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On Friday, I was up and out early: to go into town and meet a very tired and jetlagged namesake (who shall, as previously posted, be referred to as troUSers) who had flown in from the States.

It still felt novel meeting him again: it always seems to have been the case that I bump into someone I know in town when I'm on my way to the station to get him, and Friday morning was no exception. The friend said to me, what are you up to then?, to which I replied along the lines of, well, I'm just about to meet up with someone who's got the same name as me and who has flown in from half way across the planet, AND we're playing on the same stage tonight.....long story.

We took a cab back to my flat, I popped out to the shops to get some milk, meanwhile troUSers immediately fell into an obviously much-needed deep sleep and remained that way for the next four hours. Which was fine in any case, it meant I had time to make a few last-minute musical adjustments on my laptop, and to let my latent OCD tendencies come to the fore as I sat and checked (and rechecked) my leads, connections and various bits of equipment.

Now, when I first agreed to do this gig, it was quite a (much-needed) step outside of my comfort zone. Firstly, I needed to do a lot of work to ensure that I had enough music ready to actually play in the first place. Secondly, the last time I did a live performance was the first time I'd done it on my own and I was incredibly nervous - I drank large and equal amounts of beer and water, and spent a lot of time pacing up and down. Thirdly, when I sent confirmation to troUSers that I would be playing, he made a suggestion.

We should do a collaboration!

This was a great but verrrrrrry scary idea: it would involve elements of risk and of things potentially going wrong, since it would mean we wouldn't really have any time to rehearse. I emailed him, what do you have in mind?.

He asked me if I could build up some beats and loops based on a track on his album, and see if we could make it into quite an epic.

I replied and - bearing in mind my initial anxieties - told him that not only would I work on it, but that I wanted him to collaborate on one of my songs as well (mentioned in an earlier post), which would be for him to do vocals on my version of Roxy Music's In Every Dream Home A Heartache.

So, fast-forwarding again to Friday afternoon, troUSers woke up at 4pm, which left just enough time for us to eat and for him to listen to the backing I'd done for his song (thankfully he loved it) and to run through Every Dream Home to get his vocal cues in the right place.

Then we were over to the venue along with a number of other friends who were also playing on the same bill and who had done the bulk of the work for arranging the event itself. Setting everything up was straightforward and, during the soundcheck, troUSers and I had a run-through of his song that we were going to perform together. This was the first time we had worked directly together on it, but it sounded good. I was playing guitar with most of the strings tuned down into a very low open tuning which meant I could also manipulate the various sounds and textures on the laptop to help build or reduce momentum based on what troUSers was singing and playing.

I thought I might be freaked out by the whole idea of being on the same stage as him, since it was such an unlikely prospect, but I realised it was absolutely fine, it felt easy and natural, and our ideas seemed to gel.

He'd also asked a friend of mine, a singer with a beautiful voice (who plays in the band who were performing on the same bill as me and troUSers), if she would share vocals on a couple of his songs: watching them perform a few verses from these songs during the soundcheck brought a real lump to my throat: a combination of two amazing voices, soaring harmonies and the very fact of them singing together for the first time and clearly delighting in the results, was a very powerful thing for me to experience.

Everything was set up and ready, we sat around and had a couple of beers: I realised though that, while I couldn't exactly say I was relaxed, then I was actually very calm and composed. We opened the doors around 8pm, and my main concern at this point was whether we would have many people coming to see us. Apparently the posters advertising the gig had drawn some interest since people were intrigued by the prospect of two musicians playing on the same bill on the basis that we had the same name, despite living in completely different parts of the world.

What was interesting was that most of the people who did turn up weren't familiar faces to me: there were a number of friends who I'd expected would be there, but it felt quite reassuring to see plenty who I didn't know at all. In a way it felt like it took the pressure off me: if I didn't know most of them, I could hardly know what their expectations were. Thankfully a good number of people did turn up (we made a profit!) and what was notable was that there was a really nice atmosphere, it was buzzing practically from the word go.

The first band went on. They explained the story behind the whole evening and how troUSers had got in touch with me all those years ago and how it had culminated in this evening - which in itself got a round of applause, so it felt like we were off to a good start. They're singer-songwriters who do very simple, beautiful and hauntingly melodic songs. They performed really well and got a great reception. After they finished (which left me half an hour before I was due to take the stage) I felt a stab of worry: musically, my stuff couldn't be more different to theirs, being largely electronic and laptop-based. Would people be receptive to it in any way, or would they vote with their feet?

I felt as though I should explain how different it was going to be, but I realised that it would seem as though I was making apologies for my music which would be quite undermining.

But. At 10pm, the allotted time, I got on stage and when the dj stopped playing I got everyone's attention. I held my camera up and said I was going to do "before and after" photographs: I told everyone to smile, I took a picture of the whole audience, and then just got on with it. I set the laptop going, adding and manipulating various sounds and textures over the beats and loops I'd pre-programmed. It's amazing how much of a confidence booster it is when you hear your own music coming through the onstage monitors at a very loud volume: it sounded good to me, the sound engineer had set everything up brilliantly, and I was able to completely relax and enjoy the moment.

The only error I made was in forgetting to take a chair on stage with me: it meant I was either standing hunched over the laptop and various other bits of equipment, or kneeling down behind it. I did remember to take a pint of beer on stage with me though, so obviously my priorities weren't completely out the window..

My first track lasted for over fifteen minutes, changing half-way through into a very mesmeric, motorik Krautrock-style piece: I thought, if people are prepared to sit through the first 5 or so minutes, then I've got them where I want them. And that's what happened. I got a great response, and people were also dancing. At the end of my own songs I invited troUSers up on stage and we did In Every Dream Home. He belted it out with his incredible voice and, being the mischievous soul that he is, he sang it with slightly different timing, just to keep me on my toes. It was spot on though and we got a rapturous reception. I then took my "after" photograph of the audience, and there are just as many people on it as were in the "before" one.

Finally, shortly after 11pm, troUSers took the stage and performed his own set. He has a penchant for unusual but finely structured melody which along with the combination of memorable and unconventional lyrics, and that voice, makes for very striking and slightly eerie songs. It was great to watch him play with the arrangements as he went along too, he has a real sense of the ebb and flow of the moment and of the response of the audience, and he tailors his performance expertly.

I have photos of groups of people in the audience watching, utterly rapt, some smiling, completely mesmerized. My friend joined him for the two numbers that she was singing with him: it was heart-stoppingly beautiful, not to mention amazing since they'd only ever previously performed them earlier at the soundcheck.

Eventually, I was called back onto the stage for his final song. I got the right settings on the laptop and got my guitar ready. TroUSers introduced the song, but said, hang on - I'm just going to run through a plan with my namesake. He whispered in my ear, just keep it going, make it as epic as you can, and by the end of it I'm going to have everybody joining in - which was to be no mean feat given that he sings this particular song in Bulgarian!

I started the laptop, a repeating bass note, and troUSers began singing and playing over it. As his voice rose, I began triggering the various beats and loops to match the momentum that he was gaining. I then built up my guitar playing, all the time watching and listening to mirror the pace and the feel of what he was doing. Several minutes later I was thrashing out huge, deliberately dissonant open chords in d minor and he was locked into it, bellowing out his huge voice and actually managing to get people joining in. Once this was achieved we gradually lowered the momentum and drew it to a natural close.

We got an astonishingly good reception, immediate and very loud cheers and applause. Just before we left the stage, we shook hands and hugged.

Afterwards, so many people - familiar or otherwise - came up and talked about how good it was, and what an amazing atmosphere there'd been to the whole night. I couldn't agree more, and I don't see how it could possibly have been any better than it was.

This is the best thing I've done in a very long time, and I've spent so much time expressing my gratitude to the people who made it happen and who were part of it.

Two pairs of trousers

So. Following on from my previous post, I met troUSers again, twice. First time, on Friday night at a club in another part of the country where he was due to play.

Second time, he came down here yesterday evening and we had a few beers and a good old chat.

How fitting that the weather has been warm and glorious for the events of the last few days, its provided the ideal backdrop for some golden moments on both occasions.

The Friday was hectic, quite an adventure, involving a lot of driving (thanks to a good friend who was willing to share the adventure), map reading, navigating through a relatively unfamiliar city, checking in and all the rest. Its one of the first times I've been on the guest list at a club - and how nice to confuse the people working the door, by having the same name as one of the performers.

I'm not going to describe the whole thing - I wouldn't know where to start. Definitely the best night I've had in a good while though, and very gratifying to be sat on a settee watching troUSers doing his stuff in front of an appreciative audience. He's got an amazing voice and his music was great stuff. Later on, after quite a few cans of Red Stripe, there we were dancing manically to a rather bizarre assortment of tunes, which makes me chuckle every time I think about it.

But I couldn't begin to do either meeting justice. I was sat on the bus back home last night after he got on the train back to where he was staying (he'll be back in LA now), and I sat there shaking my head in disbelief and wonderment. A little choked up, actually - at how a friendship which started as an oddity, a curiosity (see the previous post), was able to be sustained beyond the spurious but novel circumstances of its inception.

Years and years of letters, emails, tapes, cds, ideas, stories, opinions being exchanged. At times, months of silence - and then, a resumption of the contact.

Once, we hadn't spoken for about a year - then he split up with his boyfriend the same week I split up with my girlfriend, and we were back in touch, recounting our woes. We're very different in many ways and yet always able to get on - at least, within the confines of emails and the rest. I was a little nervous about meeting him again though. Twelve years had passed since I last saw him, and many things have changed during that time of course - what if, in real life, the conversation dried up, things fell flat?

No chance. Far from falling flat, it feels like our friendship has deepened, and blossomed. We could have great fun on Friday, well into the early hours. We could also slip easily into wide-ranging, mutually interesting conversation over some quality beer last night. I was genuinely sad to see him go last night - but we both promised that the gap between this and our next meeting will be much smaller.

Thing is, its really my turn to go over there to see him now. I'd better start saving for the air fare. That way, I can be sure that more golden moments lie ahead.

Namesake

Sometime in the early nineties, a letter arrived on my doormat. It had been sent, unsolicited, via airmail from the USA. Los Angeles, to be more precise. It purported to be from someone who had written to me on the basis that we had the same name. Since I want to retain at least a smidgen of anonymity, I'll call him troUSers (see what I did there?).

My initial reaction was that it was a practical joke: I knew at least two people at the time who were living in Los Angeles and I could imagine it fitting in with their sense of humour.

A couple of things tempered my certainty that someone was trying to pull a fast one, however. Firstly, the address on the envelope had enough inaccuracies in it to have run the risk of not being delivered to me at all. If this was a friend playing a joke I don't think they would have gone to that level of cunning detail.

Plus, from what was written in the letter, troUSers had found my address via a book which contained a huge list of people with my/our surname. I guessed that this information was gleaned from the same databases that junk mail senders would have access to. I recalled that my grandfather had, a few years before, been sent a similar book on approval by some sort of book club. He'd sent it back to them, saying "what would I want with that bloody rubbish?"

So, it seemed possible that it was indeed a letter from another trousers. Different middle name. 5 years younger, to the week.

I was a little freaked out. My surname isn't uncommon, but my first name is - there can't be ever so many of us in the world. I remember wandering through town the same day, and feeling like I was being watched: nonsense of course. But, if I could receive a letter from the other side of the world from another trousers, then it wasn't quite so easy to dismiss that slight feeling of unease.

This was also a good few years before the internet, for all intents and purposes. This kind of thing didn't happen, you couldn't just run a search for someone. It was weird.

But, I'll cut a long story short. It was true. This guy genuinely was troUSers. He turned out to be a nice guy too. I'd had the feeling at first that he was going to be some stereotypically snotty, arrogant, brash kid, and I was quickly proved wrong. Similarly, I learned, he thought I was going to be an uptight, aloof, typically English sort of bloke.... which probably wasn't helped by the fact that my first couple of letters were written to him with a chisel-tipped fountain pen, full of squiggles and flourishes, and lots of Jane Austen-style language. I was relieved to find that his own preconceptions were quickly dispelled.

We wrote to each other on a fairly regular basis, and we met once as well. He was in London for a week, and travelled up to see me by train. I had a very odd time explaining to the staff where I was doing voluntary work at the time, "sorry, I can't come in tomorrow, there's this guy who's also called trousers, from Los Angeles, and he's in town..."

We're in touch via the net these days. He's a musician, like me. He's an active musician, unlike me, and he's also verrrry talented (like me - obviously). I'll be meeting him for the second time ever this weekend, since he's over on these shores and is going to be playing a gig.

As with the above, its going to be weird....but wonderful. I can't wait.