A vision of triumph.

Merlin's nightclub, in Leysdown-on-Sea, on the 'Sunny isle of Sheppey', is a weird place if you haven't visited the area before. In my then near 20 years of being on this planet, I had never visited Leysdown before the late 90s. To be quite frank, it's a bit retro.

The Isle of Sheppey is a small island located off the north Kent coast. A small body of water called The Swale separates Sheppey from the rest of humanity. It makes a big difference. The only way onto/off the island, at that time, was the rail/road bridge called Swale Bridge. The bridge was a lift bridge, allowing shipping to pass under when raised. Sometimes the bridge failed in the raised position, and if the bridge was broken Sheppey was isolated, while the rest of Kent rejoiced! To get past this problem, the council built another bridge..... Spoilsports! 

You see, the island had a bit of a reputation. Sheppey, and it's capital of Sheerness, is a bit like Chicago by the sea..... Everyone thinks they're Al Capone and it looks like it's still stuck in the 1920s. Leysdown, on the East End of the island, is like Walford-on-Sea. It really does feel like Albert Square, lots of Phil & Grant Mitchells in the pubs, Peggy looking after Ben on the beach, who's building sandcastles.... or is he actually dumping 'Big Hev's' rotting corpse under those miles of golden sands? It also has a nudists beach, where you can see plenty of thrupney bits..... Joking apart, Leysdown has a charm about it. It's got a sandy beach, a Vegas style strip (ok arcade shops, but they are all on one road) and a number of big campsites around the area. Meaning in the summer months the place is heaving with people, mostly from London's East End, ironically enough. Leysdown is UK beach holidays a'la 1972.

Out of season Leysdown is a typical holiday town in the rain. When the tourists go and the cold winds blow..... All the arcades remain open with just a handful of customers and most businesses try to do something special to attract the punters. This something special for Merlin's nightclub was to hold Kent's 'Battle of the Bands' contest in the autumn of 1998. The top prize was a week in a recording studio to record an album.

Merlin's, was and possibly still is, Sheppey's biggest nightclub. However, it's not like any nightclub you've probably ever seen before. Back in 1998, Merlin's was THE place to play if you were a band. The nightclub was more like a converted theatre, with a main dance floor surrounded by big sets of tables and chairs and a balcony, all looking down on a monster of a stage. Full lighting rig and PA, all controlled from a booth located at the back of the balcony section, which looked like mission control. 

That wet, dank and grey autumn afternoon us 5 lads walked into Merlin's for the first time and gazed upon that stage with much nervous excitement. This was the biggest thing Clear Vision had ever played, admittedly we had only been together for a couple of months. We met the sound guys and brought our kit in from our parents cars, except myself. I was too cool for parents. Andy had driven me in his super scud missile! (The super scud missile was a beast of Czechoslovakian engineering - a souped up old style Skoda. Built like a brick shit house, but honestly it was bloody fast. Sounded like a tank, looked like a tank, handled like a tank, was pretty much a tank and made everyone look when it went down the road in its sports striped livery!) Once we got our kit in, we sound checked, then had to move our kit from the stage and hide it behind the curtain in the backstage area. Other bands turned up and did the same, so there was other kit all dumped back stage, all in precise order so it could be retrieved and placed on the stage when your turn to play came round. For the next 4 hours till the doors opened we had precisely nothing to do. So we trudged around town and got fish and chips plus a game or two in the deserted arcades. It was safe to say we had the run of Leysdown. I was sufficiently bored and returned to Merlin's to find they had pulled down a big cinema screen in front of the stage. The sound guys had put on a recording of the Pulse tour by Pink Floyd. This was mesmerising, the song they were playing on stage I later found out was called High Hopes and it took my breath away. Sublime guitar work and an atmosphere like I had never known emanating from the screen. I was hooked! I sat there, with my fish and chips and watched the rest of the show transfixed. I immediately fell in love with David Gilmour's guitar work and his vocals. Why hadn't I heard of this band, why hadn't I seen them before? I later found out that Pink Floyd were one of the world's biggest rock bands ever, how they had passed me by amazes me to this day, but most likely it was because my parents didn't listen to them so I had never noticed their music before. Rest assured I now have all the albums and DVDs from the band and am an avid David Gilmour fan. However, witnessing that performance was just the tonic I needed to give me inspiration for this battle of the bands!

There were 6 bands on the bill, we were due on 2nd to last, which meant we got to see what the other bands would do. However, this was also a hindrance as we sat there nervous for hours while the others got on, played, then got blind drunk! Doors opened at 8pm. The session started at 9pm and we were due on at aprox 12:45am. The contest was due to finish at 2am. I had collared loads of my work colleagues and friends to come along, all together I had about 30 people coming personally, my band mates were able to get some of their friends and family to come too. However, we had no more than about 55 of our fans there and the venue had a capacity of about 600. Although not a sell-out, there were about 450-500 people in the venue that night. The biggest crowd we had played to. The first band up were absolutely rubbish, no reaction from the crowd and seemingly no interest from anyone. They did their 30 mins and then the crew jumped on stage to get the next band on. Now the next band were from Dover, and compared to us teenagers these were seasoned pros. All in their late 20s and they worked so well together, they played so tightly, their stage craft was exceptional and they had their own on stage light show. Oh cock! A quick word with Andy (yes he of Cutting Edge, one of my future best men, and general best friend) who is also a budding sound and light engineer. He scarpered up to 'Mission control' and found that they had lighting on a programmed basis, so he asked if it was ok to do the lights for our set. The tech guys didn't mind luckily. Towards the end of the set from the Dover band the whole crowd was frantic, even our supporters could see these guys were good, technically they were so strong and everyone was dancing. Looking to my band mates you could see the pressure was on. No other band lived up to the band from Dover that night before our set, so we knew these guys were the ones to beat.

Back stage the band got ready, tuning guitars, nervous looks, and all too soon we were called out to the stage. We had to be on our best form, playing like we've never played before and use every trick we could. However, I had one secret weapon and I was prepared to use it.

Stepping out on stage the crowd were silent as we struck up with our first song. It most probably was a song called 'Pick a Part That's New' originally by the Stereophonics, but by the end of it our own, with a crowd of people on the dance floor and a great atmosphere. We knew we were not as technically gifted at the Dover band, but we more than made up for it with exuberance, especially as I strutted across the stage and tried to make eye contact with everyone there. However, about 3 songs in disaster struck; Alex broke a string on his guitar. I started to panic, half way through the song and we'd lost our rhythm guitar. I tried to point Alex in the direction of my guitar, sitting at the side of the stage hoping he'd use that, but he dashed over to his case and pulled out a new string. Unlike now, we couldn't then afford multiple guitars on our part time job as students, so if it went tits up you did your damnedest to get going again using the same guitar. Luckily Alex got it restrung and with a few minor tune ups later on in the set, we had averted disaster. However, I was sure it would be noticed by the judges and we would lose marks. It was getting towards the end of the set, we had most of the room dancing but we just needed that something more.... Time to deploy my secret weapon!  

Our last song was the Rolling Stones classic 'Jumpin Jack Flash' and we had the customary band intro towards the end with the obligatory drum solo. The song went down well, the whole audience were on their feet jumping up and down, we did the intro to the band and Martin went off crashing around the kit doing his drum solo. Not to be upstaged, I disappeared behind a curtain and came back triumphantly holding aloft a kid's toy drum set, with the age requirement of 'Suitable for age 3 and above'. Yes this set was small, and you may have noticed, I'm a chunky chap. Well kids, this is one super big 3 year old! I strut up and down the stage holding aloft the set, smug face on, giving it large. I take a full size drum seat, Martin passes me a set of drum sticks and I then proceed to whack the crap out of these toy drums with Martin playing his full kit in a Chester Thompson/Phil Collins style drum duet circa 1976 Genesis! At this point the crowd explodes as we all play the song to its completion. With ringing in our ears we exit the stage triumphantly, we know we played a blinder, but now it's down to those who decide.

The decision process for the battle of the bands, which by now was severely overrunning, was to be decided by a split vote: 50% of the score from the judges and the remainder of the score decided by an audience vote. Eat your heart out X-Factor! We waited patiently for the result, which was given in 2 stages. First the judges result and we were pipped into second place by the technically brilliant Dover based band. It wasn't looking too clever for us, the Dover band had brought a significant following. However, the manager at Merlin's announced that we had won over the remaining crowd and won the public vote significantly, beating the Dover band by a comfortable margin and we won overall! I jumped up and Yoko.... Oops sorry, my girlfriend screamed 'oh, Karl!' We embraced and I shed a little tear. I was soooo happy. I looked at my band mates with a big smile knowing that WE were the best band in Kent! Yes!......... Erm, no!

'Ok guys, the final is in 4 weeks time here, you are the winner of this heat, congratulations!' was the lovely congratulations we got from the manager of Merlin's, as he gave us our prize. 'We've got to do this again? Oh crap it's 3:30am in the morning!' I said to my tired girlfriend, who looked at me amazed, astonished and shocked all at the same time. And do it again we did, 4 weeks later, on the day the clocks went back, against 8 bands and we succeeded in coming..... Second!.... Bollox, second! For the final, once again we weren't the most technically competent band, but this time as the crowd was much smaller we had no chance of beating the other bands by a significant margin so we came a gracious second. We didn't get to record our album, we never hit the studio again, and the only recorded material by Clear Vision was our TV Life EP. 

However, this is still held in high regard by the former staff of McDonalds store no 833, Medway Valley Park. Some of those nutters even got it signed by the band, but without my former colleagues help, love and support we wouldn't have become KENT'S SECOND BEST BAND!

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In the next post, Clear Vision loses a founding member, which ultimately sounded the death knell for KENT'S SECOND BEST BAND (can you tell, I'm not bitter). Also my first music wilderness years.