Saturday 6th February1999

London - The Garage

After the trials and tribs of last weeks gig, I knew that this gig had to be a good one. Those kind and thoughtful young chaps Midget let us squeeze onto the bill of their London show and it was great to see them again. They have grown up a bit both musically and in inches since the days when they supported Carter on the final tour. We arrived at The Garage in time to watch Midget's soundcheck which sounded pretty bloody good.

Thanks to the Midget crew and the guys from the venue crew we were ready to soundcheck ourselves in record time. Unfortunately by the time that we had gotten everything working on-stage Andy (our bass player) still hadn't turned up. Alain and myself took turns playing bass whilst the other played guitar, it all sounded pretty shambolic but we knew that it'd be all right on the night as long as Andy showed up.

Luckily for us and the ears of the audience Andy did turn up, apparently he had been doing something very rock 'n' roll and had lost track of time. It was still very early and about 2 hours till doors, so I took the opportunity to wander over to a nearby pub and do a quick interview with Anthony and Dan from Drummachine. It was a good little interview and helped me air a few of the ideas that had been flying around my head for a bit. I'lllet you know when it's out and about.

I got back to the venue in time to see The Vow jump on-stage and race through a very nice set of '90s punk rock songs. I really enjoyed them as did a lot of the folk in the now rapidly filling venue. Andy Midget told me that they were from their home town and he had produced a single for them. There were certainly a few songs in the set that would make great singles.

Next on were Lukan, who were an odd choice for a Midget gig, they were kind of heavy metal. Great musicians, intricate and abrasive songs, but somehow completely out of place.

Thanks to some highly efficient and superior roadie work, we were ready to go on-stage at the appointed time of 21:10 and after a few 'hellos' to people in the audience I started the set with "There's Nobody Less Rock 'n' Roll Than Me". Venue sound people, Dave and Helena really know their stuff, so both the on-stage and out-front sound was superb.

We only had a 30 minute slot so we decided to go for the unsubtle set, leaving out the mellower songs in favour of the harder faster numbers. It certainly did the trick as we got some excellent crowd surfing and the bunch of nutty enthusiast at the front really went for it.

I think that we also found some new friends tonight as quite a lot of Midget's audience seemed to be enjoying themselves and nodding and smiling.

I had a blue whale of a time, and I think that it was the best gig so far. We sold 80 CDs thanks to the sterling efforts of Nikki, Der, Brian and Crissi. It was great to see some old friend's from the Carter tours and also to put faces to some of the folk that I have been emailing for the last couple of years.

A top night out! Thanks to crew Daz, Harry, Chris, Der and Nikki