i know the drummer

Fast-forward to two years later. I am in WHSmiths, browsing through Select and I turn the page to see a familiar face looking back at me. BEB is in Alfie.

But you couldn't really tell that story about Starsailor could you? I was in a manchester club and I saw this weasely midget, well my heart flipped a beat until I realised some of his lank, greasy hair had fallen in my pint and he mostly talking uninformed crap about his A level drama thing on Moliere.. anyway two years later I open a copy of Select and the loathsome, toothsome bedwetter is staring back at me.

Me, I knew some mates who got signed to Too Pure and treated like absolute dirt from day one. I was even jealous of that, sad bastard that I am.

(They'll call me the beardless Tom Ewing, I can see it now).

One of my best friends shagged the drummer out of Coldplay.

That said, when anyone ever says "come my lady, come come my lady" I am sorely tempted.

I shared a bus with Radiohead once as well. That Oxford Tube gets all the high quality British thinkers on it, plus Radiohead. Turned out to be the night they recorded My Iron Lung as well. They all sat on the backseat except for Thom who sat by himself trying to push his wonky eye up a bit. I guess it was physiotherapy.

Apart from that, I've known a few people around and about Toronto who have drifted in and out of other projects. They were pretty much as well-known beforehand as the bands they were in, however. So.

i know a couple of people who became minor league DJs - they became utter arseholes very quickly

I knew a media-studies student named Fyfe Ewing, who then drummed with unsigned local thrash-pop outfit Therapy? Was only a loose acquaintance but we shared affection for The Young Gods, Hüsker Dü + early techno. A good drummer and not a bad DJ either, I fondly remember him once dropping G.T.O.’s ‘Pure’ in the small hours. Easy to say now but I was never entirely convinced by his band, (though I had few doubts which member once got Photek in for a remix). Once leant him a My Bloody Valentine ‘Tremelo’ EP + some Front 242 tapes which I never collected, so if you ever see him….

Amongst ‘progressive house’ aficionados (which I’m decidedly not) Blue Amazon were widely respected, especially for their remix work. One half was, until recently, my brother.

Actually, there's not much to tell. I went to school with three of them (actually four, as I think their original drummer was at St Marys), they were in the year below me and I only really knew Simon (Sice) to any great degree (we were in the same quiz team in middle school). Period when I managed the eke the greatest mileage from this: 1991-93 (had several friends who were huge fans, and I re- established contact with Sice to the extent that I had his phone number [cor!]). I do recall Martin's brother, unprompted, coming over for a chat from his position behind the T-shirt stall at a MBV gig in Leicester (though I couldn't really remember him from school); I could hardly have impressed my chums any more if I'd just introduced them to ex-girlf, M Ciccone.

Lovely chaps, thought they made at least a couple of great records, though found it hard to fully sympathise with their C'mon Kids- era popular decline, as I didn't much like the music by then. Last spoke to Sice at the Hotel Victoria, New Brighton, Xmas Eve 1995; last spoke to Martin, Camber Sands, April 2000.