On June 13th, 2006, I wrote the following on my band Mica’s website:
Tonight we play at The Comedy in central London, a gig we’re all very much looking forward to. Alex has slotted into the Mica line-up like a house on fire, and creatively the band is moving faster than a bullet from a speeding train. Tonight, Sundown will be debuted, providing that Giles remembers the order of the song. Don’t worry Mica lovers – his position in the band, nay, his life depends upon it.
‘Faster than a bullet from a speeding train’ – a perfect combination of literary prowess and pure idiocy. But I’m not here to celebrate my accomplishments in either field. I’m sharing this extract because, at the weekend, I stumbled upon the entire collection of published band blog posts – a Word document containing extensive and fantastical ramblings charting our introduction to the London music scene, our enforced name change to Silent Alliance and, eventually, the lengthy story behind the making of our debut record.
Three years of band history. 20,000 words of lunacy. It was like rummaging under the bed and discovering a beautiful, forgotten photo album documenting the best party you ever attended.
To the best of my knowledge, the original Mica blog can no longer be found on the internet. My first action was to make a copy and send it to Giles, with the strict instruction that his life depended upon its safekeeping. I am simultaneously proud of my archival tendencies and incredibly thankful that my mother bothered to retrieve the data from my old, damaged hard drive a few years ago; otherwise this trip down memory lane would surely have been lost forever.
It also serves as a reminder that the internet is not as permanent as it sometimes appears. You can generally track down a person’s drunken and shameful social media posts from eight years earlier in an attempt to get them cancelled, but that’s because it serves the interests of the social media companies to keep these records. They need as much of our data as possible, and they need effective ways to poke us into returning to their platforms (Reminder: did you know it’s been eight years since your racist outburst? Maybe it’s time for another…).
But if the blogging website, or hosting platform, or web forum that you’re using to express yourself has no great value in permanently retaining your output, it’s a good bet that it won’t be permanently retained.
Some of the most valuable historical records available to us are handwritten letters – correspondence that, for whatever reason, the recipients decided it was a good idea to hang onto. Conversely, the BBC’s systematic deletion of its own archive is considered by many to be one of the greatest cataloguing travesties of all time. If you believe your thoughts, opinions and musing are of any lasting value to the wider world, then please, keep your own record of them, rather than relying on the tech giants to do your archiving for you. And if you don’t believe they’re of lasting value, then TikTok is clearly the place for you.
Finally, a quick note on the Mica performance at The Comedy. We played A LOT of gigs over a period of more than a decade, but I remember the show at The Comedy quite clearly due to the heat emanating from the lights. It was the hottest, brightest and most uncomfortable stage lighting I’ve ever experienced – the musical equivalent of a Gestapo cross-examination and something we had entirely failed to factor into either our setlist planning or our on-stage attire.
Starting with our fastest song, Stitch, was a monumental error. Indeed, having threatened our drummer Giles with death just hours before the gig, I was now looking on in horror from my stage-left vantage point as he spiralled from getting an actual stitch towards total physical meltdown. I myself was soaking wet and downing a pint per song (thank goodness there were only six songs in the set) to try and stop myself combusting. It is normal for things to get a little sweaty when you’re a guitarist in a high-octane indie dance-pop combo, but at The Comedy, I remember a waterfall descending from my brow and repeatedly splashing upon the unfortunate instrument below. Yes, splashing.
I have suffered many indignities in the past 15 years, but few compare to being stood on stage, facing a boisterous crowd, and knowing, without a shadow of a doubt, the entire audience supposes you to be the sweatiest person in human history.
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