Imagine playing every night. Imagine being a real pro, getting paid, like, 3000 dollars a month. Imagine singing on a cruise. That’s what the girl in the nice leather jacket said when we were playing outside that pub in Leyland. At least that’s what I took from what she said. She said the water was bright blue in Mexico. Transparent. The skies were burning hot. I asked her how much tax she paid on that. She looked at me blankly.

She had a nice coat, nice hair and her mum and dad had come to watch her sing to two groups of drinking men sat on two pub benches placed a pub car park. It was summer and the gravel kicked up dust when you stepped on it. The passing cars on the road swished and crunched with hot tyres right next to us. A yard behind me was a construction area yellow with powdery dust, fenced off by a criss-crossed metal frame held together and upright by legs stuck fast in concrete blocks. It was a tight space to sing in.

Better than playing in pubs! A cruise. Better than working in a famous department store selling jumpers. Ducking your head between the racks of soft clothes to quietly groan unseen for a few seconds of relief from feeling the tedious misuse of your brain. I’d done retail.  

Imagine being young and keen enough to want to throw yourself into it with an ambition, two things which didn’t apply to me anyway in 2019. Then again, imagine knowing that no matter how many pubs and private parties you played at; no matter how many years you’d spent obtaining a pop performance degree at the Institute of Cool Manchester; no matter how many times you set up your PA in the bar for half-time at the local football game; it was never going to get that much better than today –  the pub car park. The garden party or the social club?

After a decade or two of being paid pretty much bugger all, unless it was useful pocket money on the side of a main job, you wouldn’t be getting much more than you got at the start. To make it worthwhile you would have to get quicker, more entertaining and willing to do as much as possible until you wore out. Take more gigs. Run a singers night. I knew this first hand.

Maybe this was just my bunch of feelings and the never-ending rat-run of low pay was something we should all be grateful for. My choice. My fault. My decisions at the cross-roads of existence. Blame the self not a rigged society. Maybe it was all good. Life is what you make it. Maybe.

I could hear it my head. Always. Spreading doubt like a virus. The demon talking: Get a proper job you lazy bastard. A demon with snarling teeth and spit-wet lips, in the kitchen drinking tea. The parental mantra. The classical neo liberal stance taken by the already economically comfortable. It makes me laugh to think on it.

No choice. Unless.

Unless you wrote your own original songs and got a deal with a big, minted company after you attracted and manipulated a zillion followers on your daily showbiz-promotion reels.

Unless you got that mix of a lucky break and talent, the bank of Mum and Dad, friends in posh places, a sexy mouth and somehow after years of forking out for home-made recordings you stumbled upon a late-night jam-song which a reasonably minted, indie music company stumbled upon by chance.

Wet Leg, a British indie act from the Isle of Wight, had a hit in 2021 with a video and quirky song thanks to talent and Domino Records. Wet Leg had the killer song which made them more famous than they apparently enjoyed at first. Appearing like startled rabbits in the headlights of consumer bandwagon mechanisms. Wet Leg adjusted their idea of themselves forever with one song. Made the most of it. Had the mad fun.

The one song that would make them, a song that I forget the name of, which is funny and sleazily nonchalant. It has dynamics. It has a simple but effective guitar lick to hit home between drawl sarcastic lines. Something about lying on a chaise longue in your underwear.

A real act with a real song and a real video. A singer delivering lines with clipped English and posh-girl French words. Rhian Teasdale has bee-stung lips without Botox and to my northern ears, no doubt to North Americans too, she delivers sarcasm, lines like “Mummy look at me, I’ve got a big D” like a cross between a schoolie and matron. English fun.

The video presents as kind of sneering and sexy, with a wispy blonde woman in a white dress dancing at the back of a stylised front porch setting. A duo of girls doing punk rock n roll in costume drama dresses. Great mix. Highly original fun and it stands out one in a million by far. By chance and design.

Wet leg end up on the Letterman Show. They end up winning music awards and doing tours and making albums. The wannabe dream. Not bad for something which started out as a late night jam between friends (apparently). They end up coming across in interviews like startled rabbits in the lights of surprise fame. Rude, cheeky, nervous, disdainful of the world of media hype. Having fun.

“I feel like I’m about to wet myself…” says one male band member on receiving an award live on screen. Before readjusting and thanking everyone.

So, Wet Leg had the one-off quirky hit that made them. That stays in life forever. It happened.  Through luck and talent. Their blind determination would be shared by millions who would never make it. Luck, talent, drive and a one song break as rare as an alpine flower outbreak on a Chorley pavement.

Wet Leg did it. They made it.

So, what could you do with no hits, no great original songs and a set list of covers as long as a monkey’s arm? What could you do instead of keep playing in car parks outside pubs?

You could get a cruise contract.

FOOTNOTE

The girl with bright, young eyes said nothing about Mexico. I don’t remember the details of our conversation. I think she was talking about the warm waters of the Caribbean and quoting pay. All I remember is that I play and sing with a guitar and she had backing tracks. That her clothes looked newer and more expensive than mine. I just improvised, jammed this writing.

This blog is an extract from the forthcoming book The Music Workers Diary, which is in the process of completion. My home-made video and cheaply recorded indie song is below…