In 1987, at the age of 16, I discovered the delights of the John Peel show and became probably the only person in Dunstable who was remotely interested in Bogshed, or indeed Death By Milkfloat. In 1988 I started doing a scrappy little fanzine called Glottal Stop and ended up being interviewed by Peel on his local East Anglian radio show. This made for excruciating listening.
In 1989 I moved to London to study music, but spent most of my undergraduate years playing in The Keatons, a fiercely independent and highly erratic group who ended up being thrown off a tour supporting Blur because of a “lack of professionalism.”
In 1992 I started working in a two-man company with Nick Hobbs, manager of bands such as Pere Ubu, Laibach, Spearmint, The Band Of Holy Joy and others. I spent the next 8 years looking after these bands and arranging tours of Eastern Europe for major acts including Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Smashing Pumpkins, Motorhead and, er, Samantha Fox. I kept the business going while Nick went jetting off on umpteen aeroplanes. Highlights included accidentally sending Goldie to Heathrow instead of Gatwick and nearly losing a Bulgarian promoter £20,000, assigning David Bowie a dilapidated Hungarian caravan as his dressing room, and managing to get a bass player on an American Airlines flight without a ticket.
In 1992 another band I was in, Gag, released a scratchy 8-track 7-inch and we secured a Peel Session, which we thought would make us famous but actually got us one solitary postcard from a bloke in Poland saying that he thought it was “quite good”.
In 2001 I quit working for Nick and in an unusual moment of self-belief decided I would try and make a living out of writing. I started doing features for Time Out, then ended up writing things for The Independent, The Guardian, and various cricket and food magazines. In 2003 I started a column for The Observer Music Monthly called Guitarist Wanted, where I had to go and audition for ambitious young bands and pretend I was really interested in joining. I wasn’t. It was really stressful.
I started my own band called the Free French at around this time; we put out three albums on our own label and, despite a) being great, and b) managing to fluke distribution by being mates with XTC’s manager, we still only sold about 50 copies of each. Effort outstripped reward, so we ground to a halt.
My blog, however, continued and continues to tick along. I don’t write about anything of consequence. This purposeful misalignment with the output of global news networks led to the whole thing being transplanted into a radio format for a series of programmes in winter 2005 on the wonderful Resonance FM.
I’ve also written scintillating information for travel guides, blurb for artists, pub reviews, copy for corporate clients who want to make their tedious messages sound entertaining and informative, and comedy sketches for new media, amongst other things. I’m working on various book ideas which will either revolutionise the medium of the written word, or sit forgotten in the intrays of publishers the length and breadth of the land. One of the two.
In 2005 I became the technology columnist on The Independent after they rang me and asked me if I knew what an MP3 was. I said yes. That was the only job interview I’ve ever had. Shortly afterwards I joined Scritti Politti after I bumped into Green Gartside in a London pub and he asked me if I knew anyone who played keyboards. I said I did, which was true. We went to Japan and the USA and it was great.
Today I write about satellite TV for the Radio Times, continue to work a lot for The Independent, and have vowed never to start another band. Probably.