: 05 April 2002 :

(the survey continues)

Yesterday, I

went to see Belle and Sebastian at Brixton Academy. I went there with my new short haircut with the slanty fringe, and my eyeliner on, feeling good to be going out and meeting some old mates. The gig was fucking ace, as good as I’d expected.

Waking up that morning was exciting in itself, in the knowledge that that evening I’d be having a great time with my friends around me. I went into town and bought a coach ticket to London. I dropped into the coffee shop I used to work in and had a chat with Ann, the manager. I had lunch at home and then wandered outside, where the cat from next door was sitting on the high wall at the end of the back garden two feet away from another (beautiful) cat. They were sitting fairly comfortably in the sun, whining at each other. I couldn’t get them to break it up, but they didn’t look like they were actually going to do anything so I left them. Our cat was just rolling on the grass looking carefree and unconcerned and daft.

I noticed that there were two frogs in the little weed-covered pond in the corner, their heads just sticking out of the water. I hadn’t seen them before, and it made me happy to know they were there. I hoped none of the cats would eat them.

After lunch I went into London on the coach and met my friends, and we headed off to the Academy. Three of my mates bought t-shirts (I was wearing the one I got when I saw them in Glasgow). I bought two issues of Careless Talk Costs Lives, which is probably the best music mag around at the moment.

There were Strange Fruit DJs playing before the gig started, and when they played the Magnetic Fields’ “The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side” I thought of the girl who I would have loved to have next to me. When they followed it with “Sensitive” by the Field Mice I thought my heart was going to burst. Support act were Life Without Buildings, who were alright but a bit samey - they didn’t really fill the stage, and it wasn’t till the end of the last number that they really cut loose with the unrestrained art-rock I’d been hoping for. We talked and drank and waited.

I’m still getting tingles all down my spine just thinking about B+S. They started with “Sleep The Clock Around,” and it sounded great, and Stuart and Isobel messed up one of the verses, and Mick stuck a microphone into the audience and a girl with a Spanish accent said

in a town so small there’s no escaping you
in a town so small there’s nothing left to do

and all of these things and more are the reasons why it was a great night.

Other highlights: they unexpectedly played “You Made Me Forget My Dreams,” which brought tears to my eyes as it often does when I hear it... they did a song called “Wandering Alone” off the Storytelling soundtrack and everyone in the audience was doing flamenco handclaps... they left the stage and got a steel band on halfway through (two steel drummers, one drummer and a bassist) who did a fantastic five-minute version of “No Woman No Cry” that went through a load of different songs too... the band came back on stage and did an instrumental number with the steel drummers as well... they did a big breakdown in the middle of “Legal Man” where everything except the bass dropped away and the rest of the band (and the string section) played percussion... they did “Judy and the Dream of Horses” with Sarah and Isobel playing recorders, and that was the last one they did before they went off...

And then, and then... I couldn’t really believe it. They came back on for one more, and I heard the chords start up and I thought “is this...” and it was, when the riff came in, it was “Another Girl Another Planet” by the Only Ones. Only one of my favourite songs of all time. And it was great, and Stuart did the voice and everything, and it was the perfect ending. It rang in my ears all the way home.

After we got out we found a bar that was still open and had some more to drink, still in a kind of daze from the excitement. We got on the Tube and rode a few stops before the others had to get off for the coach back to Oxford. I got the train north.

There was a bloke sitting opposite me for the last few stops, who I got talking with. He said he’d been down in Brixton too, and it was all a bit in-your-face because he lived in Scarborough. He said he always found London dead exciting but kind of intimidating too. We talked about bands, and how much we loved going to see them, all kinds of bands in different shapes and sizes and styles. He was 24, he said, and didn’t go out that much any more. “I used to love me bands, and love me draw, but now I work on the railways and they do random drugs tests so I had to knock it all on the head.” He’d done Glastonbury and Reading every year from ’91 to ’98, he said. Saw Oasis years ago at a free festival when the Senseless Things were headlining. “Who remembers them now, eh?”

We got off the train and kept talking as we walked, until he said he wanted to find somewhere that’d sell him some fags. “Goodbye, kid,” he said. “Good luck.”

“Yeah, you too.”

I rang the girl as I was walking back, wanting to share all of my excitement that was still fizzing up and which I knew she’d want to hear about, so many miles away across the world.

Today, I

am sitting at the computer in the dining room of an empty house, a cold Stella not far away. I’m finishing writing this, the entry I started yesterday morning. I’m feeling pretty melancholy today, quite in keeping with having seen B+S, because the reason I keep coming back to them, the reason I like them, is that they make me feel sad. I really hope you understand. To listen to the songs is to have someone put their finger exactly on the way you’re feeling, the way you’d love to be playing football in a sunny park right now but instead you’re sat inside at a computer. Last night at the gig Stuart said they’d be having a kickabout by the Albert Memorial at about 5 o’clock today, and I dearly would have loved to go but in the end I didn’t.

Lying in bed in London this morning I thought about going to the park for the kickabout and getting a later coach home, but I didn’t have the guts to go on my own. I just came straight back on the coach, pretty much. I read Issue 11 of Careless Talk, which was just as good as Issue 12. (They’re numbered backwards - Issue 10’s the newest one). Several mentions of the Shop Assistants, which made me smile, and a paragraph reminiscing about Jesse Garon and the Desperadoes, which made me bounce up and down with excitement because I know one of the former members.

Tonight, I got in and fed the cat, then sat out in the garden with a beer in my hand and tears in my eyes as I thought about last night. Not sad but happy-sad - there was an article in Careless Talk about holiday comedowns, and that‘s the way I felt. Kind of subdued after so much excitement, and glad to be able to sit and remember how great it all was.

Didn’t do that much this evening. I was in the mood for some enjoyable nonsense, so I watched The Golden Voyage of Sinbad that I had taped. Friends was on too, the first time I’d watched it in ages. Reece Witherspoon was on as Rachel’s sister, which didn’t quite make up for how bad the programme was. I’d not expected it to leave me quite so cold, but it did. Good episode of Bilko on later, though. I swear I’m turning into my grandad.

Tomorrow, I

will go to the bank and pay in the cheque for £150 my grandparents gave me. There wasn’t really any reason for them to give me it. It was a nice thing for them to do, and also a helpful one, because I don’t have a lot of money at the moment. I’ve got a big cheque waiting for me in Oxford, but I’m not going to be there to collect it for another ten days or so. I didn’t tell my grandparents any of this, I just thanked them.

Then in the evening my friend Mo’s coming over. I phoned her today when I was coming back home on the coach, because I really didn’t much fancy being at home on my own tonight, and asked if she was doing anything and did she want to come to mine. She said she was maybe going to the cinema tonight but that she could come tomorrow night. I said I’d cook her dinner. She reminded me that she was a vegetarian. I reminded her what my address was.

It’ll be good to see her again, I’ve not seen her in ages. Lots to catch up on. I’ll write again and let you know how it went.