Bit of a Blur by Alex James Read Free Book Online Page A

circumstances.

Early Performances
    The flat was right next to college, but my course work was suffering. I wasn’t concentrating on French. Seymour was starting to get interesting. We did a gig at a place called Dingwalls in Camden, supporting a band from Manchester. When we arrived for the soundcheck with our entourage the headline act were quite unpleasant towards us. They were really nasty, and they were rubbish. Adam was quite drunk. He was going through a phase of contorting his face with sticky tape, so that he looked like a monster. He had stuck his lips back so that you could see his gums, that day. He’d spent a long time with a tampon taped to his forehead at college, but moved on to looking disfigured when he graduated with a 2:1, quite a good degree. He had sold one of his sculptures to a rich aristocrat lady who lived off Regent’s Park and he was feeling invincible.
    The second time the singer from the other band said something Adam walked over and punched him in the face. He could handle himself with the Deptford vagabonds: he wasn’t going to tolerate any nonsense from that poodle.
    The gig went well. We had written a few good songs by then. We played ‘She’s So High’, ‘Sing’, some short, fast songs and crazy instrumentals, and ended with a very long, very fast one. I went home with Justine on the last tube and after I left it got really nasty. Graham was sprayed with Mace by Dingwalls’ security and Adam had to go to hospital. But there was a review the next week in Music Week magazine, a bone-dry music industry paper, about a new band called ‘the Feymour’. It said that they were good. We did more gigs around Camden and New Cross. People from college came and flailed about down at the front.
    I thought it was kind of the people who ran the Beat Factory to let us use the studio and eat all their cheese. It seemed very generous of them. They wanted to manage the band. They sent demo tapes and a copy of the Dingwalls Music Week review to all the record labels. Andy Ross, who had a record company called Food, was the only one who liked the demo enough to come and see us. He bought us beers. He was nice and we appreciated the drinks. Bands don’t get paid for those support slots.
    The hottest new bands all played in the back room of a pub in Camden Town called the Falcon. Andy said he’d bring his business partner to see us when we played there. We were the second support band at the tiniest venue in London, but it was the glimmer of an opportunity and we pulled out all the stops to get as many people to that show as possible. Graham designed flyers with a man eating himself and we stuck them up around college. We made certain that all the nutters and freakers came. There was one guy, a posh American kid, who would go into a completely wigged-out trance. That always looked good. He was confirmed to attend and give it everything on the night. He was in love with Adam’s Amazonian sister Jo, who was rumoured to have lived in a graveyard in Islington. She was coming too. We pulled a crowd of about thirty committed arty outsiders for the big night.
    All the early shows were shambolic. We poured wine all over each other before we went on and during the set, and usually smashed up the drums on the last song. Occasionally, when it was going really well, we’d smash them up before the end. That used to annoy Dave. There were gaps where things came unplugged and amps fell over as we bundled around the stage. It was carnage, and very loud. It was great fun.
    Some of the songs were supposed to hurt. Andy’s partner, Dave Balfe, didn’t like those very much, he said at the bar afterwards. He asked lots of questions and said we were mainly rubbish, but very occasionally brilliant. All that we knew about Dave Balfe was that he had been the keyboard player in the Teardrop Explodes. He was in his mid-thirties and he talked and looked like a mad headmaster. I liked him straight away. I loved the Teardrop