Man, he used to be so cool....

Just trawling the internet, trying to recover from a mild hangover and avoid writing a lesson plan, when I came across this interview that I did for a guy in Sweden's hipsterish music website back in the olden, golden days of AHRC funding, no pressing deadlines, Truck Festival etc etc. In celebration, a few Teknikov highlights:

- Sharing a stage with DFA's occasionally excellent Prinzhorn Dance School. It wasn't the gig or the company that made this evening memorable, however: it was the post-show shenanigans which allowed our reputation as Norwich's most immature band to spread beyond the confines of the fine city. Yes, we had 'handbags'. Mat and I stole Tony's hat for the nth time that week. Retrospectively, I can understand why he was a bit annoyed. Anyway, he retrieved said item of clothing and started hitting me around the face with it, provoking an unsightly tussle from which no-one emerged with any credibility.

- The Art School gig. This was a great night. The support act was an American chap who none of us had ever met before and he turned up at the venue, guitar in hand, precisely half an hour after he was supposed to be on stage. Our set got really squeezed because we were on late. Naturally, we spent the intervening period drinking cheap Oranjeboom and getting more and more nervous about the delay, an anxiety which transformed into adrenalin the moment we went on. About halfway through the set, and midway through a song, someone figured out how to turn the hall lights down and the backlights came on completely unexpectedly, at which point everyone went mental. There was a moshpit! People were dancing!

- Truck 2006. This was amazing. We spent three or four nights in Abingdon prior to this show doing what we do best, namely going to the pub, arguing, telling each other ghost stories, talking about football, and failing to do any rehearsal whatsoever. Somehow, this cocktail of procrastination worked wonders. We were the first band on and the atmosphere was incredibly tight, as one of the biggest thunderstorms I have ever seen in the UK was half an hour from breaking. I had sweat running into my eyes before we started playing. The tent was absolutely packed as we were one of the first bands of the weekend and, from the stage, we could see more people running across the field to come and see us. We then spent the rest of the weekend getting drunk, arguing, telling each other ghost stories and talking about football...

- The MacBeth. Our pre-Christmas 2007 jaunt to Hoxton was probably my favourite of our London gigs. Once again, we were incredibly late onstage thanks to the previous band, who took ONE BLOODY HOUR to get their equipment offstage. The gig organiser, who gave the impression of just having escaped from rehab (probably not uncommon in a known haunt of Amy Winehouse and Peter Doherty) had to plead with the stern barlady to let us play at all, and he only did this because we were all devoting energy to being conspicuously angry and walking around kicking our amplifiers like Ian Brown on the Late Show. Anyway, we got on and all of our instruments went absolutely mad. The Roland sounded as if it had fallen victim to some antagonistic nanotechnology and (as so often happens) my guitar string snapped during the very first song, meaning that I had to play the atrocious spare guitar for the entire gig. When we finally got going, though, we were ace, albeit in a frighteningly distorted, No Wave kind of a way.

Obviously, I won't go into all the times we were crap, or apathetic. Can you tell that, contrary to what I've gone on and on and on about in the past, I'm missing Teknikov rather a lot?