Spirit of Play

Extraordinary scenes at the Bull and Gate on Wednesday night: beer was drunk.

Mics were pointed at us. Amps were turned on. Notes were played. A drum fell on the drummer, mid-song. An audience peered from behind their pint glasses as Spirit of Play made like a French steak and sang. (No, hang on, that's not quite right, is it?)

Look, the important thing is, notes were played. Some of them were high notes. Others were definitely low notes. The low ones might have come from the bass guitar. I couldn't say for sure; it was already well past my bedtime when all of this note-playing (allegedly) happened.

Other notes, amazing ones, came from my guitar. It might have been protesting about my solo in "Dictaphone Don" (which is, as some wag pointed out on stage, just before we gave the song its World Premiere, perhaps one of the few rock songs to be inspired by a headline in the TLS). It might have been protesting about the promoter's interesting description of the band on their website:

"With dubious credentials Wendy Texas leads her early Wire boys through their art pop paces and into the land of new adventures!"

Dude, I think our dubious self-description just got Chinese-whispered. Then again, I suppose that's more or less what it's there for.

Meanwhile, back in the bar, which is blue, by the way, very blue, with a hint of jaunty yellow Edwardianism to it, at least two prosciutto addicts were seen snorting flakes of the stuff off one another's earlobes.

Disgusting. But you know it's true.

Anyway, after the notes and the falling drum and all that, a cunning man tried to sell us a video of ourselves.

Now that was an interesting sight, I do hereby confess (the video of the set we'd just played, that is, not the cunning man): overexposed and not ably colour-balanced, I'm told, but technical issues aside, still a useful thing for a bunch of performing monkeys to see. We look weirdly dynamic, like we're actually playing and singing and all that gubbins, acutally doing things with lungs and fingers and other unspeakable body parts, but also like we're slightly slothful wooden puppets who have become fixed in disuse. Unmoving, if you know what I mean. Not cavorting around the stage (quite a large stage, really) in the manner of a second Robbie Williams or, indeed, a third Freddie Mercury. Ah, but you prefer the first one, you say? Yes, but that prototype had so many design flaws . . . .

Anyway. There we were, peering out into the Stygian murk, caught on film (OK, probably caught on rewritable DVD) gurning and gesticulating, shouting, crooning, staring at one another pathetically, while I am seen bending weepingly over the guitar as if hoping to find that I'd become, in that moment, either Graham Coxon or J. Greenwood, esq, fit for the purposes of modern rock and more.

We turned down the video.

By the way: "If you're going to stand still, wear a suit". Should this be the rule now?