Visiting Shoe Lane Library this week we noticed a book on the shelves by Jon Ronson about the entertainer Frank Sidebottom who Jon played keyboards for in the 80’s. It’s a winning combination of happy, sad and the strange.

What tickled us were a couple of tales, one about when the band was travelling by van to a London gig. On reaching the Edgware Road the chap driving stopped and asked a passer-by: “Excuse me, is this London?” to which the shocked person replied “Yes”. The driver then said “Well, where do you want this wood?” Another was about a gig at Dudley JB‘s where the uninterested crowd of a dozen totally ignored Frank and the band, procured a ball and split into two teams and played football on the dancefloor. Frank supposedly rated it as the best gig he ever played!

We were lucky to see him live at a Late at the Tate in the early 2000’s but it was a performance he did earlier that day there that sticks in our mind.

We caught by chance an afternoon warm up gig by Frank outside an adjoining gallery to the Tate (where an exhibition of his artworks were). It was as daft as you’d imagine and towards the end of it a strange incident occurred. Frank had just passed out the microphone to the crowd of about 20, encouraging a bit of audience participation. One of the punters held his nose and shouted in a mock Frank Sidebottom voice “I am the real Frank” (it sounded like that to us). Frank’s mood changed from being all jolly to very hurt as he gave the keyboard a hard blow which set off a three note funeral type march and walked off very slowly with his head bowed as if  following a coffin and an air of doom and gloom came over the place. The three note drone continued for a good 5 minutes until someone in the crowd turned the keyboard off. Was it a set up? Was it part of the show? It was odd whatever it was.

If that weren’t mad, we walked off to get a pint and returned to catch the exhibition of his artworks in the gallery. It was then we noticed 3 or 4 Tate staff frantically scrubbing off freshly painted graffiti from the outside wall of the gallery which wasn’t there when he was playing. Was this the work of an mad and angry Frank? What was it all about? Who knows. R.I.P Frank Sidebottom. #franksidebottom