November 13, 2000

Chicago Schubas

"Obviously, I'm a cut above the rest," he says charmingly...

Night has barely fallen, and Damon Gough has a disclaimer for the fans at his early-evening show on Saturday in a tiny back room (capacity 300) at a historic Chicago pub. He says: "This might be a better show or a worse show since I haven't had as much time to get pissed."

He also has a message for the American press, which he has noted are now reluctantly chronicling the arrival on these shores of Badly Drawn Boy, Doves, Coldplay, etc. "Obviously, I'm a cut above the rest," he says charmingly. "But I've been reading that this isn't like the past. This isn't like Oasis. Fuck the past. This is now. This is real. This is going to be the best British invasion. Next time, we're going to be playing baseball stadiums."

And when a rant on The Queen somehow becomes entangled with an admission of poor personal hygiene on the tourbus, a fan asks: "Have you smelled the queen?" Gough's reply is: "Yeah, I got down on her, and she was a bit fishy. Like the Seattle fish market."

In between all these casual exchanges, Gough does have time to lead his Badly Drawn Band through at least 23 songs - much of it sonically enhanced pieces from the 'The Hour of Bewilderbeast' disc (and more if you count each part of the brief 'Springsteen Trilogy') Of course, even in the middle of a song Gough can find a tangent to explore, such as when 'I Love You All' turns into the diva-inspired 'I Hate You All'. Included is the verse: "I would gladly shoot Mariah Carey/She smells like fish/and looks like the back of my knee." "I hope she's not here tonight," he adds.

Gough has far more reverence for Bruce Springsteen. Along with The Left Banke ('Walk Away Renee') and Frankie Valli ('December 1963 - Oh, What a Night'), Springsteen is covered tonight on 'Thunder Road'. And Gough is eager to deliver a history of the song to a Springsteen-friendly American crowd, he says, since mates have been taking the piss out of him for his practice of Bossology ever since he was a Badly Drawn Schoolboy.

Perhaps it was back then that Gough saw Springsteen playing those baseball stadiums and got the idea for the venues of his next American tour.
James Brixey