a-LITTLE-comet

2010 Diary: January to June

From beginning to end it has been a tumultuous year, springing from positive to negative with much regularity. Hopefully the following will give you a little more insight into our processes, experiences and tribulations over the last twelve months…

JANUARY:

With Winter’s elastic fingers snapping excitedly, the snow blanketed much of January before one phonecall nearly wrecked our little band. We’d been having lots of disagreements with Columbia over the previous months, ranging from which t-shirts to wear to how the album should sound. Combined with a bleak financial outlook for the year they rang us up to say “no thanks anymore”.

This was really sad: to have someone cascade from believing in us musically to claiming disinterest was quite a blow to our collective confidence, and really made us question being involved in an industry which could so easily undermine the hours of work we’d put in.

Luckily after a couple of weeks of quiet desolation, we picked each other off the ground and resolved to pursue things with the same degree of tenacity and emotion that we had always tried to, before the winged destroyer of Sony had bounded into our lives.

Without any release schedule, label, management or plan we effectively started again, hiring a BMW from Mark’s mate’s mechanic’s friend and attempting to learn stop motion animation to make a video for Joanna!

FEBRUARY:

The best thing about February was a trio of gigs we played with Frankie and the Heartstrings and the Chapman Family. Although virtual antonyms musically, we bonded over cheap meat, white bread and mutual north eastern ethics.

The rest of this pretty meaningless month (someone should abolish February) was concerned with gigs in Scunthorpe (any cars like?), an acoustic session at the Fly (after Mark and Matt plundered Reebok for gluttonous amounts of shoes), and a lovely gig at the Borderline complete with Arran jumpers and a beautiful crowd full of singers and listeners!

MARCH:

Mickey and Matt started off March in the worst possible way with a “Little Comets DJ Set” at an abandoned bar in Newcastle. Playing classics like “The Look of Love” and “Owner of a Lonely Heart”, their Trevor Horn fuelled set cleared a dancefloor that apparently had already been left lonely long before the night had begun. Claiming to have been at a zenith beyond human understanding , they left in disgrace, rueing not playing a solid hour of Bowie.

Alongside this ill-fated debut we played four gigs with Delphiiiiiiic (just Delphic), who were actually really nice: just don’t ask them what a unicorn is. We discovered the joy of travelling in a pram again, climbing around venues, and inventing new ways of playing football indoors with a circular table!

APRIL:

After months of abridgment and album avoidance we started the tentative steps towards releasing something once again. We managed to wrestle our album back from Columbia in a very legal sense, and began talking to people who were interested in working with us, finally deciding to go with a new label called Dirty Hit, who had clear lines of delineation between what we could do creatively and how they work with us a record company. We really appreciated their honesty and integrity, and the fact Jamie took us to Pizza Express more than once.

I managed to rack up three points on my driving licence for breaching a filter arrow in Hitchin, much to the three M’s total amusement. Luckily I resisted temptation to take the piss out of the offending police officer who was an absolute tool. Grrrrr.

MAY:

For some reason we played a tour of the South West in May, travelling from Cardiff to Southampton over the course of a week. Mark had a close shave with death, persuading Matt to remove most of his hair with a no guard blade, whilst Mickey perfected his Louis Spence impression in a Travelodge car park.

Following this and a weekend of staying in a John Fowler holiday park, we returned home to regain the braincells we had lost in the previous week of van inhabitation, darts and poor conversation. We lost the rest of May due to post-tour grief.

JUNE:

Playing at Park Lane music festival was a spectacular start to June, as we serenaded drunken predators and bemused mackems outside an off-licence. Luckily we were redeemed by our first ever tour in Europe!

Starting off playing on a canal boat in Lille, we jumped round to Strasbourg and Paris before disaster struck on the way to Nantes. After a clunk and a crack our van was deposited on the side of a motorway waiting to be collected by Patrice – a recovery man who looked like a bald version of Jaws from James Bond (but with gold teeth). After paying him off with Jack Daniels and cigars, we jumped into a couple of hire cars (Fiestas, despite Mickey’s insistence that we could get a Porsche or helicopter travel on the insurance) and headed back to Paris. After sleeping through a storm, accidently hearing Muse perfrom at the Stade de France and having a vegetarian meal which consisted of spaghetti and tomato sauce, we continued onto Amsterdam for our next gig!

Steve, our clever tour manager and master of no languages, had managed to sort us out a little bit of promotion whilst in Holland: the Dutch version of Sky Sports wanted to film us watching the England v USA World Cup match prior to the gig. Things went well, but they were totally gutted when the venue wouldn’t allow them to set up a television onstage so we could watch the match whilst playing our set.

After trying to find a real coffee shop (not a “coffee shop”, we just wanted a cup of coffee L), we headed back to the worst accommodation we have ever stayed in: a wooden hut, with plywood floors, and prison-issue bunk beds. The ignominy was sealed the following morning when we released that you had to pay for hot water….

We’ll post the second six-month segment soon!