar. And randomly shooting pictures whenever my rather slow-to-respond camera can manage it, I end up with a load of shots of backs of heads and stuff - and there in amongst them all, I later find the best BSP photo I've taken since my iconic "Eamon At Full Moon" picture of almost three years ago, which is still used by the band on their Myspace page. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you (and all credit to Cindy for the title) Homoerotic Gasmask Trumpet!

This picture is now my work PC desktop background. Amazingly nobody has asked me about it...

Afterwards, Phil emerges with a bottle of whisky and we head out looking for a pub before any trouble can ensue. It says something for the calibre of establishment that we end up in that they don't turn us away at the door, being all rather the worse for wear and carrying loads of booze (they do ask us to leave it outside though). I am reliably informed things get very messy indeed inside and I don't remember how we got back to the hotel. In the morning (well, early afternoon) Kevo, Yuko and I stumble to the station looking rough (well, apart from Yuko, who never looks rough however much she's been drinking.) Julie and Victoria turn up looking even rougher. We stagger off the train in Cardiff and run into Noble and Woody who look the roughest of the lot of us. A shirtless chav hassles Yuko for some water. Cardiff is rough. Riot has offered to drive Kevo and me to tomorrow's End Of The Road festival and it's starting to feel rather aptly named. I drift into town and buy the cheapest tent Argos have to offer; might as well see this thing though. Then a couple of hours' sleep before it's time to go out again...

Cardiff, Friday 15th September, a pub somewhere. Chips and cheese - my first and only meal of the day. Christ, my diet leaves a lot to be desired. It's always like this when you go out following a tour though. By two thirds of the way in you generally lose both the taste and the ability to digest anything healthy and start to consider Red Bull and dry roasted peanuts to be the two most important food groups. I've not got ill though - that first Chameleons US trip in 02 absolutely everyone ended up with the green snot-lurgy from hell, and even on most of these UK jaunts everyone else seems to get a cold at some point, but these days I figure I am immune to most cold and flu bugs, and doubling up on the multivitamins deals with everything else.

The crowd are really up for it. It's rammed down the front even during Actress Hands' set, and (as we have come to expect) seriously hot - and with its brickwork arch the venue bears some resemblance to Exeter Cavern, the first (non-festival) date of the tour which seems a long, long time ago now. We stand aside a little, plenty of breathing space; Kevo and I find ourselves dancing with a grinningly enthusaistic lad who's never seen the band before. He's in luck tonight - they go out with a bang and afterwards everyone's smiling. Yuko and I crash into a couple of chairs up the back, barely able to move. At the side of the stage, Kevo overhears the first-timer grab Yan on his way past and tell him "that was better than shagging a sheep". Oh god, where did reality go again?

Victoria actually spent a year or so at university in Cardiff but has no tips for late night sessions because she claims she rarely went out; from our admittedly limited experience of the place we don't blame her. Clwb Ifor Bach, which we know because BSP played there once, won't let us in, so we end up in a dodgy Irish pub somewhere near Cardiff castle. That won't let us in at first either, but Phil "We're in the band that just played the Barfly and they told us to come here" and me "Look, these two are in the band, the rest of us are crew and PR" somehow manage to keep straight faces and our best polite voices up until we're all safely inside. Again I have little memeory of the rest of it...

Saturday 16th September, and we're off to the End Of The Road, situated on the Dorset/Wiltshire border not a million miles from where Riot and I kicked off one of the craziest summers ever, when we decided to go and watch iLiKETRAiNS in Swindon as a prelude to Latitude festival, largely because we could and it amused us. Ten weeks and 24 BSP gigs later we're driving down lanes of decreasing width; as we pass Warminster, Kevo claims it's the UK's hot spot for alien abductions. We consider faking one. Where the hell is this place? It's not called End of The Road for nothing, then... and when we arrive, there doesn't seem to be much evidence of a festival....

It's like Latitude all over again, only even more so. The site is as beautiful as the promotional material suggests; all woodland walks and strange little paths, with the main stage on a central lawn. A peacock (well, peahen probably) struts around followed by two or three chicks, and everyone seems to be chilled out on the grass. A lady called El Perro Del Mar is doing some girly folky stuff that's quite nice if rather unmemorable, and Andy and Cerys who've already been there for the first night look a touch delicate, and soon we discover the reason for this...

Yes. That's hot cider, spiced with cinnamon, and a shot of brandy in each half pint. Which costs three quid. To quote Liam Frost (somewhat randomly, I admit), "this is the place where I made my first mistake..." We head off to put my tent up, and if you've ever wondered what Argos's cheapest one-person tent looks like pitched, this is it in full effect...

Back in the arena, My Latest Novel are excellent, blending Belle & Sebastian with Arcade Fire type sounds; one of these days I'll actually get to see this band in their own right rather than squeezed into a festival bill. They also provide me with the first of these for ages...

The reviewer from Soundsxp later notes "The first weird thing I notice during My Latest Novel's set is the fat bloke stood up (everyone else is lounging on the grass) reading the Daily Telegraph". Good heavens, who'd do such a thing?

Congratulations My Latest Novel, you have been Captain Riot-ed. Next up is the first instalment of the Brighton brigade, Electric Soft Parade. I am really glad I'm not reviewing this properly, as I remember really enjoying their set but not much else. They come to Manchester soon anyway (Monday 9th October, Night & Day) where I hope to be able to remember slightly more. All I can say is that after a couple of years in the wilderness they're actually better than they ever were back in the major label next big thing days, if anything they've grown into their sound (they always used to look about 13, didn't they?) and with the newest material the strongest in the set I'm quite looking forward to that. Next act on however are universally agreed by our relatively eclectic little crew to be somewhere between "the worst band I've seen this year" (me - and yes, that does mean Guillemots - whom I'll be avoiding on the Big Top stage later - have been demoted) to "the worst band I have ever seen" (Andy). I mean look at these twats.

Their name is Superthriller and frankly that picture doesn't even do justice to their awfulness. Musically they seem to be operating in the terrifying space between Jamiroquai and Level 42. although they clearly consider themselves slightly more cutting edge than that would imply. One of their songs has the repeated refrain "Smoking kills, and I'm dead" - sorry? what? - and just in case there's anyone they haven't offended enough with their music (and this is such a "nice" festival that they actually get away with it for the best part of an hour), at the end their Asian member, wearing a Palestinian style headscarf, comes onstage with a large pretend bomb, lit fuse and all. Words fail me as to what sort of statement they are trying to make here. Whatever it is it's certainly lost on Alan and his son, anyway...

Thankfully Brakes are along soon to get us back in the party spirit (another few rounds of the Wrong Drink have helped) and intersperse the much-loved short sharp shocks from their debut album with some newer, slightly longer but still unmistakeably Brakes tunes of which the punky "Cease & Desist" is currently my favourite. They've enlisted the help of a couple of their Brighton pals too; first Phil "The Beast" Sumner stands solemnly in his cape throughout the ten second burst of "Cheney" before adding a touch-of-genius trumpet parp to the end - it's so good they do it twice - and then this rather lost looking creature wanders onstage...

... to add some backing vocals to the lovely "If I Should Die Tonight". Brakes are also touring soon (Manchester date is the Roadhouse, 3rd December) - looks like those White brothers are going to be quite busy. We have a final run to the Cider Bus before British Sea Power, where Cerys decides we need pints rather than halves of the how-the-fuck-is-that-legal hot loopy-juice, and by the time they come onstage we're ready to give it loads down the front of the still rather static crowd. I wish I could tell you what they plated - although at a guess it was probably not dissimilar to the tour sets - but it was great fun, anyway, and twoards the end there was the return of an old friend...

...yep, it's Eamon. Christ, yeah, we know Yan's been wearing that not-a-dress-honest for the past few nights, but he has the decency to wear trousers with it, and besides, Eamon's just that little bit taller... Cerys and I are really quite glad we have lost any ability to focus our eyes properly by this point. Jo Shopkeeper's up there too in her royally-approved bathing costume, there's a couple of people who might or might not be in My Latest Novel, Phil and his cape and trumpet; it's a triumphant and appropriately ridiculous finale to a fantastic tour.

Except it's not quite finished yet. Rumour has it that the collective Brighton crew will be performing a midnight set in the oddly named Bimble Inn tent. This appears to be some sort of hippy tent, with nice floor rugs and cushions (actually I might well have imagined the cushions) and...

...yeah. I have no idea who even took this photo. I'm woken up by Cerys shoving Jaegermeister down my mouth from a hip flask, and yeah, there appear to be some of BSP and ESP mucking about with things onstage. The next half hour or so is possibly the most demented thing I have ever seen onstage and utterly defies description, but I'll have a go. British Sea Power (plus Phil) start off playing "Freight Train", something that's been creeping into recent live shows as a sort of Rock In A replacement set-ender, but Yan is clearly very much the worse for wear. He howls something about his shoes into the mic a couple of times then wanders over to the drumkit (now manned jointly by BSP's Woody and ESP's Tom) and hits a few things at random, before curling up in a small ball at the back of the stage.

Eamon, Noble and Hamilton attempt some vocals, and Noble announces "We've had acid!" - a fact which is probably quite apparent. I certainly haven't, but I'm starting to feel like I have. And then Phil's off.

His first couple of attempts at standing up are unsuccessful, but then he's off into the crowd. The next thing I know he's on top of me hitting me round the head with the trumpet and for a minute I think maybe this really is the end of the road, but Cerys throws him off; I'm later told I got off lightly, he has also allegedly knocked someone out cold, which may or may not have been Roy, and nearly trodden on a small child, and I'm far from the only person who received speical brass lessons. Cerys feeds me more Jaegermeister. The plugs are pulled roundabout the time Phil starts pulling the tent down with a guitar, and I really don't remember much else.

"Cath, we're going soon..." I have no idea where the fuck I am. I seem to be in a bin liner and it's dark. Oh yeah, it's my £14.99 "tent" - I check my phone. It's 5am. Never one to hang around, Riot has calculated that he'll be legally OK to drive by now, and I'm rather glad this is now someone else's problem as I doubt I will for several days, not that I have a car anyway at the moment. We gather up the tent and walk back through the festival site. Yeah, it was a lovely little festival, but the ease with which Kevo and Riot found our encampment in the dark tells us something about the number of people actually here. Maybe it was the fact that there were no day tickets, and at the end of a summer strewn with more festivals than ever before few people would have had £95 spare; maybe it was just that it was unclear who, apart from us daft bastards who'd go and watch British Sea Power on the moon if they played there, the line-up was aimed at. The remote location meant camping was a must, and who seriously wants to trust the English weather in September?

We drive away down the empty lanes. There's a thick morning mist and we haven't seen another car in miles, and then Riot sewars he's seen a man by the side of the road. Kevo swears there was nobody there; I'm not really in any state to judge. A vision, a ghost, an optical illusion? We're all completely done in. It's been a crazy three weeks, and whilst we've had some excellent times all three of us are starting to feel we're maybe getting a bit old for all this. We have seen British Sea Power almost 500 times between us. I've done every date on the tour, they've missed one each. This is possibly not normal behaviour for people in their 30s and 40s with jobs and mortgages and stuff.

A few days later Riot announces via a Myspace bulletin "Returning home from last weekend's End of the Road Festival at Larmer Tree Gardens, Captain Riot witnessed a spectre with closely cropped hair and wearing a knee length coat walking along a deserted lane on the edge of a Wiltshire Field in the early hours of Sunday morning. The Captain hadn't even passed another vehilce in the previous ten minutes. Captain Riot's comrades: Kevo and Cath Aubergine, who were with him at the time, witnessed nothing, despite being on the look out for road signs and turnings. Captain Riot has exclusively revealed: "The image was myself in younger, pre-British Sea Power, days walking forwards from the end of this particular road in life. The spectre appeared to be on unknown ground, lost and uncertain about what direction to take." Kevo said "I have agreed to lend Captain Riot a book that has been out of print for a number of years".

My response is thus:

Over the past year or so we've lost quite a few of the "old crowd", because for whatever reason they've gone off the band - and whilst I admire those who know when the time is right to stop, I do miss them terribly. Yeah, we all still see each other quite a bit, but it's not quite the same as when we had the focal point of the gig. The pre-gig drinks, the anticipation, the euphoria, then the warm shared afterglow. I'm starting to feel old down the front these days - when I first got to know the other regulars I was amazed how many of them were older than me; there was a whole bunch of them around the 40 mark, but these days the crowds are young, and most of the newer additions to the regular crew are still in their teens. And even most of the old-timers still hanging in there tend to stay back a bit, but that's just not me. Down the front is where I belong, but on occasions I'm slightly ashamed to be there, jumping around with people 10-15 years younger than me.

For me, and I can't express this strongly enough, there has been no loss of interest or love for the band/music whatsoever. They rarely leave me a gibbering wreck these days going "what the fuck was that!?" but then they wouldn't, would they, after that many gigs. They do however still really fucking excite me far more frequently than bands I've seen a tenth of the times, and I can honestly say on this past tour they have been on absolutely blinding form nearly every night. And no, there's not a "Carrion" or a "True Adventures" emerged out of the new stuff yet, but it's generally up there with everything else they've done, and with the development which we've been repeatedly told is still in progress I have confidence Album 3 will be fantastic. But maybe the time has come for me, too, to cut down a little. I never actually intended to do the full tour this time round but the installation of iLiKETRAiNS as support for some of the dates I wasn't going to bother with in week 2, the collapse of the "other plans" I'd had for York night due to other people, and the surprise announcement from Sharon (who doesn't even like the band that much) that she'd be at the Glasgow gig as she assumed we would, all added up to ensure I did. 18 dates in 21 nights. Did I get tired of the band? Not tired of them, no, but tired? Christ, I didn't think that level of tiredness even existed.

It's been a week and a half now since I've been home. I've been to a few local gigs (the normal blog will return this weekend), gone back to work, and tonight my beloved old Ford Ka left my parking space for the last time on the back of a tow truck; tomorrow a shiny (nearly) new one awaits me in Old Trafford. Riot says of course he'll still go and see the band, just no longer feels the need to do every date. And me? Well..... I was pretty fucked. I'm still not sure if hot cider with brandy or for that matter Jaegermeister should be legal, and certainly together they should be avoided. I have now seen British Sea Power 131 times, which even I think is possibly slightly excessive. But I've seen hundreds of band this year; week in week out, I've written about many of them here, and I still can't think of one that gives me the buzz they do. Yeah, maybe Oxford on a work night is a bit silly, maybe I don't need to go to every gig they play any more, but I'm pretty sure wherever they next strike a note in concert I'll be there. And that third album's going to be brilliant, trust me on this.

As Hamilton sings in "True Adventures", "you think it's gone my friend, but it comes back again"...

The best band in the world.

Love and thanks to everyone who came along for some or all of this crazy trip, I won't name them all because I'll forget someone, and thank you above all to Noble, Woody, Yan and Hamilton for making the greatest music I've ever heard, and long may it continue.

http://www.mortonvalence.co.uk/
http://www.myspace.com/thewitchandtherobot
http://www.myspace.com/actresshands
http://www.johnbetjeman.com/

http://www.britishseapower.co.uk

Sorry, I really can't be bothered doing any more links tonight...

LIGHTS OUT FOR DARKER SKIES - PART TWO

2006-09-20T12:00:00.000-07:00

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Yes, I'm alive...

Which is more than can be said for my home internet connection. Came home Tuesday to discover it and the phone both dead, and BT quite stunningly unhelpful. It might be back by this coming Thursday - if we're lucky.

Anyway the past few weeks has seen me travel thousands of miles (probably), acquainted me with pretty much every set of roadworks on the British motorway system, and - sadly and annoyingly - seen one probably fatal casualty. Don't worry, it wasn't a person, although it had been a loyal and long-serving companion without whose help I and quite a few other people wouldn't have been able to get to all manner of gigs. Yes, sometime around midnight on Tuesday 12th September 2006 on the M6 somewhere just past Keele Services, my nine year old Ford Ka breathed its last. It was actually the second car casualty of the tour amongst the regular fans - repairs in Cornwall allowed Mark (see last blog) to get his vehicle and family back home to North Shields, but a few days later in Manchester it, too, decided it wasn't going any further. Mark had to give up on the rest of the dates; I considered it but in the end with no small amount of help from Riot and others I made it as far as, well, The End Of The Road to end the tour as I started it, drinking ill-advisedly strong booze being served out of a bus in a field with Andy and Cerys.

I ended the last entry here with the line "That Pimms Bus already seems a really, really long time ago" - it had been what, four days? Now it seems a lifetime ago. That was summer, now it's quite definitely autumn. There's the chill in the air, and what I always used to call "a Chameleons sky" - bright, but with a dark brooding edge; trees have not quite yet started to turn gold but are filling up with red berries. It's always been a time of transition - in younger days there was always a new school or college year or in student days a new house, and of course in 2003 a new favourite band. I have probably missed less than ten of their UK performances since then... three years down the line I've had to start seriously considering whether I'm too old for all this. Maybe I'm just tired. Maybe the car was trying to tell me something. I wanted to do loads of this tour because it was all fantastic small venues, places as you'll see with real character, and of course a set packed with new songs which may not be released until 2007 or in some cases at all but which to me are as much a part of the band's repertoire as the "hits"; I can't see me taking a week off when the next album comes out to visit a selection of indistinguishable Carling Academy 2's. I'll still do a few I should think; the local ones, and London and/or Brighton where there are the biggest turnouts of the old-time regulars, but I can't see me ever driving back from Oxford on a work night. I've "coached" enough youngsters in the art of long-haul away-tripping to ensure rucksacks will be being stashed behind merchandise tables for many years to come. This travelogue is dedicated to Tristan, good friend half my age and number one graduate of the Cath school of gig-going excess, you probably can't imagine what you'll be doing when you're twice the age you are now, but if you're still doing this, pass on the spirit to the next generation for me.

"Say goodbye to summer / The party's over, the world's begun"
- The Weather Prophets "Ostrich Bed" 1988

So after a much-needed night in recuperating after my what-on-earth-was-I-thinking decision to go to a gig in Exeter on a work night, the tour enters its local-ish phase on Thursday 31st August. York Fibbers is a venue steeped in history for Chameleons fans, as the band played a few legendary gigs there. Recently assimilated into the Barfly organisation it's thankfully been allowed to keep its name and character. It's also the first big get-together of regulars on the tour; many haven't been before and are shocked by how tiny the stage is.

Actress Hands (above) fill it completely; British Sea Power are physically smaller but it's still quite a squeeze. But what we get is one of the most intense, raw, red hot performances ever. Perhaps mindful of the audience demands in Exeter, they start with "Remember Me" straight into "Scottish Wildlife Experience" and almost blow the roof off before unleashing the tide of new songs. These, too, go down a storm; many of the regulars know some of them to an extent from previous live outings or sneaky recordings thereof (no, don't ask me, I've not got any myself) but the fast, energetic nature of most of them coupled with the natural enthusiasm I've seen in every single crowd for every single band I've ever watched at this venue carries them to new levels.

By the time Yan launches himself onto the crowd at the end, his clothes are completely soaked through, and band's and crowd's faces alike show it's been another legendary one. When the "low-key" (and pretty much unadvertised) tour of 200 capacity venues was announced this is what we'd hoped for; a step back from the big stages back to the raw, in-your-face sweatboxes where many of us first saw them (Night & Day in my case).

They also have some rather stunning new merchandise...

Yep...soap. Four individual bars each with the aroma and packaging designed by a band member. It is no surprise to us that Noble's ("Soup Soap", based on Provencale herbs) is the fastest selling; Woody's is pleasant but a little unremarkable, and the idea that Yan and Hamilton, adorable as they are, might even be acquainted with the concept of soap is possibly a stretch too far for most people. In actual fact Noble's is so popular I go home a bar short, as Jo Shopkeeper knows as well as I do that at whatever gig the next load of supplies becomes available I'll be fairly certain to be there. I get home about 1.30am and am still buzzing so much I can't go to bed for a bit. I'm already down to one meal a day. Yeah, the tour adrenaline's kicked in big style.

The next night however it has a bit of a lull. We've all been quite excited about the band playing on a sea-fort; this however is not just another ridiculous BSP wheeze but a new club night, Nautical, run by some people from Merseyside who are quite clearly crackers. Yeah, let's start an indie club with a difference... the difference being that we'll have it, um, offshore. Here, in fact.

Friday 1st September is their third event. At dinner time (yes, I'm still going to work every day at this point) I have a look online for any reviews of the first two and find one of twattily-named local band The Seal Cub Clubbing Club, whom I'm afraid to say will feature much later in their own right when some gross lapse of taste on someone's part sees them support BSP during the third week of the tour (the fact that their manager used to be BSP's tour manager may be related to this). The reviewer I found rather liked them though, despite (and this is, as they say, a very big "despite") "the torrential rain". What?! Yes, the gigs are held in the open centre of the fort, along with whatever nature can chuck at it, which being the North West Coast can be a great bloody lot. Down the M62 the skies are greying. No, stay dry, please.

Walking up from the car park to the fort, a car pulls alongside us, occupied by over-tanned and over-straightened Footballers Wives types and banging out some gruesome lowest-common-denominator house. One of the girls sticks her head out the window and screeches in a real fingernails-on-the-blackboard voice "Eych, what's on here tonight then?" "iLiKETRAiNS and British Sea Power" I respond factually, only later realising what a non-sequitur this sentence would sound like to someone like that... she does, it has to be said, look at me slightly oddly, before asking "Is it like hard-house and dancefloor?" Now I don't know about you but I'd be hard pushed to think of a less hard-house-and-dancefloor band than iLiKETRAiNS. "No, it's proper music, with guitars and drums and songs, you know..." which heralds a stream of abuse in return. Well I think it's abuse; I'll never know as it was delivered at breakneck speed, heavily Scoused and at the sort of pitch that sets dogs off. For all I know she could have been delivering a critical comparison of the two bands' debut albums, but I really doubt it.

Oh dear...

Thankfully it stays dry. It's bloody cold though, with the wind whipping off the sea, and opening band Tiny Dancers (above) do little to warm things up. They appear to have come as 70s football hooligans and have decorated the stage with the contents of one of those slightly scary Gifts & Fancy Goods shops you get in the middle of any city's Curry Mile, you know, a stuffed tiger and a light-up moving waterfall picture, which writing this a couple of days later is pretty much all I can remember about them. Although I do recall that even within minutes of their set finishing I couldn't remember any of their songs anyway. generic, I think, and a bit dull.

iLiKETRAiNS (above) have joined the tour for five nights which rather threw my original plans of missing a few in the middle week; it was a close call, apparently; Ashley is sporting a massive bandage around one finger which he "almost sliced off" earlier that day, but thanfully it's not one of the more important ones for cornet playing. No visuals tonight though. Maybe it's his projector finger. They play much the same set as they did supporting Forward Russia the week before; that comprising most of the mini-album plus "Before The Curtains Close II" and the new one "Spencer Perceval", and whilst later a couple of BSP fans will describe their sound as one-dimensional (and I suppose it is, a bit, but it's a dimension I do very much like) they sound fantastic to me, their chilling minor chords perfect against the backdrop of wind-battered flags and open sky. There are a few of their own hardcore here, we think, or at least there's a bunch of people down the front who see fit to shout "Leeds!" repeatedly between songs. A little like our own away-trippers' (now almost extinct) "Manchester-la-la-la" of a few years back, people from Leeds watching bands from Leeds always seem to feel the need to tell you about it...

It is really, ridiculously late when British Sea Power take to the stage and unfortunately the sound is dreadful. I'm actually unaware at this point that they currently have one of the best sound engineers in the business, but anyway, he's struggling here; a low rumble like a plane taking off is emanating from the right-hand speakers in front of us and the band clearly can't hear their monitors. Hamilton, usually a man who can hold a tune pretty well, delivers a version of "How Will I Ever Find My Way Home" without finding a single correct note, the new stuff sounds flat and samey, and despite a fine "Spirit Of St Louis" this gig's never going to be in my top 100. A shame really; as if ever a band were suited to this venue it's them, but it just never quite comes together.

Saturday 2nd September.
Sometime during the week news comes through that Kath, the landlady of one of my favourite Manchester city centre pubs The Castle, has passed away after a short illness. The older members of our union at work remember branch meetings held in the back room of the pub in the 1970s, a fug of smoke hanging permanently beneath the yellowed wallpaper, cracked seats, but a decent well-poured pint and the friendliest of welcomes. I doubt it had changed much since then. Whilst many of the city's old pubs have been glitzed up with chrome and plate glass, The Castle still stands brown-tiled and murky up the rough end of Oldham Street, its door frequently locked to keep out troublemakers and snooping official types alike. But a brisk knock would gain you entry to a world where licensing hours were somewhat flexible, drinks cheap and you might end up discussing anything with anyone.
The good news is that Kath's son Damien promises business as usual for the foreseeable future. RIP to a true Manchester character.

So, on this particular weekend it's not really the ideal venue for a mass pre-gig piss-up, so the visiting BSP regulars are directed to the equally unreconstructed of slightly less characterful Crown & Anchor - and warned just how hot the Roadhouse can get on a sold-out night. It's actually relatively quiet when we get in there though, although fills up during iLiKETRAiNS' absolutely stunning set. "Spencer Perceval" seems to go on for hours here, building up to a great crashing climax and after the set their merchandise table is awash with newly converted fans snapping up the mini-album and DVD singles. I'll just say here that if you like this band and haven't seen the "Before The Curtains Close" videos, you can still buy the DVD single off the band's website and should do so. It's.... disturbing.

Injured but not out: Ashley

I'm very, very excited about seeing British Sea Power in the Roadhouse. I never thought it would happen. The last couple of years they've done the Ritz as well as Academy 2 and 3 a couple of times each, and back when they were still sufficiently unknown to be playing venues this size by necessity as opposed to choice it was Night & Day and Lateroom. The second Yan bounds onstage - wearing a T-shirt bearing the hand-scrawled legend "Manchestester Nowt 2 Answer 4" and a cloak made out of a white bed-sheet the scene is set for a fantastic gig.

Dear Britannia Hotel, I know where your missing bedding went...

And they deliver, end to end. I don't recall the set-list (though it was much the same as most of the ones on this tour) or much in the way of individuial moments - I'd had to work that day to get a day off in the week and had made up for this by being spectacularly drunk, but that's what happens when your favourite band come to your hometown on a Saturday night, but I'll never forget the red-hot spirit of it. The band seem revitalised, and look to be really enjoying themselves; but I do remember making a mental note that it really isn't a good idea to stand this close to an air-raid siren.

Aterwards things get predictably messy. The band are billed to DJ, but have forgotten most of their CDs and largely can't be arsed, so it's left to guitarist Noble and regular fan Smoggy to entertain the crowd with such vinyl delights as... The Final Countdown, and, er, Merry Christmas Everyone by Shakin Stevens. For some reason Yan gives me a punnet of strawberries. And some whisky. In case you hadn't guessed, this is not a sensible combination. Sincerest apologies to whoever cleans the toilets at the Roadhouse....

Smoggy and Noble - make the Queens of Noize look like talented DJs

I do however get to introduce Yan and Hamilton to my dear friend Bob (above), with whom I attended my first ever British Sea Power gig and partly on his recommendation as well, and amazingly (if you know Bob) he doesn't scare them to death... later, backstage, I have another surprise. I hadn't really noticed who was doing the sound this tour; many of the crew who'd become almost like a great dysfucntional family back in 2003-4 have moved on, and I find myself face to face with Shan Hira. A sort of unsung Manchester legend, drummer with The Stockholm Monsters and co-owner/engineer of the legendary Suite 16 Studios in Rochdale - if you know anything about Manchester music I shouldn't have to tell you this. If you don't, check the link at the bottom. Anyway Shan was the sound engineer on that legendarily debauched 2002 Chameleons tour of America, and we spend a while recalling what we can of some of those nights. Strange that you've ended up here too, I say, but they really are the only band around today who've got what the Chameleons had in terms of spirit and passion and energy and talent. Yeah, he says, I know. We have a few more whiskys. The band aren't playing anywhere on Sunday which is perhaps as well for all concerned. Strawberries are bad for you, believe me...

JUST SAY NO!

I was going to take some time away mid-tour. On Monday 4th September I was meant to be going to watch Royal Treatment Plant at the Roadhouse, a promisingly noisy bunch who sent me a demo sometime ago for MM which was really rather good. I didn't, of course. Listen to them if you get a minute though: http://www.myspace.com/royaltreatmentplant

As soon as iLiKETRAiNS were announced as support for these five dates I knew I'd picked the wrong bit to not go to, so after a bit of asking round for spare tickets before remembering that iLT's PR owes me one after the Night & Day let-down of a couple of weeks ago, I find myself shooting off over the hills to the M1. Not sure I can face going back in the Roadhouse just yet anyway. Leicester's one-way system is legendary, and two previous visits to the city by car have left me tearing my hair out and screaming "yes but exactly what the fuck is the North / South / East / West Zone?!", so I have printed full instructions and a map or two; this time I can beat it. Off the ring road I'm doing well, the venue's about three streets away and then... bollocks. One wrong turn and I'm not where I should be; never mind, just nip round here and... and then it's got me. Sucked in.

There are three fundamental reasons why Leicester's one-way system should be ourtlawed under the Geneva Convention:

(1) unlike every other major city and indeed small town I have ever visited, there are precisely zero signs pointing the way of the City Centre.

(2) Every direction on every roundabout appears to point to Market Harborough. Why? What the fuck's there that's so fantastic?

And finally (3) The system of traffic lights and feeder lanes ensures that if you do ever work out vaguely where you are, you are immediately swept half a mile in some random direction like a malevolent tidal current until you are lost again.

I think I've actually left and re-entered Leicester about four times by the time I find myself on a grim looking council estate asking a young mum at a bus stop for directions back to the city centre, and amazingly I find myself back on my map. Which has all the one-way streets wrong. I swing onto another rough looking estate. Something that looks a lot like a drug deal is going on in a doorway. There's a dodgy white van at the end of the road with a hard-looking olive-skinned man passing boxes to a skinny blond kid... Shan... Hamilton... thank fuck, I've made it! Not really sure I want to leave my car here though. Of course with hindsight I wish someone had stolen the fucker, and I'd have £1200 insurance towards my next one rather than a lump of useless metal that's going to start pissing my neighbours off soon. Meet up with some mates in a pub that makes our beloved Castle look like a City slickers' wine-bar and has vibrating cock-rings in vending machines, try a couple of corner shops in the quest to get one mate some much-needed feminine sanitary products but none of them sell them (we suspect there may be, shall we say, fundamentalist religious reasons for this, and don't pursue it) and escape back to the venue.

Aside from being in a fairly grim part of a really horrible town, The Musician is a fantastic place. Muralled walls, decent sound, tiny tiny stage. Very hot. iLT's set is excellent. British Sea Power's is even better. I really can not quite believe how on-form they are on this tour. "Lights Out For Darker Skies", the two-parter from which the tour takes its name, is fast becoming a favourite; the bit at the start of the secoond half where it all fades to quiet and Yan whispers "...and we were lit by kerosene..." just makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. It's beautiful. "Atom" is another good one - half way through it suddenly sounds like "In Answer" by the Chameleons. I put this to Shan at some point and he agrees. Now I've always erred slightly on the side of Hamilton musically; I'd guess if I listed my 20 favourite BSP songs there would be a higher proportion of the younger Wilkinson's work in there than his overall share of their repertoire, but I think Yan seems to have the edge this time round. Hamilton's "Mary" and "A Trip Out" are great pop songs, but we've yet to hear a new masterpiece from the lad, another "Blackout" or "True Adventures". Anyway it's a stunning gig, one of the best of the tour. A couple of days later I tell Yan this and he replies (ever the charmer) "You're fucking mental." (Thanks little'un, you're completely sane yourself of course.) Apparently it was full of mistakes. Who cares? It was raw.

Yan's armband is in commemoration of crocodile hunter Steve Irwin whose death had been announced that day. It was given to him by fans - Noble was less kind, at one point announcing "Steve Irwin? About fucking time!"

On the way home we spend half an hour attempting to leave Leicester, as all the signs still point to Market Harborough and not a single one to the nearby M1. I can feel a letter to Leicester City Council coming on...

Part 2B - Squaddietown To Dreaming Spires

Tuesday 5th September. Nick and I have been looking forward to Aldershot. One of the first dates to go on sale, before it was apparent there was a full tour going on, we just liked the idea of going to a gig somewhere we'd never been before, and I always quite like gigs in "arts centres" such as, closer to home, Bury Met - where occasional and decidedly random rock/pop events are interspersed with childrens' theatre, comedy nights and members of the Waterson-Carthy folk clan (Trust me on this, check any brochure from any such place and thery'll be in there somewhere.) We'd also been told the venue was an old school. And guess what? It was.

We'd wondered if any squaddies were going to turn up, wondering if the band's oft-cited (if completely untrue) "fondness for military uniforms" would have creaed some (possibly the wrong sort of) interest, but it seemd like a very Arts Centre-ish sort of crowd in actual fact - noticeably older than your average gig crowd (the cluster of 40somethings in the BSP regulars were by no means the upper end of this audience. In the pub earlier one friendly grey-haired fan was telling us how he had been on holiday in Czechoslowakia when the Russian tanks rolled in in 1968 (makes "the bath taps were broken in my hotel room" look like a bit of a crap holiday gripe, that) and later watching the band Cerys and I were forced to curtail our dancing somewhat to avoid crashing into the bubble-haired septuagenarian lady next to us.

Unfortunately yet again one of the gigs we'd earmarked as being a potential highlight turned out to be a bit damp. iLT (above) played their standard set and it was nice to see Ash's finger sufficiently mended that the projector made a comeback - in fact looking round the school hall not dissimilar to that of my 70s-80s primary-school days the thing probably thought it had come home.

By the time British Sea Power came onstage it was just far too hot and airless, and there was no getting away from the school-ish feel of the place. So it was a fairly quiet, uninspiring crowd, and a set which was solid and dependable but somewhat lacking the spark of the last couple of nights. Having said that, Noble managed to find plenty of things to climb up, ensuring the interested parties who come to whatever's on at places like this had something to remember.

There was also really nowhere at all to go afterwards, and walking back to our hotel attempting to avoid the underpass we'd used on the way out (the posters asking for information on a recent serious sexual assault there not being what you want to see at midnight) we found the town almost completely deserted. And somehow ended up in the grounds of a spooky old house, with a full moon shining from behind dark trees and an owl hooting. We did not, however, go up to the door to ask for directions, so rest assured this isn't about to turn into an extremely low-grade horror movie plot - no, we eventually found an overground route back to the hotel and went to bed. Sorry about that, but there's nine dates left to go and I'm not ready to die just yet.

I really was in two minds about Oxford. I'm not especially keen on the place and BSP's last gig there (at the Brookes University in November 2005) was one of the worst I've ever seen them, and it is a bloody long way to drive home afterwards. On the other hand it's iLiKETRAiNS' last show of the tour, it is on the way home, we're told it won't be a late one, and it'll be the only date attended by one of my favourite posters on the band's forum whom I'd like to catch up with. So we head off into Oxford where the weather has suddenly become unfeasibly hot, Nick gets on a train back to Manchester, and I buy an A to Z and replenish some of my missing vitamins with a particularly revolting but supposedly revitalising fruit smoothie. Don't get me wrong, Oxford is a beautiful place. Some of the old architecture is absolutely stunning, and it's scattered with lush areas of gorgeous green space... but trying to find one that ordinary riff-raff can actually sit in and chill for a couple of hours is a bit of a challenge. I give up, and after a long queue for a space in what appears to be the city's only cybercafe (I suppose the colleges are all Wi-Fi'd up these days) I find a pub beer-garden. That's more my level.

Regular suspects Craig and Kevo have got this thing about pies. I have no idea how this started, but each BSP tour now seems to include a quest for the ultimate pie, and some low-level competitiveness between the two with respect to number of pies consumed on the tour. The pie above was Craig's best from last year's November tour, on the night of the aformentioned Brookes Uni gig, so we have the idea Oxford is a good place for pies, and as Kevo has decided he's just too tired to come out tonight (The only gig, apart from Clapham which clashed with his mate's wedding, that he'll miss all tour) Craig sees an opportunity to get ahead in the pie count, so we head off on a pie quest (despite myself and the other lad present, Callum, being vegetarian). We look up and down the road for a chippy or other suitable vendor, but there are none to be seen... just this rather dubious delicacy...

We don't fancy any bees, so me and Callum settle for pizza. Craig is not to be beaten though. Eventually he turns up back in the beer garden, looking a little demoralised and clasping a paper bag from Tesco. Samosas. Nice, but are they pies? (Readers who wish to comment on this, and any other pie defining anomalies, are most welcome to start a debate on the subject down at the bottom there.) More bizarre is that the woman who sold them to him claimed "not to actually work there". What? Freelance samosa merchants running rife in Oxford Tescos? We have reached that stage of mid-tour insanity, where everything has gone a bit surreal but seems quite normal to us - much later this evening Craig will be apprehended for attempting to climb into a garden centre whilst wearing a builder's hard-hat, a story about which I've never asked for any further detail because I prefer it as it is. On the way out to the venue we find a small carved wooden box, a yellow vest and a "Little Book Of Sagittarius" abandoned on the beer-garden's back doorstep, and then turn the corner to see Riot standing outside the venue resplendent in his lab-coat (complete with "Osterreich" sew-on patch on pocket).

iLiKETRAiNS know it's their last night with us - they've worked out by now that there's quite a few of us doing multiple dates, and realising - as the unknown Killers did back in 2003 - that supporting a band with regular fans is a great way of building your own fanbase. Andy and Cerys weren't even going to do tonight's gig - they've got tickets for a few of the later ones - but after Aldershot they know they have to see iLT one more time. Add to that a smattering of their own hardcore plus the fact that we're in Oxford, an epicentre of the post-rock-indie scene boasting bands such as Youthmovies and Redjetson, and you've got one of the best receptions for a support band I have ever seen. And it's justified.

Every song is stunning - from the creepy "Before The Curtains Close" (there aren't that many more darkly humourous opening lines than "I discharged myself today / That place did nothing for me") through to the majestic, anthemic "Terra Nova". Which is still my official single of the year - the rest of the world's got just three months to catch up now, and I can't see it happening. By the end of the set I'm close to tears.

British Sea Power themselves turn in a fantastically energetic performance despite the temperature in the venue having reached silly levels. This is becoming quite a theme to this tour, and adds gravity to some regulars' concerns about the fact that Yan seems to have had that vintage cycling top on for almost every date. It's a little slow to get going (the gig that is, not the cycling top, which could probably crawl to a launderette quite easily if he let it out of his sight); the crowd are pretty quiet again, but highlights include a particularly good "Wooden Horse" and really passionate "Carrion", as well as the gorgeous "Lights Out For Darker Skies" - still think the lyrics in the first part need some work though. One thing that I am really enjoying on this tour is the way the new songs are sort of hanging in the air and then suddenly one of them will reach out to you and you're there; some of them are more upfront about it than others.

I say goodbye to Dave iLT, and promise to come and see them on their own tour in October. At present I've only got tickets for York (15th October), any others depend really on whether I've got a car by then. At this point however I'm still taking it for granted that I can go to a gig pretty much anywhere I like on a week night so long as I can drive home, and I've had the good sense to leave the car in the park'n'ride so I can find the motorway rather more easily than we did coming out of Leicester. We're home by 2am again, despite the Roadworks Fairy piling every single cone, flashing light and down-to-one-lane 40-limit in the world onto the M40 and M6 to annoy us.

The following night's Leeds, after which I've got a week off work - and not before time. That, plus the descent from mid-tour insanity into all-out end-of-tour debauchery - in part 3. As soon as I've written it. Sunday, maybe? After which normal service will be resumed.

Stockholm Monsters / Shan Hira - http://www.prideofmanchester.com/music/StockholmMonsters-biography.htm

iLiKETRAiNS - http://www.myspace.com/iliketrains

British Sea Power - http://www.myspace.com/britishseapower

Actress Hands - http://www.myspace.com/actresshands

Painstakingly brought to you in Easyinternet, St Annes Sq, Manchester. Dear BT, please give me my phone line back or else...

LIGHTS OUT FOR DARKER SKIES: A fan's eye view of British Sea Power's September 2006 tour. PART ONE.

2006-09-03T12:00:00.000-07:00

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~ PROLOGUE ~

It's about half six on a Tuesday night and I'm on my way to a gig. I came out straight from work and should be in town by half seven at the latest... oh yeah, and I'm thousands of feet above the Welsh coastline. There are a few fluffy white clouds like the sort children draw, and the evening sunshine glints on the odd fishing boat - it's almost indescribably beautiful. I'm bound for Exeter. I was actually there almost exactly 24 hours ago dropping my mate off after a pleasant afternoon on a clifftop on the North Cornish coast - we'd set off early that morning from London after I had convinced her, several beers into the previous evening, that that wasn't really too far to go for an afternoon out. She didn't really take much convincing, and ended up phoning her boss to book today off as well. me I haven't really got the holidays left, and was back home in Manchester at half eleven. I will be back there by 8 tomorrow morning and in work for 9. You think that's a ridiculous amount of effort to go to to watch a few gigs? Maybe. It's all relative though. Said mate is originally from Japan, although she lives in London - we met, of course, watching this band. She's got another Japanese friend with her on Sunday and Tuesday who does actually live over there; she's just come over for a few days for these gigs. So why didn't she come to Cornwall with us on the day in between? Oh, she was off watching Radiohead that night... in Amsterdam.

Sat with us in the pub on that Tuesday night are two fortysomething men - one, married with kids, has brought his entire family down to the South West for a camping holiday so he and his eldest daughter can go to these gigs - his car has packed up and he has no idea how he's going to get home to North Shields, some 400 miles away. He couldn't really be much further from home and still be in the British Isles. The second, like myself one of the small number of British Sea Power fans with a three-figure gig count, has a wealth of stories that start "When we were out watching Bowie in Prague / the south of France / a forest in central Denmark". He once flew to New York to watch Bowie play one song at some awards do. The laugh is when I asked him once (as we headed for the Suffolk coast towards another typically remote British Sea Power gig) what the song was, it took him a while to actually remember. ("Heroes", if you're interested). So the fact that our little table of people came from Manchester, Birmingham, Tyneside and London (all via Cornwall) and Japan (via London and Amsterdam) to be here seems perfectly normal to us all. This is the way it is. You may not like British Sea Power, but the chances are if you are reading this you do love live music; you probably have a favourite band - welcome to our world, the world of the Away Trip. A world of Travelodges and "comedy airlines" (definition - any airline whereby the tax costs more than the actual flights). You may never want to waste your time off on two weeks' sunshine again...

~ PART ONE ~

~ SOUTH WESTERN WARM-UP ~

Trip Counter: 1229 miles

Bank Holiday Sunday, 27th August, Sackville St, central Manchester, 8am. The streets are full of the detritus of a good night; Gay Pride continues for a couple of days yet and amongst the discarded (and occasionally "revisited") fast food, club flyers and condom packets there are few people around. The odd bug-eyed raver, still clutching a can - and me and Nick heading out to the car with a couple of small overnight bags. God knows what the motorways are going to be like on the last blast weekend of the summer (officially, though not of ours) - best get an early start. Three and a half hours later we're pulling up in the car park of Battersea Travelodge - the M56, M6, M6 Toll, M1, A5 and most of central London having been almost spookily quiet. Maybe the country just isn't up yet. Check-in's not officially til three but we're lucky, there's a room available now, so we don't have to leave anything in the car and soon we're walking across Clapham Common in the sunshine towards a featival.

Get Loaded In The Park - the name isn't encouraging. Previous headliners have included Happy Mondays and the event is backed by Metro, the insidious freesheet wing of the evil Daily Mail organisation. It's official website shows pictures of the worst sort of shirted laddish lads raising lager in the air, as if in a toast to Nuts magazine. This year however Babyshambles are headlining, so chuck a load of over-made-up teens and London scenesters into the mix. Oh and with the cancellation from 65daysofstatic (whose mildly sarcastic bulletin also made reference to some of the above features of GLITP whilst surmising it probably wasn't a crowd that would lap up brain-meltingly loud instrumental post-math-rock-electrocore, which I can't exactly fault them on) there's really not much left on the line-up that interests us. Oh, apart from this...

It's true, Misty's Big Adventure have played pretty much the same set every time I have seen them which must be 5 or 6 times now. And Erotic Volvo (as I'm certain his passport doesn't say) hasn't pursued the intention he stated in an interview at least a year ago to "regenerate like Dr. Who" - yeah, he still looks like, well, that. But this is a band who, watched once every few months, never fail to leave me smiling. They look like a local drama workshop group, and from Gareth's dark-psychedelia spoken intro to their eponymous theme tune, through the wonderfully danceable hey-wow-man-heavy-concept "Two Brains" to their forthcoming single, already a live favourite taking the piss out of the (now not so) New Post-Punk scene whilst cheekily pilfering its hi-hat-heavy disco-punk beats - this is a band doing exactly what they want to. By the end of their half hour they've put most of the tent - including a few of my BSP crew who haven't seen them before - in cheerful mood... the problem now being there is sod all else on worth watching until our lads themselves, four or five hours hence.

That's four or five hours, depending on whether you believe the official programme (£5, and "the only way to find out today's running orders") or a member of the band who has been good enough to keep us up to date by text. Right. After the furore at last week's V Festival regarding such practices (see last week's blog entry for full rant and press stories - oh, and a colleague of Nick's who went also mentioned that car parking was not included in the £120 ticket price , and cost an extra seven quid... bargain!) we're amazed they've got the cheek. We have a look at one. 65days are still listed, but worse still for anyone wishing to watch BSP who isn't part of the regulars' texting network is that they will actually be just about finishing their set by the time they are listed in the programme as starting. It's nothing short of a fucking disgrace to be honest. The beer, too, is limited in choice and pricey. This could be a really shite day. And then we find the Pimms Bus...

...and that's most of the afternoon accounted for. We are vaguely aware of De La Soul debasing their fine legacy with some half-arsed nonsense on the rather distant main stage, and then it's getting quite close to BSP's (actual) slot and as the tent is getting quite full we figure we'd best get in and find a decent spot. The downside to this is that it will bring me in close proximity to The Official Cath Aubergine Worst Band Of 2006 - oh for a box of eggs or fruit to launch - Guillemots.

The gushing praise heaped on this pile of self-important hogwash almost had me believing Night & Day (some time earlier this year, and still the one time in my life where I have not filed a review for a band I've had press tickets for, on the grounds that sitting through most of their painfully tedious set was hard work enough and I could not think of one single redeeming factor to them) may have been a fluke, but no, Fyfe Dangerfield (above)'s position of the most overrated man in music (yes, seriously; even Doherty has two good tunes, although as we'll find out later not necessarily the capability of delivering them) seems safe for now. Cerys, Yuko and I spend a long time trying to work out even in what vague genre this pointless pretentiousness resides and come up with "watered down Flaming Lips with no tunes". It is a really, really long half hour.

British Sea Power look like they mean business. Aware that their set is insultingly short, they bang straight into energetic everyone'll-know-this-one "Remember Me" and swerve into last summer's highlight of more festivals than I can remember "Please Stand Up". Yan is at his commanding, slightly unhinged best, bouncing around dressed entirely in red like a small child that's scoffed a few too many sweets. With the neutral portion of the audience now firmly on side it's time for a couple of new ones - first the rather Julian Cope-ish Hamilton-led "Mary" (tipped to be the next single, although some faintly preposterous re-titling shouldn't be ruled out) and then the (early)Chameleons-ish Yan-led "Atom". The excellent reaction to these songs from a crowd who have for the most part never heard them before must be as encouraging to the band as it is to us as they prepare for that traditional musician's leap into the unknown that is the third album.

It's good to see one of my personal favourites "True Adventures" an almost permanent fixture in the live set these days. In an earlier incarnation as "Chicken Pig" this was one of the first Open Season era tracks to get played regularly live back in early 2004 and reactions to it were not always favourable - its proggy space-rock feel rather out of keeping with the spiky rules of the day. Now however with the re-emergence of effects-heavy "new-shoegaze" and the likes of iLiKETRAiNS, this beautiful song has been proven to have been just a little ahead of its time, woth Hamilton's dreamy vocals proving him the true successor to Dean "Galaxie 500" Wareham and the cornet and viola of extra players Phil and Abi filling out its already massive sound.

My other favourite "Carrion" is next (This is not a deliberate attempt at democracy, although the band would be a far lesser beast without either one of the complementary talents that are the inherently adorable Wilkinson brothers) and then an abbreviated thrash through the usual set-ending rock-out... and then it's half seven and we have not much else to do for the rest of the evening. One bunch decide to make an early exit down to Devon to give them a head start for tomorrow's leg of the journey. The rest of us hang about for the UK's number one festival tart Badly Drawn Boy.

The emergence of Mr Gough and the Twisted Nerve scene in the late 90s was, however preposterous this may seem now, as important to the music scene in Manchester as those Sex Pistols gigs in 76 that spawned our highly regarded post-punk scene. If you're not from round here, or are too young, you may not remember just what a terrible wasteland the city's music scene was in the mid 90s. Britpop meant little here - we sent them Oasis and they gave us nothing much back; our living legends such as The Fall and New Order knocked out run-of-the-mill, resting-on-laurels albums, venues closed, and as bands like Puressence discovered being from Manchester had somewhere around negative cool value in the post-"Madchester" (sic) era. Then Andy Votel and Damon Gough came along and, like Shelley and Devoto two decades earlier, invented a label to release their own records. Now looking back at the array of stunningly designed if frequently unlistenable ten inch singles the label put out in its early years, it's clear most of the music was a bit on the self-indulgent side. I should know, I own most of them. But they - along with Manchestermusic's proto-unsigned-fest Chairsmissing, and the twice-yearly month-long restricted licence community radio station Radio Space, started to wake Manchester up again. And for that, as well as for excellent tunes such as "You Were Right", I will always have time for Badly Drawn Boy.

Tonight, however, isn't the right time. Well not for the decidedly maudlin string of almost MOR new material with which he opens his set. Were you not watching the last band, Damon? Festival set means open with the hits and slip the new ones in the middle when people are already having fun. After the third dirge I can't bear the idea that this Manchester legend is almost as boring as Guillemots, and the scrappy "Silent Sigh" we hear as we leave the tent doesn't really encourage us back.

For below par versions of classic songs though he can't hold a candle to car-crash Babyshambles. We have been standing - admittedly not too close to the stage, but not to far away either - in the main arena for a couple of minutes before I realise the vaguely familiar song being bashed out by what sounds like the local community centre's pop group project for teenagers with learning disabilities, is the Libertines' classic anthem "Time For Heroes". To massacre your own song in a way that no cover band would dare is sign of someone who's lost their way. And no, I don't mean the drugs - I'd never touch smack myself but Spacemen 3 and their splinter bands managed to make a few good albums with its help, and I'd never judge someone on their taste in recreational assistance. It's the music. It's gone. It could be the drugs rotting his mind, or it could simply be that without Carl and The Other Two he's not actually that talented, but after an equally dire take on "Killamangiro" we realise that if that's how he plays his best songs we really do not wish to hear his others. Newspaper headlines about Monster Pete and Cocaine Kate flash on the backscreen. We are unimpressed and head for the pub. A car pulls up and some lads jump out and set up amps on the roof, perform a brief guerrilla gig, and then get shouted at for blocking the car park - we never find out who they are, but they're arguably better than Babyshambles. We are all very pissed by this point. "I wish I was going to that Cornwall thing tomorrow" says Yuko, and I tell her that if she can make it to Battersea Travelodge for half eight she can have a lift with us.

At 8am she texts me to say she's on her way... I can barely remember how we even got back to the hotel... it's a lovely day though... right, next stop only 250 miles of A-roads away... some would question the sense of heading out to one of Britain's tourist hotspots on Bank Holiday Monday, but what else were we going to do today?

I hate the M4 so we opt for the A303 past Stonehenge, and four hours on we're a mile from the venue before we hit any real traffic. It's useful that we do, as we know we're in the right place. By venue, you see, I actually mean field. This is how the Guardian Guide supplement recommended this afternoon's events...

It's good to see some of Cornwall on the way down too. The county is beautiful on this bright but not blazing late summer's day, and disturbingly (but not unexpectedly) packed with really weird things. There is a Bee Centre, a Museum of Witchcraft, and a village called Broadwoodwidger. No, it's just the way he's standing, etc etc. Mind you, we all have a good laugh when BSP regular Kevo shows us where he's staying.

And no, this is not your average gig venue, festival, anything. It's more like a particularly demented church fete. The woefully inadequate catering (two not very with-it women who serve one bacon butty or baked potato approximately once every five minutes, causing an hour-long queue) means we sadly miss the donkey racing, although the gang who'd departed for Devon yesterday turn up in time to place a couple of bets. I do catch the Cornish wrestling though, which to be honest would be better described as pub car park brawling in big shirts, with a referee.

The crowd is one of the most bizarre ever. Alongside the 20 or so British Sea Power regulars and another 20 or so we identify as probable fans, there's a smattering of the local "alternative" teens in T-shirts from the Rakes to Green Day. There are a lot of families, presumably some local and some on holiday - lots of kids and lots of dogs. BSP regular Mark has entered into the spirit of things by bringing a family and a dog of his own - they're camping in the next field for a couple of nights, although now have no idea how they will ever get back to North Shields as their car breathed its last somewhere around the Devon border. There are lots of "literary types" here as expected; beards, sandals, upper middle class accents and expensive looking outerwear; we'd not really considered the potential windsweptness of a Cornish clifftop and are quite cold in our T-shirts depsite the hazy sun.There are plaenty of "grannies". And no small number of "celebrities", although by "celebrity" here we're talking Martin Clunes and The Archbishop Of Canterbury as opposed to people who used to be in reailty TV girl bands or whatever. By the time we have our food the brass band are playing "Bohemian Rhapsody" and John "Bergerac" Nettles is judging the childrens' arts contest. Sod Reading, Leeds, V, Get Loaded, you name it. You don't get a line-up like this every day.

I get a brief glimpse of Ralph McTell, although the tent is absolutely rammed. He's been playing for a good hour when the tent erupts into massive applause... yes, it's "Streets Of London". Poor bastard... we recall the 'Big Train' comedy sketch of a few years back, whereby every time the poor old sod struck a chord people shouted for his One Song, and he was forced to play it over and over, occasionally stammering that he had other songs... to little avail. (Mind you, recent reviews of latest flash-in-the-pan emo-popsters The "What's that coming over the hill is it a monster" Automatic would seem to imply that one known somg syndrome is not just confined to old folkies...) Sadly the intriguing sounding Poetry Boy Band cancelled, and claiming our seats early for BSP we're left with a pretty long wait - although this does afford some time to chat with the nice couple next to us who turn out to be from Macclesfield. They are surprised I've heard of the place, as they say nobody ever has, and more so still when I tell them I'm originally from there myself. Talk turns, of course, to Joy Division, and it turns out not only were this couple school friends of Ian and Deborah Curtis but that the wife now teaches the Morris/Gilbert children. Longterm Joy Division obsessive Kevo is sat just out of earshot at this point - shame... we also meet a friendly local fan called Trevor who has read the band's forum and is having fun putting faces to names. And he's a Chameleons fan too, so within seconds we are discussing a particularly obscure Peel session only track ("Things I Wish I'd Said") and he's asking why they split up again but I really don't have the time... but on the off-chance you've followed a link here off BSP forum Trevor, look in my blog archive, there's an entry on 10th April 2006 which explains it all as best I can...

I think this is the first time, in 115 British Sea Power gigs, that I have watched them from sitting down. Someone will possibly dispute this. It's a rather odd experience; children sitting on the floor in front of the rowns of seats, and a set of semi-acoustic obscurities, B-sides and their unique take on Betjeman's "Licorice Fields Of Pontefract" (in case we'd forgotten why we were here) which the possibly quite chemically enhanced Yan managed to make sound really quite filthy. He has several attacks of the giggles throughout the show and forgets loads of words. Meanwhile Hamilton's sweet and silly "Don't You Want To Be A Bird" is quite a big hit with the blue rinse contingent. It is really strange watching the band from a school assembly type wooden chair with little kids in face paints eating crisps on the floor in front of us, but also rather pleasant.

The evening entertainment consists of a charity gala dinner which some of our number are staying for (apparently it was rather dull, but the food was good) but we have a long, long way to go. Dreading miles of surfboard-heavy traffic jam we make a quick escape, and remarkably the roads are once again clear as they have been all weekend; we drop Yuko off in Exeter and I contemplate the fact that after a day's work and a flight I'll be back here, and make the remaining 200 plus miles home in cracking time.

When the new airport security measures were announced I'd considered this trip probably impossible, but a call to FlyBE says things are generally leaving on time so I'm off down the airport straight from work with as much stuff as I can stuff into last year's In the City delegates bag, which is idealy sized for the new restrictions. I knew it would come in handy one day. With four security staff per metal detector unit I actually spend less time getting though security than I have on many previous flights, but I'm still aware that it's too labour-intensive to be sustainable without a massive increase to airport running costs which will ultimately be passed on to customers, but for now I'm off to Exeter for about a tenner. Its city status is more to do with the rather enormous and impressive cathedralthan anything like a high level of civilisation, and it's a bit, well, dead. The venue's not open til half eight. I have come down from Manchester after work and I am... early!? there's not much town to walk round and I soon acquire Captain and Mrs Riot, and we had to the bar opposite where we're joined by Yuko and her friend and Mark and his eldest daughter; it's the smallest showing of regulars for some time.

It's a lovely little venue. Support comes from Brighton's Actress Hands (above) who play upbeat indie rock with a few odd twists - this is Cornet Phil's other band and he plays not only that but keyboards and backing vocals - a man of many talents!

The point of this tour is for British Sea Power to road-test new material in small, characterful venues away from the Academies - in bigger cities such as Manchester, London and Glasgow this pretty much guarantees that most of the audience will be pretty big fans who snapped up the tickets when the gigs were publicised on the band's website. There's been no national press advertising at all, but most of the dates have sold out. Exeter however probably doesn't actually have 200 British Sea Power fans - this presumption is effectively confirmed later on when the band play "Scottish Wildlife Experience" (a regular live favourite whose only actual release was on the B-side of a seven-inch about three years ago) and few of the crowd respond to it. Prior to it have been four new songs, two of which I havent even heard before.

It's a bold move but they're losing the crowd's interest. "Remember Me!" shouts one person. And then another. Noble politely explains that this is about the new songs, and a few people in the crowd look a bit pissed off. "Remember Me!" Yan is starting to look ruffled. And then from somewhere in the middle, a voice calls out "Streets Of London!" Cheers Trevor; I assume that's who it was... it does the trick anyway, Yan's smiling again, and soon they knock it out just to get it out of the way. Well yeah, you can see above that's where it was on the setlist anyway, but probably for this precise reason. (I mention to the lad stood next to me that they should just start with it and get it over with, which strangely is exactly what happens at the very next gig...)

It's a brilliant, raw set, and I honestly hope some of the crowd realise how privileged they were - there were five songs in the set which should they ever become singles or general favourites, Exeter fans will be able to say yeah, they played that here first. Two of these - listed as Plover 1 and Plover 2 - are instantly brilliant; the latter a kind of new-shoegaze/spacerock instrumental with shades of Ride about it. The club's open til god knows when; I wish I'd known that, I could have saved myself £26 on a Travelodge and just got a taxi to the airport, but as it is I decide to go and get some sleep sometime around half twelve, en route to which I have a fascinating if rather grim tour of Exeter's evidently quite upleasant history ("this is the road where the gallows used to be.... oh, when they were digging the foundations for these shops they found the bones of executed witches... ah, that's the prison there..." - cheers!) off a clearly extremely bored taxi driver. I collapse into my Travelodge bed about 1am, and set the alarm for half five.

This is how I got to work Wednesday morning. Not often you get to say that, is it?

6.45am and the plane should be taking off, but we're still sat at the gate, at which point I do start to question the wisdom of this particular excursion. There wasn't really a lot of slack in the schedule. I'm fidgeting. Switching between tour mode and real life is weird enough at the best of times, but on Wednesday I have a colossally important meeting at 10am with some very senior people - and I've only pre-booked an hour off anyway so I'm supposed to be in at 9.15. Eventually we board and take off, and the early morning mists over Wales and England are beautiful, but I'm in little state to appreciate them. The flight's an hour but feels like about seven. I'm first off, first out, no luggage, sprinting along the moving walkway to the station, on the train, off the train, another sprint across the university campus to my parking space behind the Spar, no time to go inside and dump my bag off, bloody hell, for someone used to setting off to work about half seven the traffic round Piccadilly isn't half hectic at this time, traffic lights, more traffic lights, Oldham Road... and relax. I clock in at 9.12. That was too close. The meeting is dull then adjourned then dull again, and by the time it's finished being dull I'm leaving sadly too late to make it to Liam Frost's HMV instore at half five, so it's a gig-free night on Wednesday. Not many more of them in the near future...

A lovely little warm-up then. The next instalment brings me closer to home, with the wonderful York Fibbers on Thursday and the first big gathering of regulars, this ridiculous sea-fort business on the Mersey Friday, a home fixture at the Roadhouse on Saturday which at the time of writing I am very much still recovering from, and if I'm not too exhausted there's a pub gig in Leicester on Monday. Right now I can't see me not going, but anything could happen between now and then... and no, I've no idea when I'll next post anything. Wednesday, maybe. I've a day to kill in Oxford, and they must have cybercafes down there what with all those students, mustn't they? This is the part of the tour where the wonderful iLiKETRAiNS come on board for a few dates as well, which is about as good as it gets.

That Pimms Bus already seems a really, really long time ago.

Mistys Big Adventure - http://www.mistysbigadventure.co.uk/
British Sea Power - http://www.britishseapower.co.uk
Badly Drawn Boy - http://www.badlydrawnboy.co.uk/
John Betjeman Official Centenary Events - http://www.johnbetjeman.com/
Carruan Field, Polzeath - http://www.carruan.co.uk/
Go to gigs in Exeter c/o FlyBE - http://www.flybe.com
£26 rooms if booked early at Travelodge - http://www.travelodge.co.uk/
Exeter Cavern - http://www.cavernclub.co.uk/
Actress Hands - http://www.myspace.com/actresshands