1 “maybe it’s like going home” and “sweat in a dirty room together”

Well, I think when the German police came and escorted our singer out of the venue, I think that's when I knew it was time to retire from the music industry. And then by that point, I'd done so many different tours. I'd been touring Europe. I never really made it into America. I toured Europe quite a bit with like a couple of different groups that I'd made records for and stuff. And we were on this European tour and it was... Just going so bad. It was like just one of those things where just like the vibe was just really off. No one could really work out what to do or why it was happening, but it was just, it was happening.

This is kind of a strange thing where like everywhere we went, people were like, oh, where have you come from? And it was different to before where they were asking it in like this really accusatory way. They're like, where have you come from? What country have you been in? We had no idea what COVID was setting in. It was like February, March, 2020. And like there was just this weird vibe everywhere. And we're having this terrible tour and my piano player quit, my driver quit. I'd been having PTSD problems for a couple of years. I kept having all these shakes, couldn't stop shaking. And the tour got so stressful that this one time, like, I just started convulsing so strongly, like way stronger than I ever had before. And I like was convulsing, like, and I like just like ended up on the floor. in this hotel room in Stuttgart and I felt this thing like leave my body. I felt like it was coming through my skin. It was like swimming off the matrix and after that I was just really serene and then the next day we had the sold out concert in Stuttgart and like the band was basically just breaking up.

We were there in the like dressing room before and like it was all it was all like kind of kicking off. Anyway, and the venue itself, like the manager actually called the police and the police turned up and took the singer away. And I remember just walking out of the dressing room and I didn't look at a single person and I walked onto the stage in front of all of these people. It was like a Saturday night and it was at this fancy club and all these people had come to see us play. And I walked up on the stage and I put my bass guitar in its case. I didn't look at a single person and I just walked off the stage. incredible sereneness since I had my convulsion thing and it was like my PTSD was exercised and it came out of me and I just like I had no problems again. Well since the driver had flown home he actually had the van keys in his pocket so he had to fly back out and give us the keys back and my girlfriend flew out because she didn't feel like I could drive this van home. I thought I had won tickets for the flight home.

This band had been going for eight years. I just emailed them The tour is over. And because the driver had flown home and taken the keys, he had to fly all the way back and then give us the keys at the airport. My girlfriend flew out because I didn't feel that I could drive this huge van home. It was like one of those massive vans and it's completely empty. She flew out. And we drive home and I became aware that Covid was in and like... The whole world was like changing right in front of me. And like, actually, like most of the rest of the gigs would have been canceled anyway. I was like halfway through this European tour and we got home and like, I was just so like over the whole thing. And I remember like, I got all this stuff out the back of the van. We had all of this pasta and all of this like non-perishable food and I threw it all in this dumpster and I got in the house. And two days later, it was like, there's no toilet paper in England. There's no pasta. Oh my God, I just threw all of that shit away. My entire world had like caved in, but at some level everybody's world had caved in and it was like this incredible equalization. And I just had six months to just get my shit together and work out what the fuck I was gonna do. Because the economics of being in a band had really gone away with Brexit and just with the declining revenues.

And I just, I didn't feel like I wanted to start another band again. I'd already done it a few times. I just didn't want to make my living that way again. I didn't want to be dependent on other people. And then during the pandemic, like one of my friends was like, can you like, can you edit stuff? And I was like, well, I'm a musician. I can use music software. I can like edit. Yeah. Like whatever, like send it to me. I'll see. So I started editing my mate's podcast and then another podcast asked me to do it. And then another one, I just kept on. editing people's podcasts. And I thought about when I was at university and I actually was trying to be a journalist. I did creative writing. I kind of accidentally ended up in bands and then the band got signed and away we went. I was really obsessed when I was a kid of like people who couldn't explain what their parents did for a job. And they were like, I've got no idea what my parents do. And I was like, this is so weird. And then as I got older and everyone had jobs and they couldn't explain what they were doing. And I was like, maybe it'd be a fun podcast for me to interview people about what their jobs were. And I was like, this is kind of like a really great way for me to be a journalist after like 15 years of being in the music industry. And maybe it's like going home.

I would love to do a job in which I'm essentially... This is my dog. Let me pause, because it's the door ringing. Hold on, it makes Luper bark. Hold on, I'm going to switch the bell off. I know, I know Luper, it's awful. I will go and check, yes. AI is going to take away many things. Hopefully AI will take away all the boring shit. But I kind of wish AI took my job, but AI is not going to carry boxes of weird fabric and pencils to the venue. I mean, like I run DIY events. It will not take away our need for community. I mean, capitalism is taking away our ability to make community, but I don't feel like AI is going to replace how much we enjoy to sweat in a dirty room together. From the seed to the fruit. You have an idea, you think about the idea, that's the exciting bit, and you think, what do I want people to experience and why do I want them to experience that? And then that is really sort of the seed of everything, is thinking about your audiences and their happiness and the community. I mean, my events are, you know, partially commercial, but they are. community events, so there's a lot of thought and craft that goes into all the steps to come after.

So you have an idea and then from the idea is all the different ramifications of having a venue, having a line up, having a budget, having promotional materials, having visuals, having a ticketing system, having health and safety documents in place, having a running order for the day and then... All that comes together with several bumps along the road. People forgetting to send you what you've asked, people doing and not doing their jobs. Lineups changing a little bit along the way. You go to the venue a couple of times and you make sure that the place is as you want it to be. The accessibility is in place, the venue staff has been briefed and trained and everything is as good as it is possible. And then you get to the day of the event and you have an event management plan for the day and you load into the venue and you do a soundcheck. or a line check, depending on how long you have.

And you have to kind of learn the hard way that perfection is the enemy of good, because you get things perfect, you might just end up not doing anything at all. And then yeah, and then it's doors, and then there's running the event, which is a whole different ball game, because you've planned a whole series of things, but ultimately it's whoever shows up that will determine the mood and what happens on the night. and things vary completely from the way you imagine them to the way it turned out to be. And weirdly enough, some of the nights that I felt were maybe not great. Those were the most successful nights and the nights in which I put all my love and effort, those nights fell a bit flat. And then there's upsetting bits to my job, which are dealing with conflict and expectations and trauma. Those are the bits that I kind of wish away, but I guess I wish them away in the same way as I wish all forms of upset away.

And I think until we live in this really horrid society where loads of people are traumatized, there is no real way around that bit of my job. It's just like what working with marginalized people looks like. And I think to an extent, just what working with people looks like for people. And the most tedious part of my job is definitely the admin side of my job. You know, of which there is a lot.

I think people think the job is more exciting than it is. Well, I like, I would love to have a job in which there is a lot of technology around me that just captures my ideas and then does all the admin side of it. So I get to stand in the middle of the room and just go, oh, I would love for this and this and this and this to happen. And then there's some receptive technology that sends out all the emails with the practicalities. So it started, we just found a name and we went to a venue that was not a queer venue, but we knew it was like the current manager at the time was a queer woman and we're like, could you give us a night?

I'd never done anything like that. And she gave us a bank holiday Sunday and we did some flyers. And I mean, I'm a very, very obsessive person. So I just spent a month before going, like made a calendar of everything else that was happening in Brighton and just brought these flyers everywhere. I didn't know what health and safety was. I'd never really seen like a DJ set up. Like I didn't really know much, but we put the night on and then we opened the doors and like the queue was insane. We were so confused. We're like, who are these people? Cause we didn't have many queer friends here. We're like, who are these women?

And that's how it really started. And like it started without a bank account or a business plan or. really anything and it continued like that for really quite a long time. We were running monthly and every month, like until maybe 10 days, two weeks before the event, we wouldn't have a lineup or a flyer. It was always just catching a tail sort of thing. And it was cardboard boxes piled up in the living room with a lot of crap in them that we carried around for years. And only very recently I was like, well, it's in his boxes anyway. And it was like a lot of like dry sharpies.