Thursday 28th October 1999

Oxford - The Bullingdon

The journey to the gig was pretty uneventful, new driver / t-shirt man Der drove us safely up the M40 and through the streets of Oxford. We found the venue very easily as it is a couple of doors down from the Zodiac where Carter had played several times.

We had a fairly painless soundcheck and were looked after well by Landlord Mike, Mark, Oz and the rest of the Bullingdon crew.

There were four bands on tonight and it wasn't long before the first band JC Regulator took to the stage and entertained the admittedly small crowd with a poppy punky set of great songs.

Next on were Kamikaze Kitten a mostly girl band with a boy bass player. They were really good, with great tunes and an interesting variety of instruments. Their keyboard had refused to work in the soundcheck so the keyboard player was improvising with all sorts of strange and plastic instruments. The guitarist singer was using my amp and it would have been nice if she wasn't so ignorant and actually thanked me. I don't know if they were shy, but they did all seem a bit off to me. They are a good band though so I'm willing to forgive.

Then came the Scrutineers who gave us a set of quirky, complicated, twisted slices of pop. They actually gave me one of their CDs too and it is bloody great. E-mail me if you're interested and I'll contact them for you.

Vis The Spoon, stand-up poet and generally drunken bloke was the compare for the night and introduced Abdoujaparov with a great poem about how he hates punk rock.

We played a pretty good set and I managed some awful jokes almost rivalling Mr Spoon. I really didn't realise that I was forming a comedy band when I started out with Abdou, but it does seem to head in that direction, especially live.

Given the quality of all of the bands tonight, it was a real shame that there wasn't many people at the gig. Those that were there had a great night out.

I do have two not too minor complaints about the evening though and I hope that Mike and the crew don't mind me bringing this up.. The PA was sounding a bit awful. I know that the venue had been having some sound problems and these were being fixed as we arrived for the soundcheck. It certainly needs more attention though, the vocals in particular sounded very muffled from the audience's point of view.

The other thing is a pet hate of mine and it is a constant bone of contention for bands and promoters. The drink rider was just one round of beers and any additional beer had to be bought out of the band's fee. As a band on the road we don't make any money and we are lucky to break even on a gig, to have to pay for our beers too is difficult to say the least.

I know that Abdoujaparov aren't Carter and can't expect the same treatment or crowds that Carter enjoyed but a basic reasonable rider should be standard. England is the only country in the world where it isn't.

End of rant.

We left the venue with lot's of compliments from the punters who had turned up. We had a mutual appreciation back slapping session with the other bands and headed off to Cheltenham where we were staying the night courtesy of Der.

We spent the next four or five hours trawling through Der's wonderful 70's vinyl collection. So it was King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Bowie, Focus etc etc. I haven't had so much fun for ages.

Harry was in heaven.