RETURN OF THE TSCHEGG

The World's Favourite Electric Ambient Country Boy arrived in fine form, despite having experienced a little blazing vehicle episode on his way back from his gig in Newcastle and an enforced bus ride from Leeds to London. It probably cost him less than Max and I paid out on taxis across town to the venue.

Once the thoroughly agreeable house staff had been persuaded to move their Playstation off the stage, sound checks went easily under the supervision of the 12-Bar's excellent house sound man Allessandro. Max and I retired to the dressing room (which is possibly slightly larger than the auditorium in this particular venue) to write and learn our set. We hadn't actually done a duo show like this since last time Wolfgang Tschegg was over, back in the summer of 1999, and we were feeling a bit unsure of ourselves. After a run of band shows it's a touch intimidating to get up there without the backing of the JBC Intercontinental Rhythm Machine.

Short on time, we dined at the venue (the veggie burgers are large!) while some fellow from England pretended to be Jeff Buckley in the background. Having heard the real Jeff Buckley when he supported the JBC in New York in 1992, your correspondent reserved the right to be a touch sneering, dismissive and condescending. The thing is, boys and girls, we all agreed: there is far too much of this sort of thing going on at the moment.

Once Mini-Jeff had got it all out of his system, Wolfgang's Austrian friend stepped up to deliver one or two songs of fragile beauty before the man himself appeared, looking sharp in one his favoured shiny Euro-gigolo shirts and toting my own black Telecaster. He played through a selection of highlights from gigolo jet and his most recent release, finder , with great confidence and style. There were new songs in the set too, notably In Dieser Grossen Strassen and the ineffable Helicopter . This last is Wolfgang just the way we like him, all surging fat ambient pad and chiming guitar, not in the least compromised by its knock-out opening line: "Helicopter nimm mich mit."

About half way through the set in walks my good friend Joe Foster, record producer and gentleman adventurer, who has literally stumbled upon the night on his way back from the Warner Brothers offices where he has been working. Joe was actually in Vienna on the night we first saw Wolfgang play, so happy re-unions all round, then.

During his set Wolfgang had been speaking in English and singing in German, so it seemed only natural that Eider and I should start our set by singing in French. The two Italian girls in the front row were becoming visibly confused. We laid down a fairly soporific set of tunes, but a prett.

People were very kind and yelled for an encore, but at the end of the last tune I had shredded my 36, if you know what I mean, and with no spare guitar to hand, that had to be that. Later a brave American lady jumped up to take on the graveyard shift while the rest of us got pissed up. Everybody got paid and Wolfgang took a night bus back to his friends pad in South London. His next intended destination was Dartmoor, so I tooled him up with Gabriel's phone number, and indeed he was in residence when Gabe and I spoke on the phone last night. The rest of us stayed until the barman would serve no more, then wobbled out into the night in search of taxis.
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