Why I call myself the Shrieking Violet

I wrote this in response to a recent article in the Guardian about the decline of the name 'Nigel'.

Why I call myself the Shrieking Violet

I call myself the Shrieking Violet because of a man called Nigel: Nigel 'Nig' Hodgkins, my Year 9 English teacher, who had a bowl haircut, big, round glasses and a 'flying jacket' (and as a result was mocked a lot by the girls at my all girls' school for being hopelessly uncool). At the age of 13/14 I didn't say very much (didn't know how), but wrote copiously. My main ambitions in life were to be editor of the Times (the family newspaper of choice, and therefore my main source of cultural knowledge), a rock 'n' roll music journalist or on Top of the Pops (or possibly all of those).

A lot of the time I felt like if you weren't loud you were ignored, seen as being stupid or dismissed as having nothing worth saying, but Mr Hodgkins noticed that I did have things to say and once said he knew that I was 'no shrinking violet'. This stuck with me and I determined that I was going to be a 'Shrieking Violet' instead of a 'shrinking violet', and that I was one day going to have a band with that name. 

One day after class someone asked Mr Hodgkins who his favourite band was. He said 'oh you won't have heard of them' and wrote 'L-o-v-e' on the board. I loved them, and excitedly exclaimed 'I love Forever Changes'! It turned out Mr Hodgkins wrote for the Penguin Book of Rock & Pop in his spare time. I used to get the bus to Canterbury to go record shopping at weekends, so I started going and standing in the 'music' section of Waterstones, on the first floor, and reading 'Nig Hodgkins'' entries in the Penguin Book of Rock & Pop – which included Pixies, Beach Boys, Husker Du and Public Enemy. 

After a couple of years Mr Hodgkins left our school. He'd always said that the '80s were the worst decade for music, which I vehemently disagreed with (I still think the eighties might be my favourite decade for music), so as a leaving present I made him a tape of my favourite '80s songs, called, of course, 'Making Plans for Nigel' (I stretched '80s slightly to include 1979/1990). I first heard 'Making Plans for Nigel' when I taped it off Steve Lamacq's Evening Session, and it's still one of my favourite ever songs, with one of my favourite ever guitar solos (when I moved to Manchester they used to play it at Smile at the Star and Garter, and I used to think of Mr Hodgkins as I danced around).

The last time I saw Mr Hodgkins was at the Canterbury Fayre music festival, when I was 16, in the summer holidays after my GCSEs (the same summer holidays I spent recording my first ever album, on cassette tape), out in the rolling Kentish countryside surrounded by hop fields. Love were headlining, playing Forever Changes in its entirety, complete with horns and strings, and it's one of the most transcendent musical experiences I can ever remember having, ferocious and mellow at the same time, of its time but also still so forceful and so bright and fresh. Arthur Lee died a couple of years later, so I'm so glad I got the chance to experience it. I still wear the Love t-shirt I bought at the festival, which is increasingly washed out and ragged but I intend to keep wearing it until it falls apart.

I hope Mr Hodgkins is still writing about music and going to gigs and being passionate and inspiring about what he does!

The Shrieking Violets on Bandcamp

I recently digitised the first album I ever made, on cassette tape, when I was 16, during the summer holidays after my GCSEs. It was recorded in my parents' attic, in a very rudimentary fashion, on a Sony shoebox recorder. It can now be listened to at https://theshriekingviolets.bandcamp.com/album/first-album. I'm not sure why I felt the need to put it online, except that I guess it's the first thing I ever made, by myself, just got on with, produced, because I had to, needed to. For that reason it's still my most treasured possession.

By way of introduction, here is a piece I wrote about my teenage music-making for Black Dogs' publication Hope From Dead End Town a few years ago.


'A View from (under) the Bridge': a short story about growing up weird

I grew up in a small town called Hythe on the south coast of England, a picturesque and pleasant, yet quiet, town nestled between the English Channel and rolling Kent countryside which is populated predominantly by two groups of people: pensioners and Conservative voters. Hythe is in the south eastern corner of England, not really on the way to anywhere, and it's a place where time passes slowly; when I was a teenager, the social life of one group of old men consisted of sitting in a row on one of the town's bridges for a chat at the same time every day, resting halfway between home and the shops, their walking sticks propped up on the pavement. As a child who was never conventionally pretty, girly or interested in subjects deemed fitting topics for discussion by teenage girls, I didn't really fit in there, or at my all girls' school a twenty minute bus-ride away, and as much as I tried to make friends my overall experience was of overwhelming loneliness, from which I tried doggedly to distract myself by making music and art.

In my early teens I became obsessed with playing the guitar, both as an outlet for my creative frustration and as something to do to pass the time. I asked for an acoustic guitar for my fourteenth birthday, and when my mum and dad took me to a guitar shop in the nearest city, Canterbury, I knew that the black Fender I picked up, so shiny I could see my face in its surface, was the guitar for me; it was love at first sight. Later, I talked them into buying me a hard, black guitar case lined with what looked liked luxurious red velvet, a fitting home for my precious instrument, and was given a hippyish, rainbow-woven guitar strap which contrasted nicely with its stylish, unbroken blackness.

I took to lugging the guitar everywhere with me as if it was my best friend, the awkward, slippery handle of the heavy case wearing red marks into my hands as I wandered around the town from spot to spot, an unlikely, roving busker singing songs no-one else knew the words to. I tried to play songs like Shake Some Action by Californian band Flamin Groovies (with lyrics like "If you don't dig what I say/Then I will go away/And I won't come back this again. No/'Cause I don't need a friend”, Shake Some Action was the rousing, defiant anthem of my teenage disaffection, and it's a song I still play from time to time today), and underage romance 13 by Big Star, little realising that potential listeners wanted something familiar they could hum along to like the Beatles or Oasis. I clung onto the hope, however, that if only someone who shared my love of sixties and seventies American power pop would walk past one day and stop and talk to me, I'd finally meet someone with whom I had something in common, and find a companion.

I used to sit and play on a smooth worn step in front of the town hall, my legs dangling down onto the paving slabs of the High Street, struggling to make my voice heard over the uninterested shoppers, or on the uncomfortable, stony beach and the distinctive, pink-painted promenade which ran alongside it, and sometimes on the gently sloping banks of the historic, tranquil Royal Military Canal which meanders placidly through the town, built centuries ago to defend the Kent coast from the threat of invasion by Napoleon, amid daffodils and swans and under the shade of weeping willow trees.

One day I decided to take this to its logical conclusion and go and sit and play under one of the bridges which takes cars and pedestrians over the canal, to find out how it echoed, and make some recordings on my portable 'shoebox-style' recorder. I was inspired partly by my favourite guitarist at the time, John Fahey, who wrote a piece of music based on a 'singing bridge' in Memphis, Tennessee (as a teenager, I spent a disproportionate amount of time daydreaming about visiting the Southern States of the United States, inspired both by its completely alien landscape and the potential for adventures suggested to me by its literature and music), and in part by the episode of the Simpsons in which Lisa Simpson, another hero of mine, joins saxophonist Bleeding Gums Murphy in a jam on a moonlit bridge, an homage to the famous story of jazz musician Sonny Rollins practising on the Williamsburg Bridge in New York over on the equally remote, exciting and exotic East coast of America. Despite my parents' concern – they teasingly called me 'troll', and warned me of vermin and the dangers of waterborne Weil's disease – I became obsessed with going and sitting, alternating depending on whichever took my fancy that day, under two facing bridges at opposite ends of the town centre. I found the bridges to be perfect practice rooms to experiment with different sounds and try out the metal and glass slides and capo I'd bought from the nearby music shop in the High Street, which was run by one eccentric, opinionated man who would talk your ear off if given half a chance. Eventually, I put voice to my own songs and lyrics.

For me, the bridges were both private and a magical places, giving me space to sit, think and watch the world go by. In sunshine, I watched elusive ripples of light dance above me, reflected on the bridges' low roofs, trying again and again to capture the fleeting dashes of sunlight and recreate the essence of the place as short films on my digital camera. In stormy weather, rain and hail fell onto the surface of the water in small circles and the bridges became my refuge from thunder and lightning, an experience I found more exciting than frightening. I was usually undisturbed, save from occasional hired rowing boats going past bearing noisy families and the occasional sunburnt couple, some of whom appeared to be pleased by my music, which must have broken up the physical monotony of their oar strokes, and some of whom didn't seem sure how to react.

For a couple of years, it felt like I spent all my weekends and summer holidays under bridges – so much so that I even had my sixteenth birthday party down there and convinced some of my classmates to get the bus into Hythe to join me, eating cake and sheltering from the half-hearted rain of a mid-May day.

The Would Be's - I'm Hardly Ever Wrong

A few months ago, I rediscovered one of my all time favourite records. It's one of those perfectly composed examples of the three and a half minute artform that seemed to say everything about my life at the time when I first heard it, and can be returned to over and over again, and still sound exactly the same however my life has changed since I last listened.

I first came across I'm Hardly Ever Wrong by Irish band the Would Be's when I recorded it by chance from Steve Lamacq's Evening Session. Growing up in a small town, his daily show on Radio 1 was my only entertainment for a couple of years, and it introduced me to many classic songs, as well as new bands.

I still have the cassette, which is marked Jan-March 2002. I'm Hardly Ever Wrong, a lost indie classic from 1990, takes up even less than the conventional three minutes, nestled in between Hole and a live session by Easyworld. Presumably, my finger, hovered over my stereo, hit the record button soon after the song started, drawn in by the distinctive opening notes of the intro, which trundle into a piece of perfect pop that is as unique as it is timeless. The female singer's slightly husky voice is unforgettable, gliding through lyrics about how seeing a film, reading a book, hearing a song, "changes your life, but only for a day, and a day is not enough". She's almost blase, prematurely worldweary like someone who's been through it all before, the chorus soaring to its conclusion that "i'm hardly ever wrong" with the self-assuredness and world-conquering ambition that's unique to teenagers - or at least, I saw in my 14 year old self.

I'm Hardly Ever Wrong is tinged with regret and melancholy, anchored by slightly mocking horns that follow the floating vocal line like an encroaching conscience or voice of doubt. The arrangements are highly sophisticated. So far, I've only tested it out during bedroom discos, but I'm trying to spead the word so that I'm Hardly Ever Wrong can be played again and come to life on the dancefloor, assuming its rightful place alongisde the establishd indie cannon of Smiths, Stereolab and et al...

Despite its superfluous apostrophe, in my mind The Would Be's is also up there with all time great band names, memorable because of the aura of mystery it creates - 'would be' suggests unattainable dreams, unfulfilled ambition, something elusive and hard to come by, not yet accomplished.

I tried to find out more about the band on the internet, but to no avail - until a few months ago, when I discovered they had finally created a myspace, where two more superb songs can be heard. Unfortunately, it seems the Would Be's were to become Would Have Beens, and disappeared without ever even releasing an album.

I'm Hardly Ever Wrong is one of those songs I wish I could have written, and something my own music aspires towards. I contacted the band with a list of questions, as much to satisfy my curiosity as anything else. I'm fully intending to write their responses up as a proper interview for a fanzine soon, but until then, and to coincide with the 19th anniversary of the release of the song, here are there answers in full, which are brilliant even in their unedited form and discuss subjects close to my heart like the radio, John Peel, teenage spirit, grand dreams and ambitions and even just the experience of being a young band in the music industry.

Who is in the band?

The Would Be's consisted of three Finnegan brothers, Matthew, Eamonn and Paul, assorted guitars. Julie McDonnel singer. Pascal Smith drums. Aideen O'Reilly trombone and saxophone. Eileen Gogan singer who replaced Julie.

How did you meet and get together?

Guitarist Matt was asked to play in a local variety show in which Aideen was involved, Aideen was a friend of singer Julie, so due to a shared interest in good music the Would Be's were born....and of course a secret shared interest in being rich and famous but we didn't talk about that !!!

How did you come up with the name the Would Be’s?

We wanted a name that would suit our down-to-earth unpretentious modest attitude to music and life, plus we had the mistaken belief that we just couldn't be a great band without being part of some elite group of people who were somehow ‘born to greatness' . I did say that we were modest, it's the one thing that we could boast about at that time !! so after some searching in ' Virtues English dictionary' ( Encyclopaedic Edition ) we found '' Would be '' and we liked the sound of it and how it looked in print.How old were you when you released I’m Hardly Ever Wrong?

A mental age of about nine or ten but the band had a physical age of between thirteen and nineteen ish and it's a fact that our thirteen year old rhythm guitarist Paul didn't get to play a certain gig in Dublin because the owner of the venue wouldn't let him in cause he was underage. but hey....that's rock'n'roll...man !

It sounds quite teenage - what did you write songs about?

We tended to write songs about certain deep thoughts that we had from time to time, like for instance, how our 'radio sounded different in the dark ' and how things seemed to be '' funny ha ha and funny peculiar'' at the same time, we tried to get a balance of ' insight into life and a good sense of humour about it all, we'd like to think that we achieved that in our songs....( well we hope so anyway !!! )

Who were your influences?

We were influenced by a wide range of music, famous bands like the Smiths and the Pixies, no so famous band like, Half man Half Biscuit, Bongwater, Freiwillige selbst-kontrolle ( F.S.K. ). I.Ludicrous, Shonen Knife, the Frank Chickens, the Pooh Sticks, Jonathan Richman, Flying Lizards, John Cooper Clarke, and lots more.

How did you come up with the idea of having brass in the band?

Well one day I was walking past the local scrapmetal yard and I saw a big brass bed.......( only jokin ). The trombone and saxophone came about because Aideen was a member of the local brass and reed band, we thought that it added a nice touch to the guitar based pop music that we were playing and as we got more well known we found that people really liked the fact that we sounded different to the other rock and pop bands around at that time. '' Ya cant bet a bit of brass '' as they say...........in brass bands, I suppose !

How did you write one of the catchiest indie songs ever and then just completely disappear?

Well it wasn't easy, it takes a special kinda talent to disappear so quickly after breaking through in a very competitive business, when the single '' I'm hardly ever wrong '' came out, some of the biggest record companies in the world wanted to sign us, the phone was hopping all day every day after the late very great ' JOHN PEEL ' played the song on his bbc radio 1 show, we had A & R people coming from New York and London to hear us playing live in some small out-of-the-way towns in Ireland, sometimes they got lost on the way to the gigs and were never seen or heard of again !!!!!!!!!! maybe....! but in the end we signed to a small independent record company in London because we wanted complete artistic control, we thought that the big companies would tell us what to do, well the small company didn't tell us what to do....... but they also didn't have the money to make the record a hit, so it was a combination of ' naivete, idealism, big headedness and downright stupidity that helped us to disappear from the scene. but we're not bitter......................oh yes we are !.......but only a little......when it's very cold and we haven't much to eat..!

Why is there no information about you on the internet?

We didn't plan it that way but we kinda like the fact that there's not too much information on the internet about us, it adds a bit of mystery in these days of instant knowledge, instant gratification and instant coffee.....it's nice to be anonymous but then again that works against you if you're trying to sell music.............can we have it both ways ??...........no, didn't think so !

Did you never record an album/ why?

We didn't get to record an album, we got a bit distracted at the time and our first singer Julie McDonnel decided to stay at school, we were looking for a new singer for a few months, which is a long time in the music biz, when Eileen Gogan joined the band we recorded four songs with producer '' STEPHEN STREET ' those four songs plus four songs we had recorded with Julie McDonnel have just become availible on itunes as an E.P. '' SILLY SONGS FOR CYNICAL PEOPLE '' the song '' I'M HARDLY EVER WRONG '' is included on it. so that's the nearest thing to an album that we have released.

Did you ever meet John Peel or go on his radio show?

Sadly we didn't get to meet john peel but he did phone us a few times, I think that he was a bit concerned that we might get eaten up by some of the big sharks in the music biz ,and ya know I think he was right, we kinda did !! . John gave us his home phone number which was an honour to have but wouldn't you know it one of the times that we rang him he was in the middle of his sunday dinner, he talked to us anyway and didn't seem to mind, he was a very rare and genuine person in a business that is known to be full of common and false people, we were very saddened to hear of his death, I'm sure he would still be doing his show on radio if he had lived, we didn't get to go on his show live but we did record a four song peel session for his bbc radio 1 show in Maida vale studios London, he broadcast it a few times which was a great experience, we had been big fans of his show for years before he played us, it was a dream come true, so that proves that dreams really do come true...............well, some times.......................if you dream hard enough!

What did he like so much about your song?

The first time that he played it he said he liked the sound of the guitars on the intro and he played the intro part a few times to point that out, he also played the b side that first night and he said that '' I'm hardly ever wrong '' was a wonderful classic pop song and that he hoped that bbc radio 1 would put it on the daytime playist but alas for some strange reason they didn't , maybe because it was a wonderful classic pop song and you cant have that kinda thing on daytime radio now can ya !

You beat Morrissey, the Charlatans and Nick Cave to reach number 12 in John Peel’s 1990 festive 50 - that’s quite an honour! How did you feel about that?

We were very flattered by that as we are big fans of some of the bands we beat, it was a good confidence booster at the time, but maybe it's not a good thing to get too confident when you're young and foolish, there's nothing bigger than a big head.

You have a song called My Radio Sounds Different in the Dark - are/ were you a big fan of the radio?

We have always enjoyed listening to the radio, used to listen to it in bed, in the dark for an hour or two before going asleep, that's where the inspiration for that song came from, music is much more vivid in the dark, much more intense.....man ! and as it happens, I'm listening to the radio at the moment as I write out this interview and you may not believe this but D J Chris Hawkins on BBC 6MUSIC has just said he will be broadcasting the Would Be's John Peel Session on his show, friday 20th.march 2009. now that is what I call a coincidence ! and it does sound different, in the digital audio dark . !!!!

Did you play much in the UK?

I think we did two short tours of the UK . which was very exciting for us at the time, we played in Liverpool, a venue called Planet X , Morrissey was suppose to come along to hear us play at that one but the manager said he always gets mobbed everytime he goes there so I dont think he showed up that night, I think the support band was called '' Barbel ''.

We also played in ''the Mean Fiddler '' '' the L.S.E. '' '' the Boarderline '' and the '' Venue '' new cross London where the support was from a band called the ''Boilweevils '' .We got to stay in that famous rock 'n' roll hotel near Hyde park '' THE COLUMBIA HOTEL ''where all the rock and pop bands used to stay and maybe still do ! New Kids on The Block '' were staying there at the same time as us, ahh well, bad timing there !! but the Inspiral Carpets and Lush and the Greatful Dead were there aswell so it wasn't too bad, a big name D J from Los Angeles '' Rodney Binginhimer '' a d j on KROQ radio came to hear us play in the L.S.E. ( london school of economics ) he took some photos of us and had a chat backstage, very rock'n'roll, He was one of the first d js to play Blondie and the Ramones, he's known as the Mayor of Sunset Strip ' these days. Oh, and a big fan of ours from England, a one '' William Shakespeare '' came up to say hello to us after that gig, now you wouldn't forget a fan with a name like that, wouldest thou !! so hello to William if he happens to see this. We really enjoyed the UK gigs a lot .

Were there any other bands that were doing the same kind of thing as you at the same time?

Not too many that sounded the same with brass instruments and a female singer and of course ' wonderful classic pop songs '. We're still modest !!!

Did I’m Hardly Ever Wrong enter the charts?

The single didn't get playlisted on bbc daytime radio at the time we released it and we were on a small indie record label so we didn't get through to a big commercial audience but it did reach number 5 or 6 in the independent charts, which was nice.

Why aren’t you famous?

Well, why indeed ! maybe we'' just haven't earned it yet baby '' ( as the Smiths once sang ) I think part of the reason is because we didn't make the right decisions at the right time, we got lost in the moment, and what a moment !! but as some wise man once said,( '' if everybody was somebody, then nobody would be anybody '' ). Hope he was right about that ?

Do you feel like your songs should be better known and should be being played at indie discos?

We would like it if people got the chance to hear our songs at indie discos so that they could decide whether or not the songs deserve to be better known, I suppose every band thinks their songs should be better known but ultimately the people shall decide.

How long were you together for and why did you stop making music?

I think we were together for just about two years or so, it was a kind of whirlwind romance with the music biz, not sure why we stopped but as the initial buzz died down I think we lost interest, it must have been a case of '' too much too soon ''.

What do you all do now?

Most of us are still involved in music, Pascal Smith is giving drumming lessons, Julie is an art teacher, Aideen is working in art and fashion, Eilleen is writing and singing songs under the name '' Melba '' us Finnegan brothers are still writing songs and playing music.

When did you last play together?

I think the last gig we played was in 1991, could have been a venue in Limerick city.

Are you going to make any music together soon?

No plans to make music as the Would Be's at the moment but the Finnegan brothers are writing some new songs with a female singer and may release them under a different name sometime if they sound any good.........which of course they will !!!!!!!

We almost got together a few years ago for a John Peel remembrance day show in Dublin along with some other bands but we couldn't get all the members of the would be's together at the time so we didn't get to do it

If you play any gigs soon, will you play some of your old songs? Would that be weird, playing them so long after they were written?

If we ever did play together again we would play the old songs, I dont think it would feel weird, it would be much more fun I'd say because we wouldn't be taking ourselves so seriously as we used to.

Are there any bands you like nowadays?

There are lots of bands that we like at the moment, the Gossip, the Arctic Monkeys, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Richard Hawley, the White Strips, the Kills and many many more, as they say !

Yours musically
Eamonn, Matt, Paul Would Be's
www.myspace.com/thewouldbesofficial
eight track album
''silly songs for cynical people'' available at itunes music store

Taste of Honey, Royal Exchange Theatre, Monday 17 November

Unless you can afford the best seats, an evening at the theatre often involves sitting up in the gods peering down at the tiny players on stage below. A new production of Shelagh Delaney's slice of life play Taste of Honey, however, throws the conventional theatrical experience out onto the cold Salford wind.

DJ Jon Winstanley, who's providing a live soundtrack to the show, plays Northern Soul while we wait for the play to start, so it feels more like going to see a film at the cinema, complete with pre-movie muzak, than a formal trip to the theatre. By the time of the interval, I want to get up and dance.

My 'seat' is a doorstep, an extension of the set. My feet touch the smooth, green-blue slabs of the Salford street below, which are wet with glossy patches of rainwater. Other audience members sit on a sofa, and a dilapidated brick wall on the edge of the stage. I can see the grain of the floorboards, worn smooth at the edges, and the glow of the cellar lights going down into the street. I can make out the patterns of the wallpaper and curtains, as well as the broken banister and the frayed carpet that doesn't quite cover the floor. I'm in the thick of things before the play even starts.

When the players run on to the loud, brash blare of the Ting Tings, carrying their whole material lives in a wheelbarrow, the tenement comes alive, crackling with sexual tension and claustrophobia.

We can taste the weak coffee and feel the coldness of the two room flat. We smell the smoke of the cigars and cigarettes Helen's boyfriend Peter (Paul Popplewell), a shady upstart with an eye-patch, smokes. The dripping ceiling leaks into a bucket like a tinny clock beat of decay, ticking with the regularity of a watery metronome. A lone light bulb flickers. We shiver in solidarity with the characters, feeling the chill of a city where “there are two seasons – winter and winter”.

Sally Lindsay is the curvy, glamorous single mother Helen, a sexually voracious vamp with her blonde hair in rollers. An ageing alcoholic, she provides a contrast to her frumpy 15-year-old daughter, played by Jodie McNee, that would be tragic if it wasn't so humorous. Pinch faced and stick like, the mouthy Jo resembles Quentin Blake's scrawny depiction of Roald Dahl's precocious young girl Matilda.

Helen and Jo are on first name terms, and more like an antagonistic, longsuffering married couple than mother and child. Perpetually chattering Helen barely gives Jo a chance to speak, and they have very few moments of calm in which to really talk.

Taste of Honey is a play about relationships and power. It's almost a play of two bickering married couples; Helen and Jo, and Jo and Geoff. Geoff, a foppish, ginger haired art student played by Adam Gillen, is the play's main source of comedy, but also its main voice of reason. He cares for Jo when she becomes pregnant as the result of a then taboo mixed-race relationship. He steps into the nurturing role Helen should have had in Jo's life.

The play, written when Delaney was 18, may have turned 50 this year, but updating it to include Manchester and Salford pop hits such as the Ting Tings' obnoxious, catchy Shut Up and Let Me Go, demonstrates that teenage attitude and bravado doesn't change over time. Even though Jo's future looks set to recreate Helen's adult life of “work and want”, she's irrepressibly upbeat and boasts “I can do anything when I put my mind to it”.

Nor does the excitement of first love change over the years, providing hope against a backdrop of hardship and poverty. The characters sing and dance out their inner feelings to a cast of Manchester greatest hits that includes Oasis and Inspiral Carpets, Ian Brown, Happy Mondays and Northern Soul. It’s a form of escapist musical soliloquy: the characters can’t talk to each other - they’re too busy to listen. The songs of the Smiths are centre stage, the characters referencing famous lyrics such as 'I dreamt about you last night and I fell out of bed twice', and 'If a double-decker bus crashes into us, to die by your side is such a heavenly way to die'. It's a nod to the influence the play has had on popular culture, not least Morrissey's lyrics.

Adam Green, Club Academy, Friday 11th April 2008

Whilst his fellow former Moldy Peaches hero, Kimya Dawson, now revels in being a proud mother, Adam Green’s infantile live show is more fitting to someone half his twenty six years of age.

Prancing onto the stage in ‘Man-Chest-Hair’, a white, tasselled cape cum wings contraption hanging from his arms, to a stadium rock workout of the single ‘Morning After Midnight’, Green twirls through an evening of high camp silliness that’s less anti-folk show than Phantom of the Opera theatricality.

Sung in a fine baritone far beyond his years, Green’s lyrics, revolving round genital parts and coupling, are nevertheless closer to a continuous assertion of his masculine straightness than the sweet, sensitive, introspective folk songs his ex-bandmate added to the soundtrack of the recent teen flick Juno.