Baby, I’m Broke
Monday, October 27th, 2008
With a band name like ours, it’s fair to say that we have a volatile relationship with old Lady Luck, and making our all-important US debut in New York, we had an ‘eventful’ week that left us throwing our heads back and howling at the glitter ball moon. Having been forced to cancel a London warm up show due to illness (poor Paul contracted some God-awful vomiting bug just before we flew over) little did we know that our luck was about to be seriously stretched when I caught a stinking cold a couple of hours before our CMJ showcase, which grabbed me by the vocal chords with such sudden, ill-timed ferocity that would make anyone question their fortune. With hindsight, perhaps I shouldn’t have tempted fate with the boys earlier when I came out of the bathroom, pretending I’d caught Paul’s bug. We’d made sure he was kept in strict quarantine for fear of the rest of us going down. We followed his every move with antibacterial spray, labelling his cup the DEATH CUP and we even got him a seat as far away from us as possible on the plane (apologies other innocent Virgin Atlantic passengers, but this was an important trip!) ‘Ha ha only joking’ I shrieked. They fell for it, but apparently serendipity didn’t find it funny.
And so, armed with my double Jack Daniels and cough mixture (nice!), I hacked my way through our (thankfully) short set having culled Baby, I’m Broke at the last minute. Backstage I’d attempted to warm up, and sounding more Scooby-Doo than Doo-Wop, I realised that the entire top half of my voice had gone. Eek! We ended up having a good gig despite the new husky vocal direction, with Andrew and Ivor stepping up to their respective mics for the high bits, and the rest of the band rocking out, high on the excitement of finally being on stage in New York City, baby. Hell yeah!
CMJ week is mental. The whole of the music industry lands in the Big Apple and it’s hard to get a hotel room, let alone get noticed, but we rented a charming house in Brooklyn with dusty chandeliers and enormous four poster beds, and apart from freaking out about losing my voice, I did spend the entire trip feeling like a shrinking Alice in Wonderland surrounded by big things. Never before had I seen such enormous pizza boxes/tins of ravioli/cars… I could even stand up in the enormo-fridge. And of course, there’s nothing like being in a beautiful city to take away your woes. We had a great time jumping in and out of yellow cabs, drinking bottomless cwoiffees and getting shouted at by over-enthusiastic pizza waiters for being indecisive bumbling English fools. WHAT D’YA WANT? WHAT D’YA WANT? Brilliant! What I wanted was for my voice to come back, and as our big 80-minute-no support band-fans flying in from Canada- headline show at Joe’s Pub loomed closer, my throat got tighter and tighter and all I could think about was throwing myself off Brooklyn Bridge…
Having scoured Manhattan for every last Vocalzone (CMJ week – they’d all sold out!) Andrew, Paul, Malc and I made our way back to the house for a well deserved kip. Short of the miracle I actually needed, I figured the only thing I could do was to try and sleep it off for a couple of hours and hope that I’d wake up better. Good idea, except we’d locked ourselves out. Did I mention we’d passed a plaque on the way home quoting Voltaire; “God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh”? It was Paul’s birthday and so I sang him Happy Birthday sat on the stairs in my desperate, cracked voice and all we could do was laugh.
Something magical happened in New York, despite everything. Of course the gig started disastrously. My voice was wrecked and as if to top it all off, Rusty’s bass lead decided to pack up in the first song. I felt like we’d blown it in America, big time, and so, in the spirit of ‘sod it, there’s nothing to lose’ I sang the rest of the set like the broken woman I was, and somehow, I still don’t know how, but somehow, we managed to storm it! Rusty had reassured me it’s amazing what the human body can do when it needs to, and sure enough my voice didn’t fail me, and I even got through the high bits in Baby I’m Broke, the irony not lost on my truly wonderful band, who carried me, willing me on with every strum, every hit… I BLOODY LOVE THOSE BOYS! The audience were great and Joe’s Pub is a beautiful venue – like an old 60’s jazz club, and I think it’ll be one of those strange magical gigs that we’ll talk about for years to come. I don’t know, maybe it’s too much brandy and Lemsip talking, either that or my usual London cynicism has been overtaken with American schmaltz, but I feel so humbled by that gig, and truly lucky to have such an amazing band, and I’m now very, very excited about the future…
And as for you New York, I ain’t finished with you yet.
Xx Ali
