While recently exploring the source of a leak in my loft (note to future house purchaser - I'm making this bit up) I found a suitcase full of photos and demos from my years as a struggling artist (plus ça change, as Marcel might have said).
I like to think of the last decade as comparatively successful (especially when compared to the ten years before that and more than likely the next ten years) so the contents of this suitcase sparked many memories of an earlier, more innocent time.... some fond, some I'd rather forget.
So instead of playing you new music - which will happen as we get closer to the tour - or making a big bonfire of all this old rubbish (yes, I know, maybe I still should).... I thought I'd share these early photos and recordings with you in the guise of a sort of autoblography.
Tom's Way
(...issues with the hair even then, although the more cunning observer will have spotted the first and last recorded example of a McRae smile, which was later to evolve from a smirk to a sneer.)
For a long time I used to go to bed early. Then when I was 18, I left home for the sinful possibilities of London, to make my fortune and stay up a bit later.
Having thus dealt with the early years, let us move swiftly on to my first band.
The Ministers of Orgasm
We were young, we were stupid. We thought this was a funny name. We were studying politics degrees at a crap polytechnic, and perhaps this name illustrates why we didn't get into Oxford or Cambridge. Alas, no photo documentation from this time exists (I hope), and so you'll have to take my word for it that me, Trevor and Nick were in a band together. We won a battle of the bands and then split up. I played bass and sang. I think we may have covered Teenage Kicks, but it really is all lost in the mists of time. Thankfully.
Raising Cain
Next came Raising Cain. Before the wedding band, before the movie, there was us.
I'm the investment banker on the far left. The good looking guy on the far right is James. It was his band really. Check his hair. Everyone loved him. I think it's a shame that only guitarists are allowed to pose in band photos with the tools of their trade. Why not drummers balancing a kick drum on their heads, or singers clutching a full length mirror?
There is a Blue Plaque on the wall commemorating the fact that we played at The Swan on Fulham Broadway every week for two years, come hangover or high water.
No there isn't. But I was getting carried away with the links thing. Not that we should overlook the possibility of there one day being a blue plaque for me somewhere in the world. Maybe we could start the campaign here. Let's overlook the fact I'm not dead yet - although I'm finding that increasingly hard to prove.
Every week we opened for a band called Paddy Goes to Holyhead, a covers band fronted by truly awesome Danny. We played our weedy original pop songs (which I fully take the blame for) and the occasional cover (mainly Teenage Kicks and the odd Neil Young) to a crowd of still hungover or not yet sober biker types who frequented The Swan.
The Swan was run by Noreen. A woman so bizarre, she offered us tours of countries we weren't sure even existed, promised opening slots for U2 (her close personal friends), and said that we were the best band she'd ever heard. Noreen only had one lung, and this had clearly affected her hearing.
(U2, we didn't open for them, their loss quite frankly - where are they now, eh?)
But what Noreen lacked in the usual brain and body function she made up for with a pint jar, which was variously full of free beer, or tips which we earned for playing. At the time it looked like the best deal in town, and right now it's starting to look pretty good, too. Noreen, if your one lung is still working, give me a call.
(Noreen only had one of these)
How the band got together is marginally more interesting than any music we may have made. Marginally.
We all worked on the third floor of a big bookstore called Foyle's...
(this is me on my first day - it was the '90s, we took working for a living much more seriously back then, and dressed accordingly)... James (lead guitar) and Tim (bass) worked in the music department, I was head of drama - obviously, and Mark (drums) worked in Religion. It seemed to make sense to form a band. It would surely only be a matter of time before our genius was recognised. Seven spectacularly unsuccessful years later we split up.
Working at Foyle's we had the career expectancy of paratroopers under fire, so it was only a matter of time before we were all sacked. Christina Foyle, long dead, is now regarded as one of the leading patrons of the literary world, we regarded her as a wizened Nazi, who fired all her staff after 6 months, so they couldn't claim holiday, sick pay, or other benefits. Also the cross-dressing entertainer, Danny La Rue, kept an apartment in the building. We never saw him and Christina in the same room together at the same time. It was non-stop glamour in the heady world of bookselling.
(This is either Danny La Rue or Christina Foyle, they were largely interchangeable)
In hindsight, working in the shop was more fun than being in the band. Every day a 400-yr-old Polish tea lady called Erika would wheel a trolley through the shop, and when she reached the 3rd floor, we would blast Ride of The Valkyries from the speakers in the music department. As you listen to this glorious piece of music, close your eyes and imagine a Mrs Overall-type older lady,
haphazardly crossing the shop floor, her squeaking trolley spilling tea as she went.It took her an hour to get from one side of the floor to the other. Naturally, we thought we were hilarious.
And so, during the seven years of Raising Cain, the band, not the activity we experienced the usual transit van misery, headlining Cub Scout huts in the Thames valley, blowing all our money on rehearsing in damp basements, recording demos, and drinking beer as we argued over what we should be called. But it was full of hope and youthful enthusiasm - both traits you may have spotted in my music over the years. A ha. Ha. Ha.
Next month: "The Orchid Lounge" years, how the band split up amidst much acrimony - then reforming an hour later. We did this quite a lot back then.
Check out the unique iMovie stylings of this slide show, it was raining this afternoon and I had 20 minutes to kill. Very professional I'm sure you'll agree. Although I think the music sounds like 500 angry wasps in a bottle.
