Darkest Thoughts

Feel a bit knackered…me too….Craig and I are half way to Hull [twinned with your darkest thought], to play the Adelphi, one of my favourite venues, and we’re always competing for bad health. I thought I was a hypochondriac until I met him, now I’m not so sure. He’s pretty good at being ill and matches me symptom for symptom. Thing is my hearing has died in one ear. I think it’s the old wax issue and no amount of finger shoving seems to have any effect. So let the moaning begin. The traffic on this woebegone Friday night is not good and neither is the latte in the services; we finally arrive at 7pm and meet up with Jim the sound engineer who is one of the nicest people you could ever wish to meet. Jim sorts us out. I’m still moaning about my hearing when Craig and I have one of our little tiffs about sound and volume and stage balance and it all feels a bit silly. I apologise and then we’re off to the pub with John Hirst who has lovingly gate-crashed the sound check in the name of modern art. Pretty much everything about John is done in the name of modern art. That’s artists for you. John will soon be making his VP recording debut on the new album, his collection of pound shop paraphernalia must be heard to be believed. I first met John in Belfast with Bill Drummond so we have a bit of a history [John works with Bill]. We talk about getting our hair cut, every month for a year in a different barbers, a notion I find totally appealing. I just need to get my act together. There is lot more information on how to go about this at www.penkilnburn.com which is Bills site. I respectfully suggest you check it out. The pub is rammed as Hull are on the telly. A local fan informs me they have never won a televised game….and tonight they lose again. We find a quiet corner and talk about our fantasy quest to destroy all Irish Traditional Music. I don’t know how we’re going to do it, but someone’s got to. We also cover the paranoia of masculinity, the lunacy of the Blair and the phallacy of Dion Dublin. Throughout all this I’m having finger sex with my right ear and moaning about deafness. We return to the venue and catch Ted Key who used to be in The Housmartins, we know this because he covers most of their hits in his set and makes continual reference to what might have been. He’s a bit of a cabaret compere type. They have clubs up north for people like him apparently. I start the gig with The Hairdresser poem which is my little ode to the all seeing mirror of personal reflection. I still get nervous at the Hairdressers…but all that’s about to change when I hit the barbers. Half way through the set and John requests ‘Egg Incident’ from the Growing up with VP album which we manage to do without breaking a string or bumming a note. It’s nice when people ask for stuff even if they are people you know. We also get a request for ‘We didn’t paint our nails’ which we do for the encore. Thank you Adam for that…sorry we couldn’t manage the lift back to Manchester. OK so the attendance could have been better, but as ever we really enjoyed meeting people afterwards, catching up with people at gigs is always a pleasure. Some people I spoke with last saw me in Devon three years ago…and bought new albums and were very positive. Perhaps I am the Jonathan Coe of alt pop after all? Well that was their take on it, and it'll do for now. No pictures from Hull...so instead, my mother and daughter, best, VPx