I used to be in a band. I love being able to say that. The only thing better to say is I am in a band. But I am not, I am bathing the kids, and that's great too.
Being in the band is altogether a long story and I was thinking lately, I am not doing myself any favours with the irrelevant details I've been putting on here, if I want you to keep coming back to read Read Pole - which I really do.
This is something that struck me again when I saw Twitter referred to as a "micro Blogging site" in a Times article. Admittedly the article was putting the mockers on the Twitter revolution, saying 90% of the content comes from 10% of the users. I inferred that if people wanted a blog they wanted it short.
So, having described all that in far too much unnecessary detail. I'll spare you the details.
I wanted to write about one particular event during the early part of the bands life, beacause I heard a similar story on a podcast recently and it reminded me of this time.
It was one of our first gigs at a local venue and we'd filled the place with friends. Through our network of friends, we'd managed to attract quite a crowd of people we didn't know too.
The gig went down really well and we felt like superstars, everyone wanted to tell us how great we were and to talk to us. There was even some guy trying to sign us up for a management contract, although he didn't seem much more than a keen amatuer. In fact, I think I was quite rude to him in my drunked obnoxious superstar state, because the business card he was showing said something about carpets. I hope he wasn't a missed opportunity.
Anyway at one point, a slightly drunken first year student from the local University blocked me on my way to the bar and she was excitedly bouncing up and down with a pen in her hand. I couldn't hear too well for the music, but she was clearly asking me to sign her tits. As if my ego needed any more boost, I complied with no hesitation and swaggered on.
The drummer of the band was a great guy, still is, and he was the butt of more than his fair share of our jokes. He used to walk round carrying a skateboard, but nobody has ever seen him on it. We used to rib him for his accent too, just because it was slightly posher than ours. He was one of those people who didn't always think before he spoke and this meant he came out with some very dumb sounding things sometimes. But for all this he was very charming, extremely popular and a thoroughly 'nice chap'.
As the evening of our first gig descended into a familiar hazy blur, the drummer came scurrying across the floor to where the other three of us on the band were standing. He had an excited look on his face and was desparate to tell us that a girl had just asked him to sign her 'breasts'. He added with slight regret that the edge had been taken off the event by him finding all three of our signatures taking up most of the available space.
Of course, my interpretation was that he was fourth in line of popularity, which put me first, but I'm sure it was just the order that the girl had found us in.
I used to be in a band. But tonight, while I gave my children a bath, my daughter asked me to play my guitar and sing.
I chose Take That's 'Back for Good' (Barlow 1994). Because it's easy and the kids can do the backing vocals "I want you back, I want you back, I want you back for good".
Drunken me in the bar about 15 years ago would have thought this song 'off limits'.
We only did our own stuff you see,
we had integrity,
we wouldn't sign up to a carpet warehouse label and
we only ever signed breasts if we were asked to (and if no more than three other people had already signed).
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