The Mercury Music Awards 2009
I’m on the Tube home. That’s right: Mercury nominated Banjo/Bass player takes Tube home.
It’s been such a wonderful day. We got to say hello to BBC TV centre this morning for a live session and interview. The first time for all of us and we had a guided tour of the Blue Peter garden. Perhaps not so important for modern day musos but, to us, seeing it every day for so many years of our youth it was a beautiful experience. Especially as the lady who showed us around was so enthusiastic about it. Saying “You wouldn’t believe how many people aren’t bothered about seeing this part of the BBC”. A welcome distraction on a day where we perhaps felt a little out of our depth and grasping for some semblance of reality or at least familiarity.
I know we didn’t win. I didn’t think we had a chance anyway. We were happy to be nominated. And we were. Throughout the day, every time we were asked the stock answer would be “Its enough for us to be here”. And it was.
But then you get the red carpet, the limo (admittedly only 50 yards in the limo) and the ‘press run’. They keep telling us it’s an open competition. “The Grand National of Mercurys”. You could win.
55 minutes on that carpet. “Look at me”, “Over here now”, “Centre”, “Left” said anonymous people behind flashing cameras. We looked, we smiled. We wondered. Could we?
Then the press. TV, radio, bloggers, loggers. We settled into it after a while and got quite composed. Then comfortable. Not cocky but not far off. It took our minds off the performance though which was more than welcome. But still. Might it be the year of the fairy-tale?
A quick run upstairs to our room to be briefed by our Manager, Adrian – with us for years and years he’s part of the furniture and well briefed on the in-gags of 3 lads who grew up in quaint Bucks’ villages.
He told us we needed to be here at this time, there at that time and if you win…..
If we win?
Really? Could we? Well the people on the red carpet didn’t think it was such an impossibility. They told us as much. Didn’t they?
Well, no. They didn’t. We heard what we wanted to hear. We can win. We can take the award and £20k.
And then Jools Holland announced the winner. Even after he muttered the first syllable of the winner I thought we could still win. “S…”. I was filling in the gaps after that until I realised it wasn’t us.
I cried for the first time in years tonight after the awards. It’s not something I allow myself to do very often. It wasn’t because we didn’t win. I’m smart enough to realise this is just a begininning. It’s because I decided a long, long time ago to abandon, or at least postpone, a conventional career to make music with people I love. Tonight was vindication for that decision. I think tonight was the first time it really sank in that I’d made the right decision.
We did OK.
Bish.
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