If you haven’t got any style then you had better pray for some substance.

It has been a heady month for Kites.

Our stages have been strewn with the sweet sweat of our idols. 

We have supported members of New Order, Pulp, Erasure and the Happy Mondays, to name but a few.

Have these juxtapositions inflated our egos or alerted us to the fact that we might be amateurs masquerading as professional musicians?  Well, perhaps. 

I suspect that the majority of successful creatives never quite recover from the feeling that they have fraudulently hit the big-time. Either that or they succumb to the warm seduction of their own hype, never to return to a little planet called reality. 

Mind you, who was ever interested in reality?  It’s a grim, unimaginative sort of a place.  Personally, I have no desire to ever set up a permanent residence there.*

In any case, despite protestations to the contrary, my head has not grown any larger and my sense of entitlement remains sober.  Kites have a long way to go, that much is true.

Our latest shows have provided a window into a world where alternative music can be popular, where charisma trumps musicality, where tight red vests and Thai-dye jeans are somehow acceptable.  I won’t name and shame anyone in particular, suffice it to say that the 80’s was not a decade that was synonymous with sartorial modesty.  It was the age of the shoulder-pad, the puffball skirt, and the dourly attired Margaret Thatcher. 

Fashion faux pas’ aside, Kites have had a lesson in showmanship and song craft.

I observed each show with the kind of concentration usually reserved for heart transplants.  I’m hoping that some of the magic might eventually sink in.  Do you believe in miracles?

*N.B. Yes, I realise that “I, personally” is a tautology and that I also split the infinitive. There are those who have bad grammar and don’t know any better, and there are others who use bad grammar and don’t give a damn.  I hope to be the latter.