twenty-seven 

The college looked totally deserted as I parked the van we'd hired in the car park shortly after four. And, as we trooped inside, our footsteps and lowered voices echoed eerily through the rubber-floored entrance lobby. For one dreadful moment I thought we'd got the wrong day. But then on an information board at the far side of the lobby I saw a couple of posters.

Saturday October 25th eight till late. An evening of Rhythm and Blues with Blue Murder and Casino Royale. Tickets £3 on sale now in the refectory and Reckless Records.

Besides the posters were exam timetables on flimsy blue and pink A4 sheets, and photos of kayaking girls in red helmets and orange life jackets, glued at strange angles to a piece of cheap pale blue card beneath the heading: Come to Canoe Day on the Westing Canal! Beginners Welcome! It reminded me of school and I felt a sudden gladness to be out of it all. I checked my watch to confirm that it was actually the 25th. But, having done so, still felt anxious at the emptiness of the place.

"Maybe they've cancelled it," I said.

"No we're just early," said Tony.

We stood and listened to a boy in a telephone kiosk having a muffled argument, 'Oh come on Julie, it wasn't my fault,' whilst Dad went and looked at the miniature packets of biscuits in the food dispenser and then tried to make the coffee dispenser work, his five pence pieces repeatedly clattering out of the refunded-change slot. Me and Tony peered through the wire-strengthened glass of the double doors into the hall with its empty stage and blue chairs stacked at the side.

"Stewy's not here yet then," I mumbled

"He said he might be late," said Tony. "He had to take his sister to modern dance class or something at the community centre."

"Well he better not be too late," I said, wondering whether anybody would turn up to see us.

"Stop worrying," said Tony, pushing the door open. "We've got plenty of time."

As I walked nervously across the hall, I felt rather like a small antelope on an African plain (as if some hungry vulture with huge talons might suddenly swoop down and pluck me from the wooden-tiled floor). I hopped up the three steps at the side of the stage and looked down, imagining faces peering up at me. An uncomfortable memory of mumbling some crap poem I'd written to an audience of sneering third years suddenly flooded into my mind. And I felt slightly sick.

I'd just settled down in an ungainly heap on the side of the stage when Blue Murder (or rather their road crew) arrived.

"Hi," I said, grinning with relief at a couple of bearded hells angels who came in through the side doors carrying a large base speaker. The larger of the angels nodded in my direction as they dropped the speaker on the stage and then walked off again, swaggering from side to side in their checked shirts and beards (rather like a cross between gorillas and cowboys, I thought).

As the roadies were leaving, Stewy, dressed as usual in black leather jacket, army surplus trousers and twenty four hole DMs, came bursting in through the doors.

"All right?" he asked. He bounded up onto the stage and played some impromptu air guitar, jumping up and down like he was on a pogo stick and laughing maniacally. Then he bounced to the front of the stage and stooped as if speaking into a low microphone and proclaimed, "Hello Madison Square Gardens."

As Blue Murder's roadies returned to the hall with another huge base bin, Stewy stretched his arms out and aeroplaned recklessly around them. Worried that his exuberance might inadvertently piss-off them off, I got up and caught him in a kind of full-on rugby tackle and we collapsed on the floor like two footballers celebrating a winning goal.

"Fucking idiot," I laughed. "Come on lets go and get our gear in."

"I'll give you a hand," said dad, strolling across the hall, triumphantly clutching a steaming polystyrene cup of coffee (white with one sugar). "Anyone fancy a mini chocolate chip? The texture's surprisingly crunchy."

It was a long time since I'd seen Dad get so enthusiastic about anything as he did about that gig. He charged back and forth to the vans carrying amps and drum cases up to the stage, slapping the dust from his hands before hurtling back out for more. Not only did he bring most of our gear in, he also carried half of Blue Murder's stuff in. The two check- shirted gorillas stood on the stage and watched hands on hips as he brought in a huge roll of coaxial cable.

"Where do you want this?" asked dad.

"Back in the van" said one of the gorillas. He grinned, a flash of white friendliness flashing through his beard like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. "That's the extension for my power tools."

"Oh right," said dad and rushed back out again.

"Is he your manager?" asked the friendly gorilla.

"No, he's my dad," I said.

The gorilla nodded understandingly.

We eventually sound-checked about half an hour before the college doors were meant to open, due to the late appearance of Alex our drummer (or should I say the drummer, seeing as he showed little allegiance to our band).

Alex was one of the many drummers that Tony had met in the music store. Although he was undoubtedly the best of the bunch, he was also a right big head, forever going on about some band he'd played with that had done a couple of sessions for the John Peel show and had a gold album in the Finnish charts. Because he was such a massive megastar (cough, cough) he always acted like he was doing us a really big favour whenever he bothered to turn up to rehearsals, which really used to piss me off. And when he was late for our sound check, I swear, had I not had my hands full of vintage Telecaster I'm certain I would have jumped off the stage and tried to strangle him.

At the same time as Alex arrived, an impromptu bar was being set up. Metal barrels of beer were being rolled in and stood on empty crates behind a couple of trestle tables at the far end of the hall. Alex stopped on his way past, no doubt to discuss the possibility of free pints being ferried to him during the performance. The delay added to my irritation as I stood on stage.

"Get a fucking move on," I shouted down the microphone, the guitar strap (which had been slung round my neck a good hour earlier) starting to rub irritatingly against the back of my neck.

"All right lets start without him," I said, launching into the opening chords of our first song as Alex approached the stage, swigging from a half-full tankard of dark beer (which I later discovered was the glass that the barman had used to test that each of the barrels was working and hence contained a yeasty mixture of about five different lagers and bitters).

With his usual nonchalance, Alex strolled across the stage, settled on his drum stool and bang-on-cue started drumming away like he'd been there all night. Then Tony and Stewy joined in and suddenly a wave of intense pleasure swept away all my anger and anxiety. The sheer excitement of being surrounded by the ten-feet-high speaker stacks of a two thousand watt PA system, the vibrations of the bass and drums rising up through the soles of my All Star baseball boots, made me feel overwhelmingly happy, like I'd just opened the best birthday present I'd ever had. And as I walked towards the microphone and broke into the first verse of our opening number, my nerves had given way to an all-consuming confidence like nothing I'd ever felt before. The song was a Curtis Cline number called Surfing the Undertow, the original version of which had a lilting, folky feel to it. However we played it as if we were the Buzzcocks or the Undertones or something, and as I started to sing and heard my voice booming out into the hall, I felt like I'd been hooked up to the PA and had electricity running through my veins.

The work it comes and the work it goes

Where I've been

By the chorus, I'd really got into my stride. Blind to the small group of people standing at the back of the hall (which included Danielle the girl from the college who'd organised the gig as well as Blue Murder and their crew) I really went for it.

The tides they come and the tides they go

Up to my neck again, but I'm all right for air

I was cloaked in the sound of the band. I felt like my body had been vaporised, so that only the voice remained and all I was were the words within the music, only the words, as Stewy eased back on the bass, Tony jangled a few chords here and there, and I virtually whispered the second verse.

The moods they come and the moods they go

Pray for the waves to bury me

Cue to stamp on overdrive and join in with the rocky bit before the chorus.

Bury me, oh yea

Pray for the waves to bury me

But for now I'm still surfing on the undertow

As the tides they come and the tides they go

Up to my neck again, but I'm all right for air

All right for air, oh yea, oh yea

Above a crescendo of feedback and distorted whammy bar dive bombs, we finished on one last vaguely harmonious 'yeaaaa,' and the small group of people at the back of the hall went wild. Danielle jumped up and down and clapped her hands above her head like a clockwork toy gone haywire. A couple of other people cheered and whistled, and the guitarist from Blue Murder raised both thumbs as he nodded and grinned (even the bass player and the drummer clapped). It's impossible to describe exactly how I felt right then. All I can say is, imagine the best orgasm you've ever had. Now imagine pleasure at least a hundred times more intense than that. And you'll be getting close to sensing what I felt like at that moment. It was fucking incredible.

At Tony's insistence, both us and Blue Murder were using a mixture of each other's gear. Fortunately, Alex had a really nice drum kit and Stewy had a ridiculously expensive base amp, so Blue Murder were happy to go along with this set up (if it had been the other way round and they'd had all the decent gear and we'd had stuff as shit as theirs, I don't for one moment think they would have let us anywhere near it).

Somehow, Tony had managed to put both guitars and all the effects through two amps at once (one he'd borrowed from the shop and the other belonging to Blue Murder's guitarist). And as I stood listening at the back of the hall to make sure the loudness of the amps was balanced OK, Tony sounded as if he were about eight guitarists playing in unison. Even in the crap, linoleum and polystyrene tile acoustics of the college the purity of his sound was sublime. The stage looked great too. The towering PA speakers and all those guitar amps, looked really professional, illuminated with blue filtered spotlights that had been used for a graveyard scene in the college's Christmas production, "These Foolish Fangs remind me of you," (a romantic comedy musical based on the Dracula story and self-penned by the college's head of drama and music, so Danielle told us).

Before the gig, Tony had spent hours cleaning his Casino. He'd carefully scrubbed the machine heads and pick-ups with the detachable head of a burnt-out electric toothbrush, and wiped the sweat and dust from each string until they gleamed packet-fresh. And bathed by those midnight-blue stage lights, the polished walnut of the guitar rippled like the ocean and the strings sparked like they were beneath the flame of a welder's torch.

It was one beautiful moment.