“When something’s good, it’s never gone”
In the summer of 2015, after eight long and dispiriting years in the music industry, a childhood dream finally came undone, not with drama, but with the quiet finality of redundancy. I had failed to bring bands to life on music television, failed to be in love, and lost the home that had once felt like a refuge. It was, without question, the lowest point. A season where everything that had seemed certain dissolved into a kind of grey.
*image credit: Big Ed Photography
The Shiiine 1 poster hung in view, its colours fading as if in sympathy, a reminder of something once bright and possible. I would look at it often, not with longing exactly, but with the numb recognition of a man who knows he can no longer reach what he once imagined he might. The idea of rallying friends and heading west felt impossible.
But time, as it always does, crept forward. A year later, the troops were gathered once more. I went to Minehead, body present, soul lagging. Excited, yet still uneasy, the despair still nagging away internally.
Cellar Doors changed everything!
Their brand of Laurel Canyon-meets-psychedelic rock 'n' roll struck instantly. As the crowd grew and grew and edged closer, I felt among my people. I felt at home. People unashamedly enjoy the kind of music most radio outlets had consigned to the dustbin. The weariness I entered with began to lift, a faint current stirring within.
When The Wonder Stuff took to the main stage, something inside me settled. From pop to politics, punk to poetry, they carried the same fierce joy that had first made me fall in love with music. Each song was a reminder of who I had once been, and who, perhaps, I still was. With every return they make, they seem more powerful, more enriching. More more more! Is it really Shiiine without them?
Each Shiiine brings its own quiet resurrection: a cult band, once lost to time, given a stage to unearth its buried treasures. This debut year was Thousand Yard Stare. Their enthralling set on Centre Stage sparked a new obsessive fandom that took me to the 100 Club and Lexington, and led to sharing emails with frontman Stephen Barnes in future years.
In future years, The Orchids would shimmer whilst Bradford played with a defiant pulse in Jumpin’ Jacks, and The Popguns filled the Inn with a melodic majesty. Detractors decree nostalgia; they miss the point. These bands are survivors, striking old friendships for good, for health, for the love of living! Their songs had grown richer in exile and found keen audiences willing to share their love. Furthermore, 99% of Shiiine acts are releasing new material, and so, breathing life back into us, the mortals.
Dance music has always pulsed through Shiiine’s heart. Having Eddy TM close out that year was more than a booking; it was a moment heavy with meaning. A world-class DJ, of course. But for me, it went deeper. His set took me back to my own youth.
As strangers took me under their wing, conversation flowed from Rick Astley to Anna from This Life, and Eddy’s MTV show ‘Up For It’ (specifically the six-pack challenge). Something loosened inside. The faint hopes of my teenage self were not far enough from the reality of the 32-year-old who stood arms aloft on that Sunday night. With every beat dropped, the tension I’d carried for a year began to dissolve. The music, the laughter, the shared recognition, all of it stitched together the fragments of a self I thought I’d lost.
Thank you, Shiiine On, for giving the lost a place to return to.
