They had let her out on the morning of her graduation. Two years, four months, and five days after entering isolation and six months after widespread adoption of the vaccine. They’d lied about almost everything on the program including how long they needed her for. April hung on to the only things that she still believed were true: her blood had saved her friend and would vaccinate the globe. She’d spent most of her life isolated and now she was connected to almost everyone through millions on millions of injections of something synthesised from inside her.
She felt awkward and out of place in the Great Hall. It was the first set of ceremonies to be conducted back in the Wills Memorial since 2019, more than a decade ago, the first time that everyone felt safe converging in such numbers in a confined space. They had arranged a gown for her and let her change at the hospital before a taxi had picked her up to drive her into town. She had kept it from her parents, there would be time to call them later and she hadn’t wanted them to come straight away. She couldn’t really explain it but she’d completed her studies shut away, it was hers and hers alone and she wanted to keep them separate from her memories of her time in Bristol.
In the cab on the way over she had dropped a text to Aps, just a jokey thing commenting on the weather: beautiful day for a graduation. She knew they’d all had their ceremonies already as the scientists (even the pseudo ones like Leah) had been earlier in the week; she’d listened to them all chat about it on one of their regular video calls and been bombarded with photos afterwards, the usual shots of mortar boards thrown into the air, friends arm in arm, laughing families.
There was a shot of Aps that she loved, eyes glowing, facing down the camera with a broad smile. There was no trace of the shattered and wrecked girl that she’d seen in the HDU, no vestige of the months and months of rehabilitation she’d worked through, rebuilding her body, processing what had happened. They had clung to each other for the last two years, speaking every day, working through their memories of their shared experiences and talking about what they were facing now. April would read to her in the first few weeks of her recovery, dialling her up on video, and voicing over whatever she was studying. Later, as Aps got better, she took over the lead on their conversations and April was grateful for that; there were only so many ways to describe her day when every day was basically the same in isolation.
The pictures of Leah and Cora also brought her joy. Leah had grown her hair out, falling down across her shoulders. It was how she wore her hair growing up, she said, when they’d first moved to Italy. Her parents had flown over for her graduation and there were several shots of her and her dad pulling faces at the camera before a final one of the two of them, his arm across her shoulders, him looking at her with a quiet pride. Cora was mostly alone in her pictures but looked content and comfortable in herself. April knew she’d met someone in the last few months, they were taking it slow but it was making her happy. Cora had confided in her the day of her ceremony. She’d hesitated a little as she’d said that she would always love Rob but that she thought that it was finally time to move on.
April took a seat towards the back of the hall which was beginning to fill up. Everyone else gravitated towards the front, filling the rows with the best view. She didn’t mind. She didn’t really know anyone, they’d tried dialling her in on seminars but it had never properly worked trying to keep up with the flow of discussion in the room. They had usually forgotten she was there, a disembodied face on a propped up tablet. Towards the end she’d managed with just viewing the lectures and picking up one to one conversations with her tutor. She had hoped to meet him but couldn’t pick him out in the sea of faces and she felt still too uncertain to try and mingle in the crowd. It was only after she sat down that she realised how overwhelming it all was, like she was undergoing some sort of social bends, coming back up into a large group of people too quickly after so long on her own.
She took a deep breath and stood up. This was too much. She turned to leave.
In the doorway were three women. They weren’t wearing gowns and looked slightly breathless, flush in the cheeks, as if they’d just run up the gothic stairs on their way to the hall. One of them saw her and pointed. And then they were all running, all four, them to April and April to them. She felt arms around her for the first time in two years. They stayed like that for a long time.
“Why are you crying?” said Leah, finally. “You got a first.”
“Yeah,” agreed Cora. “It’s us that should be in tears. We didn’t have to study on our own for our degree and you still did better than us. I think the University’s a bit embarrassed about it to be honest, you’ve made them look bad.”
“They’ll spin it as evidence of the effectiveness of their distance learning programs,” said Leah. “And, I don’t know how to break this to you Cora but we are all kind of crying.”
“What are you doing here?” said April. “How did you know?”
“Really?” said Aps. “You think we wouldn’t figure out your cryptic little text. Absolutely classic April, can’t just come out with it and ask us to come.”
“I never was very good at asking people for help. Ask my therapist.”
“Which one?” said Leah. April laughed.
“Hey, now you’ve graduated you could be April’s new therapist,” said Aps.
“I really don’t think that’s going to work,” said April.
“You could be my lifetime study,” said Leah. “Don’t rule it out. I’ve already worked out our first session. Tonight. Classics night at the Kandi. Classics with an x, obviously, you haven’t missed that much. Indie dance therapy. I’m going to get it peer reviewed, imagine it will be bigger than CBT.”
“I never really got on with CBT,” said April. “But screaming Nirvana songs in your face under a strobe light I think I can get on board with.”
Cora gestured towards the front of the hall where some members of faculty and local dignitaries were taking their place on a stage underneath the building’s dome. Someone tapped a microphone and the four of them squeezed into seats on the back row, Cora and Leah flanking April and Aps in the middle.
Aps held April’s hand until her friend’s name was read out. She gave it a squeeze and let go and they all watched her walk to the front to receive her honours.
April moved seats so that she was as far from the door as possible. She wanted to give Cora some space; it wasn’t the first time that people had been uncomfortable around her. She could hear voices in the hall, a soft Scottish accent lowered so that the words were inaudible. The other April speaking at a more natural volume but with a forced politeness, insisting that Cora came in and that there was nothing to be concerned about. I judge my own risk. April heard that.
April knew what Cora would be doing. Sure enough when they finally came through into the kitchen she was holding her phone, eyes moving from the screen to take in the room, and then back to the screen again. April’s arm was still exposed from where she’d shown her namesake her scars earlier but she wore her MedLet on her right wrist. She rolled up the sleeve and held up the black band, a pale green light emanating from a small face on its outer edge.
“Your phone would have lit up from the street, you know, if I was showing symptoms,” said April. She paused. “Hi, I’m April. But I think you alredy know that.”
Cora sighed and held up her hands. Still ensconced in their gloves. “Look, I’m sorry. I just like to be careful. I know it’s not the best way to meet people.”
“I guess it’s more honest than those air kisses our parents told us about, right?” said April, smiling. “Listen, I wouldn’t ever put anyone at risk. I never skip a test. I wear my MedLet with pride. My CT is zero.” April knew that Cora would already know her contact trace number: your records showed your viral history and the number of people they thought you’d infected. If you’d had any of the strains it was very unusual to show a CT of zero. Some people liked to see their whole sequence of contacts but most stopped at the straight CT number because they didn’t want to know their CD rate: contact deaths. The official messaging was always the same: it’s not your fault as long as you followed the guidelines but it was hard not to feel culpable.
The other April had busied herself distributing the tea that they’d made just before Cora had arrived. She put two of the mugs on the table and took a sip of her own. Nobody else moved to drink theirs. There was an uncomfortable silence. April rolled her sleeves back down and muttered that she need to sort out her room, unpack. She left, circling Cora, allowing her to step further into the room so that there was always a distance between them.
The two of them left in the kitchen picked up some halting small-talk. Cora’s journey had been long but uneventful; they had both picked Bristol for science courses, April for Chemistry, Cora for Zoology; they had done similar A levels; neither of them had lived away from home before. Cora had no siblings. April did. They got on to nicknames and April let slip that her sisters had always called her ‘Aps’ for short and that maybe the house should do that, save the confusion with two of them having the same name. Cora nodded. She didn’t particularly want to be known as Cor. Only one person had ever called her that. Sensing that Cora had quietened again April – Aps – felt obliged to show that she wore a MedLet as well although she felt sure that she would have done her homework and known that she’d never been in isolation. She remembered something.
“You were never in ICU, were you?” Aps asked.
Cora lowered her gaze but Aps caught the momentary look of sadness in her eyes. “Not ICU, no, but I was in soft isolation once. Just a month. Precautionary, never had anything. Doesn’t go on your record. I don’t really like to talk about it, if that’s okay?”
“It’s not really okay, is it?” came a voice from the door. It was April.
“It’s not something I like to talk about.”
“But it’s okay to come in with all your I judge my own risk and your gloves and your suspicion? It’s okay to refuse to meet me at the door until you’ve run your checks, got the all clear from MedApp?” April saw the untouched tea on the table. “It’s okay to refuse the drink? Let me guess? You’ve got your own mug, haven’t you?”
Cora looked at the floor. “It’s not like that. I just…”
“Just want privacy the rest of us don’t get to have, is that it?” April was shaking her head. “Come on, I’ll leave it alone but at least tell me I was right about the mug.”
The air in the room seemed to have been sucked out. April was staring at Cora, Aps had turned away, went to rinse the remnants of her tea out in the sink. Cora was slowly shaking in her chair, picking at her fingers until she suddenly peeled off the gloves and lay them on the table. She looked up at April, eyes pricked with tears but she didn’t break her gaze.
“I was in soft isolation because my boyfriend died. He picked it up. He should have been alright, he was healthy, no underlying conditions…” She punctuated each syllable of un-der-ly-ing-con-dit-ions by stabbing her finger into the table in time with her speech. “He should have been alright but he wasn’t. I was in isolation when they cremated him. Alone. He was alone. I was alone. So, now, you just leave me the fuck alone.”
April started to try to say something but Cora stopped her.
“And, yes, of course I’ve got my own fucking mug.”
Remember that time when we danced in the kitchen to “All My Friends”? It was the end of the night, all of us back together, ten year anniversary meet up. Later on the two of us had drifted off to sleep listening to the sound of “Astral Weeks” floating up through the floorboards, rising like a soft, sweet spell through the house. The covers were still kicked off the bed, lost in the urgency of our prior entanglement. The last thing I heard before you started calling my name, over and over, breath rising faster, coming now in gasps, was Van singing love to love to love to love to love to love and then, for a good long while there was no sound except the beating of your heart, my head collapsed on your chest, your fingers in my hair. I guess I never learn.
I woke up around five a.m., skin raised in bumps against the early morning chill. You must have rolled across the bed at some point in the night taking the duvet with you. Part of me saw the funny side; everything between us in bed had been the same as it always was and you stealing the covers was no different. You were always selfish in bed. To be honest I’d been drunk enough this time that I couldn’t even remember if I’d come last night or even if I particularly cared. I sat for a while on the edge of the bed, arms criss-crossed, knees pulled up to my chest, hands rubbing some warmth back into my body. The room was stale with the smell of last night’s booze and last night’s sex. The sun would be rising soon and it felt like watching it might be my only consolation from a predictable and miserable weekend. I pulled on some clothes and left the room as quietly as I could. Not out of concern. I couldn’t face another one of our morning-after conversations.
The night’s black was softening to a dark blue as I left the house. Someone was asleep on the sofa in the lounge, TV fizzing with static lines opposite them. The kitchen looked like a Tracey Emin installation, there was a skyline of discarded, empty bottles arranged in a line on the table we’d all sat round for dinner a few hours ago, and the floor was strewn with a set of clues about how the evening had gone. Several corks. Smudged cigarette ash. Somebody’s iPhone. A bra. Not mine. Too big. I guessed maybe it was Lizzie’s. A pair of Levi’s. Also not mine. I couldn’t place them but I knew they weren’t yours. I remembered enough to know we’d made it upstairs still dressed. I knew because the anticipation of you was always what tripped me up, seemingly even after all this time. Van was still singing quietly from the speaker in the kitchen. Stuck on repeat through the night.
It was chilly outside but the air cleared the fog in my head; the cold felt like clarity, cutting through last night’s heat. It had been a surprise to see you and maybe that’s why all my good intentions turned bad. What’s that saying? The road to hell is paved with good intentions. It wasn’t hell. At best it was two old friends rekindling something they once sort of had. At worst it was a drunken reunion fuck that didn’t last long enough to remember why we’d ever slept together in the first place. You seemed to enjoy it so I guess I could console myself with the fact that I’ve still got it. The worst of it really is that it happened, that I let it happen, made it happen even. It had been a good night, catching up with old faces and kicking around the times we’d all been together before, living on top of each other in student rentals and cooking up another variation on pasta and tuna, or toast, endless rounds of toast, and drinking cheap sherry straight from the bottle before we’d head out to some retro 70s night at the Union. It was only ten years on and now it was all Prosecco and tagines – one meat, one vegetarian – and swapping stories about first homes, second homes, mortgages, trips to Ikea and how many weddings there had been this year. Underneath I guess it was still the same. The dynamics in the group settled into the same rhythms. Me and you settled into the same rhythm.
How could I have been so fucking stupid? You hadn’t changed. The same cock-sure smile, the same easy conversation, the same self-assuredness. When you’d told me you were “in the City” now I nearly spat out my wine. It was too obvious and too perfect. Of course you were “in the City” and, no doubt, perfectly at home there. You didn’t look surprised when I said I was teaching. God, I think you even said something, it could have been “good for you” like the patronising twat you are and, instead of turning away and joining back in the conversation about that night we all moved our mattresses out of our rooms and slept outside in the Quad when we were all in Halls, I smiled and thanked you. I was like a needle being dropped on vinyl. I just settled back into a groove that had been well worn in years ago and let the same old song spin. We both knew the tune and the words. It’s a song I thought I’d given up singing.
The sun lit the horizon and a honey-glow spread across the gardens around the house. Birds began to chatter and trill, breaking the stillness of the dawn. My head was starting to ache and so I headed back into the wreckage of the kitchen to see if somewhere amid the carnage there was a packet of paracetamol. Even just a glass of water. Something to shake the pain. I guess, misguided as I was, that’s all you were the night before. Something to shake the pain.
Disclaimer: I said I’d stretch the definition of “record” and this post definitely tests it to breaking point. At times it also seriously tests my powers of memory: everything here is true but I can’t guarantee that details haven’t been embellished by time. The video footage contains haircuts that some viewers may find distressing. Oh, and in case it gets confusing, there were two people called Phil in the band. I was one of them.
Intro
“The best mates”
– Listen, listen, I’ve got a great name for the band.
– What band ?
– The one we’re starting.
– O-kaay, what is it ?
– Picture this. The stage is dark. Audience going insane. Intro music starts up… “it’s time to play the music, it’s time to light the lights, it’s time to meet The Muppets on the Muppet show tonight”… We’re on stage. Straight into the first song.
– The Muppets ?
– The Muppets.
“The guitarist and the singer”
– Richie’s in.
– Really ? You asked him ?
– Well, I didn’t really let him say no but that doesn’t matter. He’s in.
– Can he play ?
– Can he play ? He’s awesome. Strat. Gibson SG – think he’s played at the Rock Garden or something.
– Sounds promising.
– He’s got a singer as well.
– Who ?
– Andy. You know him, he’s got a room at the other end of block 7 to you.
– Yeah, I know him. Can he sing ?
– Don’t know. Apparently.
“The Chem Soc Ball”
– We’ve got a gig.
– What do you mean we’ve got a gig ? We’re not ready.
– We’ve got a gig. Chemistry Society Ball. I know the guy that’s organising it – I told him that we normally only play around town but that we’d do it for him as a favour.
– I haven’t got an amp…
– Borrow one, it’ll be fine.
– You haven’t got an amp or, in fact, a bass…
– I’m buying one, don’t worry.
– We don’t know any songs…
– I’ve been thinking about that – about a set-list. Just need a few songs that are pretty easy to play but still amazing. I’m thinking rock obviously.
– Obviously… but we don’t have a drummer…
– No but I’ve been recommended a guy. It’ll be fine. Bit older than us, think he’s doing a post-grad in space science or astro physics. Something like that. Got his own kit and, even better, his own car.
– When’s this gig ?
– Two weeks.
“The rocket scientist”
– *knock knock*
– (Answering door) Yeah ? Hi ?
– Alex ?
– Yes
– Hi, I’m Phil, this is Phil. Sorry to disturb you – we’ve heard you’re a drummer.
– Er… yeah, I guess. I play in a couple of bands.
– Fancy joining another one ?
– Well, I suppose I don’t mind sitting in to see how it goes.
– Great, you’re in.
– What are we called ?
– The Muppets. Don’t worry, we’ll probably change it.
Verse one
Late Spring and the French doors leading from Beaumont Hall to the Botanical Gardens are flung open. Outside curious botanists mingle with unwinding students. Inside five young men set about the task of setting up a rehearsal space. On one side of the room someone carefully unpacks a Fender Stratocaster from its flight case, sets up a myriad of effects pedals, pulls a dust cover from a Roland amp, plugs in, briefly consults a digital tuner on the floor and then refines each note by ear. On the other side of the room someone else absent mindedly strums a cheap, unbranded guitar plugged in to a borrowed amp and chats to the bassist. Somewhere in the middle the drummer puts together his kit with a precision that tells of countless hours placing snares, toms and cymbals, whilst the singer paces, nothing to do.
The drummer signals that he’s almost done and one of the guitarists – the one that isn’t holding his instrument like it’s about to bite him – suggests starting with “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”. The band are booked to play The Chem Soc Ball and, by way of warm up, have persuaded the social committee at their halls of residence to let them play the hall bar. A set list, largely featuring songs with no more than three chords, has been agreed and this Dylan song, albeit the at-the-time current Guns ‘N Roses version, is on it.
The opening bars of the song ring out into the room, the guitarist picking nonchalantly. A certain tension rests across the remainder of the room – they’ve never played together before, never even heard the drummer, are supposed to be performing publically in a couple of days, and then at a function where people have paid for the privilege of attending. A set of circumstances built on a fair amount of bullshit, an object lesson in how far a lot of front can take you. All of it crystallising in this moment – if they can’t run through a mid tempo, three chord Dylan song then the exercise will surely be exposed for the sham that it is ?
The drummer makes a final adjustment to his snare, sits down on his stool, twirls a stick between his fingers and, four bars in, effortlessly plays a run round his kit before everyone comes crashing in to the first verse. Perfectly on time and in tune. Everyone exhales, looks at each other and grins. Music. They might actually get away with this.
Chorus
The bar at Beaumont Hall is packed. A night’s free entertainment, curiosity value, friendship – whatever the reasons, they had come. It’s hot, the warm evening air ratcheted up several degrees by the mass of bodies. Drink flows liberally and the mood is exuberant, expectant. A receptive home crowd.
Five people detach themselves from the throng and move to the end of the room where instruments are already arranged. The same spot where, two short weeks ago, they’d first come together to play. No stage, just an area for the band demarcated by a line of microphone stands.
The crowd are appreciative before they even hear a note, a cheer erupting at the sight of guitars being slung over shoulders and the crackle of leads pushed into amplifiers. The band pause, look at each other, exchange nods of affirmation and it begins. Thirty breathless, blurred minutes, and eight songs, later it ends – all they had time to learn. They’re not allowed to get away so easily, the audience demanding more. So they play the entire set again, grinning at each other, at this thing they’ve started.
Verse two
Late Autumn, eighteen months on from that first gig, and the five members of The Muppets crowd round a sound engineer in a run down studio in the centre of Leicester. He pushes faders up and down on the mixing desk in front of him, removes his headphones, spins in his chair and looks up at the band: “what’s next ?”
They’ve been there all day having scraped together the cash between them to book out the space and record some songs: their songs. There’s only time to get down four songs, the playback of each one painfully highlighting each mistake, each chord out of time, each dropped note, in a way that’s usually covered up in the immediacy of a live performance. It’s a sobering, painstaking experience but they persevere, repeating takes, over dubbing – trying to make the best document they can.
At the close of the day they leave – a solitary cassette containing four tunes the only tangible reward for their efforts but all flushed with the deep satisfaction at having created something new.
Chorus
The band on stage at Stamford Hall is the same one that started out across the road in Beaumont two years ago. The same but different. Better. The rhythm guitarist now at least looks as if he’s on speaking terms with his guitar. The bass and drums play as a unit, each song not necessarily gathering unwanted pace as it goes but staying in tempo. The lead guitarist still doesn’t realise quite how good he is, knocking out dexterous solos almost casually, and the singer now looks comfortable and confident on stage. They’re tighter musically but more relaxed performing.
The audience is bigger and pulled from a broader constituency than their own circle; still a student crowd but now drawn by word of mouth and reputation. They’re no less engaged for it and, by the end of the set, most of the room is up, dancing.
The University film society are here, recording the gig for posterity – freezing in time the band at their high point. Freezing in time the impetuosity to start something from scratch, the commitment to actually carry it through, and the time to turn it into something good. And, yes, also freezing in time some misguided leather trousers, a waistcoat that’s since gone on to a successful solo career touring with Mumford & Sons, and some of the worst hair ever grown on a human head. Mostly though freezing in time one of many fun, joyful nights playing music.
Bridge
The Muppets played a big part in almost three years of my life; I can remember rather more about the hours of rehearsal and playing than I can about, say, Jean Jacques Rousseau or any of the other great political philosophers that made up my degree course. Think I was more of a John Locke kind of guy.
There are numerous fragments that still raise a smile over twenty years later. Our very first rehearsal was marked with absurdity; as we practiced “Rain” (The Cult) the refrain in the chorus “here comes the rain” caused an elderly couple, outside browsing the Botanical Gardens, to pause at the window, peer in, raise their palms upwards and frown in enquiry. We once played someone’s 21st in London, Richie broke a string on both his guitars mid set, and so the rest of us had to try and fill whilst he repaired the damage – cue the single biggest crime against the blues ever perpetrated as we launched into an impromptu jam. I knew nothing, not even a simple scale, a semi-quaver might as well have been a crisp that failed the quality assurance process at the Walkers factory, so my response to being told that we were going to jam in D was to just play a D chord over and over and over…
There was a regular event at the University for student bands to play – the Old Coffee Bar Club. Periodically it would host covers night which marked a couple of our finer hours as we always flung ourselves into the spirit of it, picking one band, learning a few of their songs and then trying to dress up like them. The Stones were fairly straight forward (“Jumping Jack Flash”, “Sympathy For The Devil”, “Wild Horses”, “ You Can’t Always Get What You Want”) and gave us an excuse to break out a nice line in 60s wigs; presumably I was Brian Jones. Better was Take That (“Only Takes A Minute”, “Take That & Party”, “Could It Be Magic”) where our efforts extended to a couple of brief pieces of choreography and waistcoats over bare (frankly pretty pasty) torsos; presumably I was Jason Orange.
All of those songs, including the Take That ones, stayed in our growing set. By the end we covered a fairly broad range from Seal’s “Crazy” to The Cult’s “She Sells Sanctuary” by way of perennial crowd pleasers – EMF’s “Unbelievable” and the Black Crowes’ take on “Hard To Handle” – through to some slightly more esoteric choices that we liked – The Doors’ “Maggie M’Gill” and JJ Cale’s “After Midnight”. Along the way we lost Bon Jovi’s “Keep The Faith” (top note in chorus too high), Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” (very difficult to play tight), and, due to various disagreements, never quite got round to adding Sister Sledge’s “Lost In Music”, REM’s “Losing My Religion”, or Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. On top of which we’d fashioned about ten of our songs which stood up pretty well – even usually closing with the epic “Boy I’m So Glad (I’m Not You)”, a slow burner that borrowed a bit structurally (okay, quite a bit) from “Freebird”.
Song choices were probably the biggest source of argument in the band as everyone had diverse tastes. They were also a source of tension in that, sometimes, there were songs we couldn’t do due to my lack of technical ability. The most notable instance being Lenny Kravitz’s “Are You Gonna Go My Way”. It’s a pretty simple riff but still too complicated for me and so, despite everyone else firmly believing it would go down a storm, we didn’t do it. This only became problematic when we played a “Battle of the Bands” at one of the halls of residence. By this point we had long since left living in halls and so turned up without an audience full of our friends, albeit with a reputation for being pretty good. First band on were clearly at the point in their group’s life cycle that we’d been at earlier in this piece: brand new, enthusiasm to burn, and a room stocked full of their mates. They opened with sodding “Are You Gonna Go My Way” and the place went berserk. “Battle of the Bands” was declared an unsatisfactory draw. Maybe we pinched it on away goals but it felt like defeat.
And the long mooted name change ? It was discussed many, many times – endless suggestions that not everybody could agree on. As an example, Phil suggested “Seahorse” (him: “it’s exotic and mysterious”, me: “it’s shit”) which was largely ridiculed only for John Squire to name his post Roses band The Seahorses a couple of years later. I was right though, dreadful name for a band. The closest we came to changing was to “The Big Bush Experience” – which I guess we (wrongly) thought was just the right side of cheeky innuendo without being puerile. It only lasted one gig as everyone just kept asking us when we were changing back and referred to as The Muppets regardless. So it stuck.
Final Chorus
The posters outside the Princess Charlotte (don’t look for it, it’s not there anymore) proclaim “local showcase”: bottom of the bill, The Muppets. The posters inside the Charlotte, promoting gigs long since past, whisper the promise of this venue, a roll call of bands that have made it in the last twenty years: Radiohead, Pulp, The Stone Roses, Oasis, Blur, The Killers, Primal Scream, Muse, and the Manics. It might be a spit and sawdust pub in the East Midlands serving up lukewarm beer in plastic glasses but it represents the one thing that drives all aspiring bands: hope.
The bands to be showcased loiter in the back-stage room, all feigning an air of cool detachment, like none of this matters, like it’s something that they do all the time. But it’s all artifice, all a little too studied to be real. There’s palpable nerves all round.
Being bottom of the bill offers only one advantage: you play first. The Muppets have been allocated 15 minutes and four songs but, staying true to the grandest traditions, stretch this out by tacking two songs together and closing with something that goes on for about 7 minutes. In all they probably manage 25 minutes before bowing out, reacting with innocent surprise to the annoyance of the proceeding acts.
The audience reaction is good, if a little less enthusiastic than they’ve become used to. This isn’t solely their crowd. It’s a shift from known student band playing to other students, often at events involving large amounts of booze, to unknown local band playing to paying gig goers. It’s a shift that reveals what’s involved in really trying to make it – the days and days of rehearsing, the relentless slog round pubs and clubs begging to perform, then playing to tiny rooms of people, hoping eventually to build a following. It’s a shift that they never made.
Outro
– We’ve been thinking about the band next year…
– Great, good – we have too.
– Yeah, well it’s a bit awkward, but we’re thinking of staying in Leicester and carrying it on. Only…
– I think we’re thinking the same sorts of things…
– …only, we’d like to move on in a different direction. Andy wants to play guitar, there’s some other stuff we want to try… More blues based. Walking bass lines. That sort of thing.
– So what are you saying ?
– We think it’d be better if we call it a day with the current line up. I mean, Alex is still going to drum, and Phil, if you want to play bass then that might still work…
– But you’re kicking me out ?
– Ah, don’t take it like that, it’s time to change – it’s time to do something else. You’re in to different stuff anyway…
– Is this because of that fucking Lenny Kravitz song… ?
Coda
It wasn’t really about that fucking Lenny Kravitz song. In part, though, it was a reflection (a fair reflection to be honest) on relative technical ability in the band – I couldn’t play to the standard of the others.
To his eternal credit Phil never took up the offer to remain in the band. It was essentially our friendship (and his incredible drive and ridiculous ability to get people to do things that, rationally, made no sense for them to do) that had started the whole thing and our solidarity stood fast to the end. Continues to do so to this day.
The Muppets mark 2 – I genuinely forget what they re-christened themselves – did carry on for a while in Leicester. I saw them play at a pub on new year’s eve, I guess 1994/5, and it was a strange, sad experience watching Andy, Rich, Alex, and some new bassist (who, yes, did indeed play a lot of walking bass lines) run through a lot of our old set. Still no Kravitz though.
However, my abiding memory of those couple of years isn’t one of sadness for what might have been but one of real pride in what we did – it might not seem like much in the scheme of things but we recorded a bunch of our own songs, played to a lot of happy people, and shared a lot of great moments. Some of which – lost in a song on stage, watching the reaction of the audience, seeing people respond to something you’re creating – are amongst the happiest of my life.
42 @ 42 