Oh dear..
Having kept such a low profile for so, so long, JOHNNY BRAMWELL must now be fearing the worst, not only for himself and his band, but most of all for his music. With Guy Garvey's endorsement now stretching as far as the grandiose string arrangements on what is surprisingly the band's fifth album, I AM KLOOT, fresh out of nowhere, suddenly find themselves in the running for a much-coveted Mercury music prize, along with all the bollocks that this entails.
But what does it all mean? For Bramwell, a man not so much accustomed to the limelight as positively spooked by it, it meant a home fixture playing for the benefit of a half-interested crowd of ELBOW fans bolstered by telescopic lenses and Rifat Ozbek frocks in the Hard Rock Cafe: possibly the most plastic setting that the city has to offer.
“Guitars in glass cases?” he spat derisively to the cocktail crowd “What fucking good are they in there?”
The king of low-key anti-stardom, Bramwell, has spent a quarter of a decade keeping a purposefully low profile, in order to keep live music real in the pursuit of (to quote the old Johnny Dangerously song) 'a fair day's work for a fair day's pay'.
To have quietly have gone on in such an unassuming way for so long (making music with the minimum of fuss) must have made the I Am Kloot front-man's arrival at the brink of superstardom all the more difficult to swallow.
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It points to a future of success achieved without merit; the big game of hide-and-seek has finally been lost:
As one lad remarked to me: “It's a shame that Guy Garvey's influence is the only reason why people have come here tonight” - a sentiment that Bramwell was no doubt feeling the full force of as he spat and cured his way through just four (nevertheless beautifully performed songs) from the album he was here to promote before making his exit.
The delicacy of his delivery seemed to hammer home the message that this was his life's work here, that he's not some kind of performing seal.
Instead of bidding a stunned audience good-night, he told us all (in the nicest possible way) to fuck off.
In the aftermath, I shook hands with a man disgusted at his own stupidity, for either signing something he shouldn't, or for collaborating with rock stars. Either way, I fully understand his actions on the night; this may have been an appearance he'd been legally obliged to put in, but there was nothing in the contract that said he had to like it. Fair play, from a genuinely very angry man.
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