My Band T-Shirt

This is the only band T-shirt that I own. And I will never wear it. It marks the transition of a band that I fell in love with, to – I’m sad to say – just another band.

I first encountered Little Fish in November 2008 at my favourite venue, The Abart, in Zürich. The Abart only holds about 600 people, yet still regularly manages to attract great British bands. We were there to see Supergrass, and Little Fish were the support.  Standing right at the front, less than a yard away from the drum kit, I was stunned by the sheer violence that Nez (after speaking to them afterwards, I felt we were old friends) put into his drumming. It certainly made me wonder at the engineering prowess necessary to make a drum kit. How can it stand up to that punishment? How do those clips take that beating and yet remain adjustable? How long can those skins last? Why doesn’t the whole thing just tip up and fall over?

There were times when I watched Nez, times when I watched the drums or even just the pedals, but more often than not I watched JuJu. It didn’t hurt that she was young and cute and thrashing an electric guitar, but the sheer anger in her face, the range of tones in her voice, were mesmerising. She’s one of those people that treats a guitar like a whole range of instruments; percussion, bass and guitar all in one. Able to extract delicate notes or violent screams interchangeably. She was funny too, with a range of put-downs that any stand-up comedian would be proud of.

I’d stopped buying CDs and switched to downloads sometime in 2007 and my flat became a CD-free zone about nine months later But I bought two CDs that night. One was a studio demo (“it’s rare, mate”) and another had three tracks live. I didn’t care that the tracks were probably the same. If there was a possibility of a note, even a breath, being different, I wanted it. I needed it. I asked Juju to sign one and write the same as she had for the guy in front of me. She did, sort of: “I love you - because I have to”.

There followed a period of scouring listings for Little Fish gigs. Plenty of them if you live near Oxford. Zurich isn’t near Oxford. Occasional newsletters presaged an album; it was ordered unheard and loved instantly. I even toyed with the idea of getting them to play at a corporate gig I had a minor input to, but decided against it.

Then last year a new single, Wonderful, was announced. This would be the first time I would hear them as a three piece, with Ben added to play the Hammond, and although that meant it wasn’t the Little Fish I’d seen, it was OK. If you ordered quickly, you could order a limited edition T-shirt. I was quick, but not quick enough; I ended up with a Medium rather than the Large that my frame now requires. Never mind, it was a Little Fish T-shirt. Little details like size aren’t important.

And then, disaster. Pretty much at the same time as the single and shirt arrived, I read that Nez had left the band “to spend more time with his family”. And at that point, the magic was gone. It turns out that it wasn’t about the guitar. It was about the drums. And suddenly the relationship was over, the T-shirt a relic of something beautiful, but now just a T-shirt that’s the wrong size.

We go our separate ways now, Little Fish and I, and I wish them well. Sadly, the Abart will close this year too, bringing another touch of finality. But my band T-shirt will remain, folded and unworn at the bottom of a drawer.

Geoff Collins