TOPLOADER

When I was 11, I went to my first ‘proper’ gig at Preston Guild Hall. ‘Proper’ because it wasn’t a school concert, it wasn’t shaking maracas and painting dolphin T-shirts at Womad festival with my parents, and it wasn’t anything to do with the Mike Nelson Pharos Orchestra of Fleetwood library (whose members included my brother, me and two Chinese-Welsh girls). 

It was a gig that me and my two friends had decided we wanted to go to, and so we made it happen, dammit. We asked our mums to buy us tickets, and they did. They also bought tickets for themselves, an unnegotiable by-product of being 11.

My best friend Susie liked Toploader, so I liked Toploader. She also liked Norah Jones, an artist whose songs made the long list of things that made my eyes roll, but Toploader were inoffensive and jolly. The whiff of cheese was mild enough to stomach.

I got into them. My mum went to Freeport shopping village and brought back Onka’s Big Moka (still no idea what that means) and I listened to it again and again and again. And again.

I had to. Teenagers (the epitome of coolness, and of whom there would be many at the gig) didn’t go to concerts without being able to mouth (never sing) the lyrics to all of the songs from the band’s latest album, as well as the majority of the back catalogue. They also had to know at least the frontman’s full name — but the acquisition of all this had to be effortless; authentic.

With mere weeks to go before the gig, pulling off an air of wizened musical nonchalance would require some serious cramming sessions with my Discman and the album notes, plus school-run sing-alongs in my dad’s Ford Galaxy. The try-hard irony was not lost on me. I pushed it away.

Susie’s favourite track was Floating Away in the Bath Tub which I thought was stupid, and my favourite track was Achilles Heel — deep; wistful; adult. I looked up Achilles in the children’s encyclopedia and pretended Greek mythology was something I just knew about.

I decided it was necessary to pick a favourite band member. The frontman’s hair was a bit out there and anyway, it was too obvious to pick the frontman. A swift flick through the album notes revealed that all these dudes were pretty old and therefore, ugly. They were no Aaron Carter. They looked like they drove hatchbacks and had pictures of their children in their wallets.

I settled on the least-ugly member, the bassist, Matt Knight. Cool name; casual; couple of off-the-cuff syllables. A far cry from the moth-eaten, bog-redolent catastrophe that was my own name — because obviously everything about myself, even my own name, was cause for complete and utter embarrassment. I committed Matt Knight to memory so I could drop him into passing conversation should a fitting occasion ever arise.

It was important to like what everybody else liked but to put my own spin on it so that people would think it was my idea in the first place.

My other friend Amy was less committed. She was just happy to be going to a gig with her friends. Obviously not as fake-cool as me.

It was 1999. Dancing in the Moonlight had just come out. My heart breaks a little for my preteen self that in fact-checking this, I now know it’s a cover of a 1970s rock song. I’ve listened to the intro and it is much, much cooler. I will not — I cannot — listen to the rest.

By the time the gig came around, I’d listened to the album so many times that my dad had started putting his head in his hands when I pushed play — an excellent sign. That meant I was a bona-fide Toploader megafan. But not in a Take That/Boyzone/S Club way — in a mellow way. I just liked their music, mate. NO BIG DEAL.

I remember walking through to the Guild Hall with my friends and our mums. I was at that stage where I didn’t know how to tell my mum I was too old to hold her hand. I looked around at the unchaperoned teenagers, longing to taste that freedom while at once feeling utterly terrified by the prospect of it. I gripped Mum’s hand tighter.

The sheer level of self-consciousness I felt at that age has been perfectly captured and immortalised in the one photo taken that night. Amy dressed like a grownup. She wore a lot of black and a smattering of labels — timeless. She took an ill-advised U-turn some years later after taking up ballet and became obsessed with the colour pink. I think she was rebelling against her mum or something. Susie always looked cute and appropriate — Tammy Girl all the way. And then there’s me, clinging to her for dear life. Apparently I felt the need to dress like a history and politics student en route to a line dancing convention. That is a non-waterproof mac from Matalan wrapped around my middle that I thought made me look ‘sporty’. I had NO idea how to dress myself. I also didn’t understand that having a fringe was an option, not just how my hair grew. 

We were in the seated bit of the hall, obviously. No under-16s in the pit. We saw Andy Gregson from our school walking down there, like it was nothing. He was good at drama and had curtains. Cool. This is what teenagers must do, I thought. Casually, every night of the week. He was probably going to a nightclub afterwards. Wow. Just taking that shit for granted. The house lights came up and everybody stood, so we did too.

I can’t really say I enjoyed the gig. Rather, I spent the entire time in a permanent state of insecurity whilst trying not to show it, which never works. Trying to dance — but not too much! — don’t want to look like a keen bean! Mouthing the words, obviously. Trying to keep a straight face because smiling was for babies and the weak. That sort of thing.

My mum wasn’t really a fan of the other mums — soz Alison and Elina. She was a cool mum who explored high-street shopping beyond the bounds of M&S. She was irritated that we’d sat back down and were just nodding our heads rather than actually dancing, and left to boogie alone on the balcony. I had to follow her.

She was sort of angry dancing — lips pursed tight, head held high, eyes on the band. I’d seen her do angry cleaning before but never angry dancing. I joined in with some anxious dancing, a unique ball-change with finger clicks.

I can think of many moments in my life that I have felt so uncomfortable I have literally wanted to crawl out of my own skin and into somebody else’s — maybe Catherine Zeta-Jones’s or that girl’s from Jurassic Park — a preteen python, shedding my prison of insecurities that comprised skinny legs, skinny hair and the false notion that everyone was looking at me. Awkwardly dancing on the balcony with my mum while darting my eyes about to see if anyone was watching me was one of those moments. I stayed for what I thought was an acceptable amount of time and went back to my friends.

I had to keep the Toploader train going for a while after the gig to rubberstamp the legitimacy of my interest in the band, to myself and to the world. But by the time Magic Hotel came out, it was waning. My mum’s friend with a computer ripped the album for me and I loyally listened, but it was no Onka’s Big Moka. He also ripped me Sexy Crazy Cool (38 female R&B summer hits) which I was much more excited about (oh hey early womanhood).

But I went too far. For my birthday, some well-meaning family friends bought me two GIANT Toploader posters — and when I say giant, I mean they were bigger than I was. By this point, I realised my identity was inextricably tied to Toploader and the knot was too tight for me to unpick.

I wanted the runaway Toploader train to stop (yes, we’re back to the Toploader-as-a-train metaphor) but it was beyond my control. So I just had to ride it, while maniacally grinning, because I’d welded together the whole wretched convoy.

The posters went up. Who on earth is buying these, I thought, what is the market? One of them was alright, just a photo of the band standing around, but the other was a life-size portrait of the frontman blowing bubbles, his orange hair and large face looming stark against a twilight backdrop. Terrifying. 

And this was the one my dad fixed above my bed. Having put it up with Blu Tack that had previously supported a Forever Friends poster, it would sometimes detach itself from the wall and fall on me at night — a blue and purple nightmare whose image had engulfed my every waking moment and now, my dreams.