The Mekano Set

Friday

Blurred around the edges. Emerging like a polaroid. Did I make it home? What day is it? What time is it? Is that AM or PM? Did anything or anyone get left behind? How many casualties? Who's sofa is this? Who's clothes am I wearing? Hang on, that's not my face! Fall asleep. Wake up, start all over again.


Friday

Wake up in the middle of a dream about a song on a radio playing in my sleep. A song about a storm in a hotel. A storm, staying in a hotel. "Thunder only happens when it's raining... thunder has a room but it's not staying... has it lost it's keys and is it raining?"

Friday. Friday sees Milk beyond skint. Skint is the light at the end of the tunnel of counting out enough two pence pieces to justify Milk's body's desire to leave the room (The Dairy) and take in the crispy winter air and eat some food. Milk didn't have to spend money yesterday but he didn't want yesterday to end.

Here at The Dairy the cupboards are bare. There's a Lemsip but I'm saving that for a special occassion. There's half a lemon in the fridge and enough melty coffee dust in the bottom of three jars to make one cup. Gluten-free pasta is just not something I can face right now. Ignore the gluten-free pasta and move on.

But I'm going to be OK. Because I'm not hung over. And we did a gig. And I am in a band. These oddly 'contented' edges surround a fatigued interior and offer it a knowing smile whenever it's looking too sorry for itself. So I treat it to an over-priced, delicious slice of freshly made Organic Coeliac-Friendly gluten-free pizza. Brighton isn't perfect, but you can buy gluten-free pizza here every-other day of the week.

Fall asleep again. Get up, brush teeth. Think about food. Watch Garfield buy the new Kate Bush album, a scary and deeply moving moment. No tears. Maybe we'll do some recording over the weekend? Maybe I'll eat more than Lemsip Surprise. I buy orange juice and chips and finish off a bottle of wine from two days ago. Listen to some new ideas.


Thursday

Waking up not knowing where you are and talking like you've swallowed a load of loose change and washed it down with a glass of rusty surgical tools. You work out you are in a hotel and you are showering with clothes on while someone else brushes the fag ash from their teeth. Woolly and Saint go out to see if the news has hit the papers yet, pick up some vital supplies. Water, crisps, bandages, pain killers. I Try to ignore the fact that Steve Reich's "Electric Guitar Phase" is playing a little too loudly in my brain.

Try not to sulk about the fact that I got the kiddy sized bed. And I forgot the toothbrush I bought especially. And there's no glasses or cups or a kettle in the room. There's a DVD player / widescreen TV, but no glasses for that all important pint of tap-water at 4 in the am. Laughing so much you feel bruised. Still drunk. Fall asleep. Risk the fried eggs and the beans at breakfast. Drink the coffee and the orange juice. Marvell at the 6-feet-wide TV in the hotel lounge. Are we the only guests?

Subway. Subway. Drop flight case on another person's shoes. Fall over guitar onto Garfield's boots. Make dramatic apology implying that we are strangers. Concerned glances from passengers 'please don't let them be on drugs'. Train station. Woolly is going to buy a danish. There is nothing we can do about this. He invites us to attempt to stop him, laughing, knowing that he cannot possibly be stopped in his quest for fluffy sugar coated baked goodness. We split up in search of various un-breakfastly breakfasts. None of us are ever seen again. That was thirty years ago. I love you all, wherever you are. If you have the Mekanoids, please, just get in touch. We just want to know that they are safe. We promise we won't go to the police.

Tea, coffee, pastries. Laugh so hard you cry and your ribs hurt. Out with the gang. The Mekanoids. Feel like a band. Don't want to stop. Saint put's on Comrade Katerina's tiny hat and transforms himself into the missing member of Goldie Lookin' Chain. Making up in-jokes. Why are we going home why aren't we on tour?

Home. Frosty sea air home. Autumnal leaves smother the pavement. Those leaves must really love that pavement. Winter by the sea. I forgot how much it can touch you. And why didn't I bring warmer clothes?

Dump the wreckage at Mekano HQ (Mekano Towers). Brush teeth. Hair of the Dog in the Hampton pub. Check the spam. Drink too much wine. Feel good about it all. Good gig. Ace gig. Top gig. More please. We have more. Top. Ace.

Veggie curry at The Kremlin (Saint / Comrade Katerina's). Winding down. Winding down. Feel tired now. Feel self conscious. Time for bed. Thanks everyone thanks and sees yous and sees yous and laters and laters. And a riot van pulls away from just outside my building and I know I'm home.


Wednesday

We take trains to Victoria and Bethnal Green. The Three Mekano's. On a train. Bound for London Village. Almost like a band. At least a lot like a gang. Aliens in this place. At least no one is the only one. We are all expats of one form or another. Gene pools need to move around and mingle or we all end up like thoroughbred dogs - a bit 'wrong'.

It's Saint's birthday. We're making an extra effort. We're staying out. All getting our smartest saturday night clothes on. Saint looks like a gangster, a sharp nightclub owner. The Fixer, they call him. Later, Beth will look like a New Wave Agent Scully. Neither of them seems to know how cool they are. I just look like me. Tired. Ill. Moody. Scruffy New Wave school-boy. I put my suit on. But when I open my mouth all the silliness and confusion and delighted-despair falls out. Because I let it. Wish I wasn't so distracted by plugs and cables and tuning in untunable instruments.

Do we want a gig at Freebutt on 13th December? Yes. Cool. And Brixton on the 8th. Top. Aces. Do you have a warm jumper? Water? Tooth-brush? Tooth-paste?

Arrive at the venue early. Eat some chicken salad across the street. Get over-excited. Slow down. Too much Kiora. Venue opens.

It's billed as a kind of 'grrll powa' night. A night of "Feedback Vixens". So come on, let's feed some female foxes. That's a good cause in my book. Some say they are vermin. Some foxes would probably say the same about a lot of us. A night that turned out to be a pretty mainstream affair really. A hint of Guns N Roses in the air.

We sit around for a while and feel like the only vixens in the building. Let alone vixens capable of causing feedback. Patrick looks like he organizes crime for a living. Agent Scully emerges from the bathroom looking like she's discovered punk. Possibly we are over-dressed. Possibly not.

We have a brilliant time on stage. There isn't room to be nervous. All of our kit is in good order these days and we love playing these songs. I don't get nervous anymore but I do get a bit down if there's any ego trouble in the room. We stomp on into A Little Nothing and we're in Mekano Mode and everything's going to be OK. Possibly we are a bit too alternative and groovy for the mainstream 80's rock vibe but we yell our way through Away and it's fun fun fun!

I look over at Beth and Patrick to see if they're having fun and I realize they look superb (Beth in pinstriped mini / biker boots / exotic eye-makup, Patrick in gangster-sharp suit, shiney shoes and exotic eye-makeup). I am in a band. I am in this band. With these cool people. I am in this band with them. This is what we do and none of us are fighting that or trying to make it into something else. We make this sound. I make this sound with them. These people that don't try and 'do solos' or flashy vocal gymnastics. Life really isn't all that bad. I don't want to stop. But I know the set will be over before no it's already over.

I break my guitar for real this time. A piece of it snaps off at the end of the set. Strings won't stay in the right place now. They sort of hang off the neck. I'm doomed it seems never to own a guitar that stays in tune for the lenght of an entire song now.

Then we're off stage quick get all the stuff packed away where's the drinks hello yay you came wicked have a cd have a badge have the keys to my flat I love what you've done with your hair.

Someone asks Saint why we don't have a drummer. Saint tells him.

We sit quietly and give the other acts our full attention. I warm to Candy Panic Attack because they have a female drummer and a female singer / guitarist with short hair. Aces. A bit of Elastica in their gene pool. And I like her spoken / ranty style of singing. In contrast to the 'muso' quality of the other acts, they are shambolic and what journalists would call 'savagely under-rehearsed'. None of their songs have endings. They just stop. Their guitar sound is consistently dischordant. I'm sure they think we are weird and tedious and flashy, and I want to produce them. They recently lost their 'lead guitarist'. I think they should keep it that way. Or get some mad synths involved. And let us record them.

Birthday cake and free drinks for Saint. Mekano Set place-matts.

A trundle around town in search of somewhere to keep the flow. Warming to drinks now. Don't want it to end. A chunky looking B-Boy is rapping full on into the headlights of a camera crew. I run over his trainers with my flight case and we wind up in an oldschool drum and bass club where, for reasons that escape me, Beth decks me. She turns around and I topple back over our pile of bags and junk. It feels quite good. A drumnbass biker boot baptism. Maybe we should make it a regular thing. Look like we're having a scrap. Never let it be said we take ourselves too seriously.

We drink bottles of beer and vodka. Saint and me smoke Lucky Strikes that appear to be kept in a special Cigarette Fridge behind the bar. We dance like the drunken troubadours that we are.

Back to the hotel which is oddly affordable considering its fresh and gleaming appearance. We assume money laundering and count our blessings as we sleep it off, six to a bed, as the sirens and fires and toasters and musos of Hackney blaze their way to the dawn.


The Mekano Set