Refried Ectoplasm

Astonishingly, despite my entry for Sweeping The Nation's series on songs of the last ten years being largely about boilers leaking and the cuteness of the guest vocalist, I did manage to write some even more irrelevant fluff about Hear The Air that I edited out for everyone's sake. However, whereas most of my offcuts tend to end up clogging up my hard drive to be seen by no one, I've decided to try and conjure something out of this one, on account of the post complaining about the spelling of "The First Noel" on the posters for Myleene Klass' Christmas Spectacular turning out to be hopelessly misguided.

(Seriously, who knew? I'm sure that at some point in the last 33 years I must have seen the title written down somewhere, and I'm sure I would have noticed if it was spelt 'Nowell'. And you don't really expect the promoters of Myleene Klass' Christmas Spectacular to be the people to be pedantic about this sort of thing. But, good on them for doing it.)

Other than the fact that I really like it, one of the reasons why Hear The Air stood out for me when I was considering songs I might write about is because I really didn't care for Mo-Ho-Bish-O-Pi at all. And I've always had a soft spot for one-off really good songs by bands I otherwise dislike: there's something oddly reassuring about it, as if the dreadful support slots I had to stand through, looking at my watch and wondering why I bother, were actually worth it in the end; that there's the chance that all bands with the whiff of averageness about them may have one existence-justifying shining moment lurking within.

(I used to have this theory that every vaguely competent band had at least one good single in them. It was a particularly stupid theory - to be honest the only other song I can recall that fits it is Take It Easy Chicken by Mansun - and by the turn of the millennium this had already been irrevocably proved so by the continuing existence of the Stereofuckingphonics (trad.), and clearly it would never have survived Kasabian.)

I remember seeing Mo-Ho-Bish-O-Pi three times, although, unusually for me, I can only place two of them: one was at the Camden Falcon when the Barfly was still based there (they were supporting Rosita, but I seem to remember leaving early to go and see Spearmint around the corner somewhere - oh, the days when I would wander the streets of Camden going from gig to gig), and once at one of those NME Awards shows at the Astoria. The Astoria one was particularly memorable as being the worst gig I'd ever been to, something which wasn't really Mo-Ho-Bish-O-Pi's fault. I think I'd probably still hold it up as the worst I've ever attended, not so much because of the wretchedness of the bands (although two of the four were pretty rotten), but because of the horrible dashing of expectations.

Being useless at deleting things, I still have my commentary of events from the night, and my review of Mo-Ho-Bish-O-Pi is telling: "Save for one nice thumpy thing when some girl called Rachel (probably in some band or other, I expect) joined them, they were pretty much any band you're likely to see first on in any old backroom in Camden." Telling, that is, that I haven't had any new ideas in the last 10 years. They were followed by a then largely unknown Sigur Ros ("They'd possibly have been much better playing where people actually went to see them rather than as support, and were less likely to chatter incessantly or imitate bow-wielding bloke's extraordinarily high-pitched 'ooooo's'") and Mudlumz, who were hand-picked to represent British hip-hop but mostly reminded me of the time I saw Chumbawamba, and you never want to be reminded of that.

However, none of this was anything to do with why this was the worst gig I ever went to (not that Mudlumz weren't dreadful, but I can handle bad support bands): that was down to the headliners, who were The Beta Band. Because I've never seen a band as insultingly, willfully rotten as The Beta Band were that night. I don't mind bands who don't necessarily play the songs that you want them to play, as long as what they choose to do instead is worth seeing. But bands who play the songs you want them to play in a really half arsed manner and just noodle around amusing themselves the rest of the time... well, that's not really on, is it? The only positive thing was that they were so dull that I felt able to go to collect my coat early, thus beating the Astoria's notoriously long queues to retrieve your belongings. I sulked for about a week afterwards. No band I'd been looking forward to seeing let me down as badly as The Beta Band did that night.

And yet, despite all that, I still really like Hear The Air. And now I have to write six more bits about songs I like, despite the ones I've already done being like pulling teeth and those being the easy ones.