Why:
I haven’t thought about this band in years, but I’ve just put House of Jealous Lovers on the stereo and it takes me right back.
We loved this band.
I remember writing an email to one of my oldest friend the first time I’d played Echoes.
It was “Indecently good,” I told him.
I remember putting Jealous Lovers on a compilation for a someone.
Someone I hoped would become my girlfriend.
It was like being a teenager again, and still just as awkward. I was nearly 30.
She was a college friend who, very much to my surprise, had come home with me from a pub in Camden after a group of us had gone to see a band called the Dawn Parade play the Bull & Gate.
I’d discovered this band through the internet, and bought all their early singles and EPs.
I was very passionate about them.
Because of that show I can date this night to September 2001.
This was one of the years that I very much wanted someone to call a girlfriend. I think I was clutching out at anyone that came even close to interest.
She showed her interest by coming onto me on my sofa then coming up to bed.
After that, I’d convinced myself she was perfect for me.
As you do.
But the only other time I even got to kiss her again was at party at her parents’ house some awkward months later.
I’d brought round this CD.
I remember that Losing My Edge by LCD Soundsystem was on there too.
LCD and the Rapture were bands who helped people like me feel that we weren’t just stuck listening to exactly the same kind of music.
In my late 20s this felt useful. It felt like a progression.
I remember trying to talk to this girl about things months later.
We were out somewhere down by Angel tube station.
I’d spent the best part of a year since it had happened just waiting for her. This was a very real thing for me.
I’d asked a friend who had the Dawn Parade in for an interview in his office to sign a Christmas card for her.
I thought this was romantic. But the childish scribble of a Christmas tree on a random piece of paper with their names scrawled alongside it looked – even to me – like something a stalker would have put together.
“I might be AWOL for a while”, she’d said that first and only morning.
It looks strange to write it, but I’ll swear that’s what she said. “AWOL.”
So I took it on faith and I waited.
I remember seeing her walk off to the tube as I waited for a cab.
I remember waiting ages before anyone stopped for me.
I remember how she looked when I awkwardly asked what was really going on.
She looked pained. Like I’d put her in a position where she had no choice but to feel sorry for me.
The show would have been good.
I remember it being crowded, and a much better vibe than you’d sometimes get in a packed out Astoria.
There would have been cowbell. Lots of it.
There would have been dancing by people who don’t know how to dance.
High: Sister Saviour at the end of the show.
Drinking: Lime and soda. Seriously.
Thinking: Christ it’s crowded in here.
My Old Gig Tickets 