The Time: Monday 18th December 11am. The Place: My Life Story Sunshine Tours Headquarters. An urgent message arrives via our Hi Tech global communication system. Strange rumours of My Life Story playing an impromptu gig at Camden Palace tonight are being picked up. Camden Palace are unable to confirm or deny this rumour at the precise time....

10 Hours later and we arrive at the Palace. The evening gets of to a good start when we discover it is directly opposite the now infamous Mornington Crescent Tube station. Inside things started getting even better. The palace is amazing, it's an old theatre and it is still decorated in a very ornate style. Little alcoves and statues of naked men and women! The band weren't on till 12.30, but just to make sure we didn't miss anything we arrived at 9.45 to find we were probably the first people there. Then appearing from nowhere we spotted Paul who wasn't feeling very well as he'd had his Wisdom teeth removed the day before and was still in considerable pain. Not, however in too much pain to invite me backstage at New Years Eve!

The next member of the band to seek our attention was Simon, who swept Polly of her feet by coming over to her and giving her a kiss and a backstage pass. I just settled for the backstage pass. Ah, the glamour of backstage - the free bar, the free food, mingling with the band. Bollocks! Backstage was not much more than a 6ft square concrete hole, no free bar (well there was a fridge with 4 cans of Heineken in it), only one packet of dry roasted peanuts between about 30 people, and worst of all none of the band were there, having decided that they would go out for a meal, or just not having turned up yet. Lucy and Rox fell into the latter category, but arrived about half an hour later, where they wandered around looking for a way to get backstage. Unfortunately the only way was to actually climb over the stage itself. I of course offered to show them the way, being the gentleman that I am, and in the process got to hold not just Lucy`s hand but Rox`s hand as well as I helped them onto the stage and down into the hole that is backstage.

By this time Nic and Tony had arrived, and seemed rather upset that we had backstage passes and they didn't. A fact that I took great pleasure in rubbing in!

By this time it was almost show time, so I took my position in the front row. Most of the other people there seemed to have come to see Terrorvision who were supposed to be playing, but pulled out at the last minute, and seemed to be unable to do anything other than leap around very violently (with absolutely no sense of rhythm) and blow whistles very loudly. After about 3 songs some of them even realised that Terrorvision weren't on stage! The set was a bit disappointing, basically a cut down version of the tour set, only lasting about half an hour. No Mr Boyd, No Funny Ha Ha, and No Girl A, Girl B, Boy C. The songs they did do however were fantastic, especially King of Kissingdom in which Paul seemed to have turned up the volume on his bass and was sounding like Hank Marvin.

Jake was back to his usual form, telling stories about Lady Di videos being made in friends houses and putting down heckles from the crowd. One of the better ones was when someone threw an empty glass at him to which he said "You can chuck as much as you want mate, but I'm always gonna be better than you are...Some twat with a glass doesn't equal to a genius with a guitar and a wit."

All in all a rather splendid night out, although I rather suspect it will pale into insignificance after New Years Eve.

Silently Sparkling

Chris

This page http://www.twelvereasonswhy.co.uk/gigs/mlscp96.html
was created by Chris and is maintained by Richard Harrison

© Richard Harrison
This page was last updated on: