So it’s finally happening. My mid-life crisis is in full swing. My band and I are reuniting, twenty two years after splitting up. Don’t worry Brighton; this will be happening in the deepest, darkest, bowels of the East Midlands. East Midlands; I’m sorry.
Let me take you back to the beginning. Throughout the late eighties and early nineties, I was in four different bands. The members just about stayed the same over the years but we changed the name of the band to be ‘edgy.’ I was the singer in all four bands.
I can’t sing. But no-one else volunteered, so I stepped up every time we reformed. I was hired more for my fancy dress wardrobe, than I was for any talent. I knew this but I was happy to take the gig because I knew being a singer in a band, would get me the girls, even if I was dressed as a woman.
We finally spilt in 1992, when I went off to live in Australia, reformed in a different guise seven years later and then split again when we realised we weren’t going to be pop stars.
Over the last year, we’ve made contact again through facebook and we talked about doing an anniversary gig. This intensified over Christmas and then we got the devastating news in January that our drummer had collapsed and died of a heart attack, at the age of just forty-nine years old.
We went to his funeral, regaled the old times and talked to the family about going ahead with a gig. They wanted it to happen, (his brother Tony, filling in on the drums) we wanted it to happen and we’re now putting on a show to end all shows in early July. Fittingly, the money taken on the door will all go to the British Heart Foundation.
RIP Steve. We’re going to miss you. But at least you don’t have to go through this mid-life crisis. It’s getting embarrassing now.