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Miles Cain - An Appreciation! I first met Miles Cain, of all things, playing rugby - a sport for which our dearth of enthusiasm was perhaps exceeded only by our lack of tallent. Waiting in line for our chip-supper after the game, we stumbled upon a mutual enthusiasm for John 'Cougar' Mellencamp, and in particular the country-flavored Lonesome Jubilee album. Thus was born a friendship which has spanned a decade and a half of music and marvels - if not quite from Hank to Handrix, then from White Lion to the Wallflowers, with Billy Bragg tagging along for moral support. We played our first gig together in 1989, at a youth club in Hemel Hempstead. We were booked to play for 45 minutes, supporting some mates of ours from school - Speedvark - a "real" band, who were good enough (or at least well-connected enough) to have an album reviewed in "Q" a few years later. It wasn't a bad crowd for a Friday night in Hemel. We turned the amps up to 11 and ripped into our seminal power-rock classic "No Answer". And then, as quickly as it had begun, it was all over - a three-quarter-hour set felt like it had gone in about 15 minutes! The only problem? It had gone in about 15 minutes! There was only one thing to do - play "No Answer" again - the 12" extended re-mix, with drum solo! And at that moment, I made a promise to myself... never again! The band broke up later that evening, and though a money-spinning reunion show followed some months later, Miles was left to concentrate on a solo carear which took him, quite literally, to Hull and back. I remember the first time I heard Miles' solo record The Dark and the Light. It was ground-breaking stuff - with real instruments - pianos and fiddles, and a backing vocalist on whom Miles had a secret crush, which later turned into a not-so-secret crush, and ended up in a terraced house in York, with two cats and a metalic-green Ford Focus... but that's another story. The Dark and the Light was a revelation, and I jumped at the chance to join Miles and his band on a tour of Ireland in the summer of 1993. It turned out that the tour bus was a National Express coach, the five-star hotels were five-to-a-room boarding houses, and the band was... well, me on harmonica. But the Guiness was real enough; and we played to big crowds in the packed pubs of the south coast - and it was on that tour that our signature tune was born - Steamin' Train Blues No. 17 - a shuffling harmonica riff that requires big lungs and no competence whatever, and that we've played at almost every gig since. By the late 90s, Miles was a regular fixture in the pubs and clubs of the North East. Whether busking in church doorways or rocking-out upstairs at the The Polar Bear on Spring Bank, Hull knew his name, and he knew Hull's. His first official CD, the Fairground Town EP, was released in 1999 to some acclaim. The initial pressing of the CD was marred by a copy-protection scandal, which rendered the disk unplayable on traditional CD players in an effort to prevent them from breaching Miles' copyright by humming along. However, following a protracted legal battle, a restored version of the disk was released, and eventually sold everywhere from Miles' guitar-case to the Virgin Megastore in Prince's Key. In the early part of the 21st Century, artists as diverse as Robbie Williams and Gerri Halliwell were trying to "break America" and Miles was no exception in this great westward expansion. Sadly, both Robbie and Gerri failed, but Miles was at least able to satisfy himself with the knowledge that he had made it as far west as York - nearly 30 miles from where he'd started out in Hull. Some years later, a little older, and a little more married, Miles continues to gig around the York / Hull scene, and if we were you, we'd catch him at the earliest opportunity. |
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 FairgroundTown.co.uk /
Reflectable Ltd
2010
The point is we are all connected... through love... through loneliness... through one lamentable lapse in judgment!
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