It’s a sunny Friday April morning in Strawberry Hill, South London and seven guys are trying to solve a difficult problem – how to fit themselves and all their equipment into a van significantly smaller than expected. It’s almost impossible - and one acoustic guitar has to be sacrificed – but after some diligent space management everyone and everything is crammed in and Narration’s two week stint around the UK begins. As soon as the van begins to move, hailstones the size of peanuts fall from the sky. Not only this, but the traffic is appalling. It takes almost two hours before the van escapes London. It continues to rain, hail and snow for the rest of the day..

It’s not the most auspicious start to a tour, but no-one ever said that this was meant to be easy. It isn’t. It’s a lot of hard work for everyone involved. This is a band who are just starting out, who have so much promise but who have also worked very hard to just get to even these beginning stages. They’ve laid some great foundations – as all genuine bands have to do – but these are often forgotten about. So this is what life on the road, for three days at least, with a band just starting out is like – there’s the crazy crush, the horrible traffic, singing along to Bruce Springsteen’s Thunder Road at the tops of our voices, the rush to unpack in time for soundcheck because we arrive in Manchester almost 2 and a half hours late, the shitty weather, the sparse hostel room, the sheer energy draining effort of it all.

The Dry Bar is a strange place. There are 12 bands playing tonight – six upstairs, six down, and no real thought to the line-up. Each band plays to just a handful of people – most just drink themselves silling in the bar area. It is Friday night after all. But it’s a good start nonetheless – the band sound great, despite a couple of angy, pissed chavs saluting the band with middle fingers for the duration of the last song. That the band don’t notice or care is great – there’s always going to be pricks around. Life on the road – it’s not always glamorous and full of adoring fans. More of this later.

Anyway, the band finish their set and relax for the first time since they started out that morning. The alcohol flows freely, as it should and usually does on tour. After all, it’s tough out here – you need a break. Or ten. No-one knows what time we get back to the hostel. It’s less than a five minute walk from the venue, but it’s raining like the tropics and everyone’s drenched and drunk and why the hell not? Having got to bed at in the early hours of the morning the night before, that’s pretty much my lot. I pass out on my top bunk, sleeping happily through the party that apparently starts in the next door dorm at about 4am…

The next day it’s an afternoon show in Leeds, so it’s up early to leave by 10am. The showers are barely a drip and not really worth taking, but that’s one of the better bathroom experiences of the tour the band later explain. Leeds is almost sunny, so it feels odd to be in a dingy (but cool) club at midday, getting stuff sorted for the show. Everyone is very young. Two of the bands are in their mid-teens. Both play some pretty horrendous cover versions. Both would have been better off not doing so. Against such stiff competition, the Narration boys shine. It feels weird to eventually emerge into the sunlight because, a few ciders down, it already feels like the next day and it’s only 5pm.

A bit of food and a few hours later, everyone heads to watch 65 Days Of Static. A slightly bigger venue and a few more people present than the afternoon, but it feels just the same. And that’s it – it’s about the fight to get there. And the Narration boys can fight pretty damn hard. Again, more of this later. Anyway, the gig turns into a club and everyone stays and dances and drinks and drinks and dances and wakes up on a foul Sunday morning on the floor of a student house where someone’s brother lives. People pass out and pranks are made and pictures are taken – you don’t want or need any more information.

Fast forward a week and a half and fists are flying downstairs in the Camden Barfly. It’s the end of the night and the band, back home in London after their tour, are ready to go home. How or why it all happens is a mystery, but some cliquey indie types with pointy shoes take offence to Narration’s music. Their words soon become fists and within seconds there’s a bundle of bodies on the floor, pulling, pushing, punching until, eventually, it gets broken up. It’s terrifically stupid way of showing your distaste for a band, but perhaps what you’d expect from people who, by the way they act and dress – the shallow reasons why they act and dress that way - show a remarkable lack of intelligence and imagination. It’s not the best ending to a successful two week tour, but it’s somehow fitting. Narration, you see, are a band who, musically, are kicking against the pricks and not conforming to the accepted, anodyne standards of the contemporary British indie scene. So if it pisses people off, well, maybe it should. And despite the black eye, they gave as good as they got. And they’ll go on to give even more in the days and years to come when most Babyshambles wannabes will be forgotten and buried. It also makes for a pretty damn good story to tell the grandchildren…

Mischa Pearlman
Photos by Karen Toftera