My friend Ben, aka the genius pop producer and performer Fryars, has always been a tad strange. So when he was offered the support slot at Lily Allen’s big comeback show at London’s Shepherd's Bush Empire, he decided to undermine the whole affair by inviting me, and another journalist, Michael Cragg of Popjustice, to pretend to play in his band. Except we weren't really going to play, he was giving us free reign to tweet, check our emails or do whatever we want.
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Ben’s reasoning was basically this: 1) Although he produced a few tracks on Lily’s album (“well not actually the album, but the deluxe edition, but there’s a reason they call it deluxe”), no one coming to a Lily Allen show is going to give a shit about him and his gently crafted alt-pop, so why not do something else to keep them interested. 2) If we can do some kind of social media “thing” while we’re up there then that’s probably better than being ignored by people in the crowd. 3) It’d be good for me, a weak palid music writer, to man up and discover what life was like from the other side of the stage. This was my chance to be in a band, basically.The most awkward part of the day was soundcheck. It had been decided that I’d play a drum machine and keyboard, neither of which would be switched on. That’s all fine when you’re dicking about in a concert, but when loads of roadies are trying to make sure all your shit is working, it’s faintly emasculating to say, “sorry, I”m just here for show as part of art project cum feature pitch.” I just kept my head down and caught up on Noisey articles.Things massively improved after that though, with WINE and VERY NICE FOOD courtesy of the lads at whoever Lily Allen gets to do her catering. Look how happy I am.Normally it feels like the majority of a gig is spent waiting but I guess that’s because you’re standing in a loud sweaty room with nothing to do. After dinner we were pretty much on stage straight away. All we had to do was employ the social media element.
Walking on stage with my head down and sidling up towards my instrument, I felt just like all the unrecognisable members of bands I’ve seen walk on stage with their head down on tour documentaries and festival coverage all my life. It was a real thrill.I kept up the pretence of playing for all of about a minute before getting really bored. I tried to get on my laptop but the wifi wouldn’t work on stage so I just started tweeting. Things like this.
I'm literally tweeting on stage. It must look shit. #sheezusbush
Some people were a bit nicer. It started getting a bit weird when I was tweeting at people who were waving at me, having our own private on stage lols while Fryars were doing their best to play a gig. I thought I should be in the moment a bit more, so I started feeding other members of the band crisps. I got carried away and threw the crisps into the crowd, but that felt a bit cheap and The Automaticy.Almost immediately I got this:
After a while I just felt like a schoolboy trying to piss about - chucking Malteasers at people, trying to give out the venue's wi-fi code - while the teacher, Fryars, tried his best to further his career in the music industry. We did get a decent hashtag going though:
#SHEEZUSbush who the hell are these people? Yes I mean the ones on stage!!
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