Blog: Back In Time Live

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After work on Friday (where again, i was working LATE) i toobed it over to Liverpool Street and thence to The Spitz, where I was due to play at Back In Time Live. This was a retro-gaming DO, run by the same people who did the convention we played at in Manchester a couple of years ago, but this time it was just an EVENING do, rather than a whole weekend.

I arrived to find things in FULL SWING, and was escorted over to a corner and placed behind a small table, there to sell my WARES. Hey Hey 16K T-Shirts were WELL to the fore. I always feel like a bit of an OUTSIDER at these sort of things - to an outsider ALL GEEKY-TYPES may seem the same, but there are GRATE variations and also LEVELS, and my PRIME INTERESTS (comics, WINGS) put me in a different area in the GEEK VENN DIAGRAM to Retro-Gamers. ALSO, of course, this was a primarily COMMODORE 64-based gathering, and as I had a SPECTRUM i felt like a Chip-Ite at a Whizz-kid convention (ARCHAIC REFERENCE).

There WERE a lot of dead nice people there - Chris the organiser, for instance, or regular GIG GOERS of ours like Warren (who gave me a hand with the stall - thanks chap!) and Andrew - but there were a few pockets of ODDNESS. My favourite was the guy who came over and asked what "platform" my songs were on. "Er... A guitar?" I said, and he looked at me BLANKLY. I tried to explain for some minutes before he smiled, SLIGHTLY AFEARED, and hurried away.

As well as NOT being a convention as such the other big difference from last time was the MUSIC. In Manchester it had all been very live and, with the exception of US, rather PROG. It had all been a bit strange - the other bands had been very "Musicianly" and SERIOUS and had done HUGE great long MUSICAL PIECES... All of which were based on the music for old computer games. It seemed UNUSUAL, to me, that they were being so FURROW BROWED and STRAIGHT FACED playing classically themed versions of, say, MONTY THE MOLE. THIS time, however, it was all DJ SETS and MIXING, which felt MUCH more appropriate. The site of a hundred very sweat, very HAPPY, very DANCEY Computer Types doing Big Fish, Little Fish, Cardboard Box to SLAMMING BEAT REMIXES of "Eyeball", for instance, is something that only the STONEY HEARTED would not find JOYFUL and FUN. It was like stepping into an ALTERNATE UNIVERSE where Ibiza had been settled by SIR CLIVE SINCLAIR.

Soon it was time for ME to go on - in fact, a lot sooner than I'd expected, as I seemed to have received an OLD running order that said I was on at 11pm, when in fact i was due for 10 o'clock. This PLEASED me, so on I went and did THIS:

Hey Hey 64k

Ctrl-Alt-Delete

The Gay Train

Easily Impressed

Boom Shake The Room

I THOROUGHLY enjoyed it, and LOOK! WORLD PREMIER Live Perfomance of Hey Hey 64k! An hour or two before setting off I went and looked at the organiser's WEB FORUM and was rather surprised to find they were advertising my appearance as FEATURING that particular song. "OH BOY!" I thought "I suppose I'd better DO it then... Er... What are the words?" I've not actually PLAYED it since I wrote it, so printed out the WORDS on great big sheets and hoped for the best.

It seemed to go pretty well, and the rest of the set was a LOT of fun, INDEED after Boom Shake The Room I'd intended to go on and do Hey Hey 16k and almost had to be DRAGGED off the stage. It was GOOD!

EXCITINGLY, there is VIDEO EVIDENCE of most of the set, here's Hey Hey 64K, Control Alt Delete and The Gay Train. Isn't the future BRILLIANT? I've also got PHOTOGRAPHS from Warren which I shall get put up soon (when i do the LLAMA pics, in fact).

That done I spent an hour or so CHATTING to various people and generally having a NICE time, only MARRED slightly by the rather TOSSY bar staff - NOTE to TOSSY bar staff: the reason people keep looking AGHAST at the prices is NOT because THEY are hopelessly GAUCHE IDIOTS and YOU are urban bon vivants with superior taste, it is because FOUR QUID is TOO MUCH for a pint of crappy lager, even down the road in PILLOCK CENTRAL, and this ISN'T Shoreditch.

It made me Quite Annoyed! But apart from that all was LOVELY and WELL, and I headed out into the night full of CHEER and The Good Vibes!

posted 25/6/2007 by MJ Hibbett

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Comments:

Hiya. I was there at the gig, err, I know I spoke to you but I hope I wasn't the 'what platform?' bloke. I know I asked you what kind of music you made because, ermm, well I feel a bit of an outsider myself at these things, and between one CD and another it's hard to know sometimes how people are approaching things, without a little bit of context. I've listened to too many poorly-made 12-minute long pieces with a hideous drum beat and random bleeps to want to shell out
posted 27/6/2007 by DonJuanna

Nice to see that someone else "gets" what MJ is trying to do. And well done to you, Juan-Luis, for buying the CDs. It's hard to pick a favourite track I have to admit, but out of the recent EP "Never Going Back To Aldi's" is becoming a firm favourite of mine.
posted 29/6/2007 by Warren

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