Reading Kieron Gillen’s post on Kenickie got me thinking about how much I used to love them and what they used to mean to me.

It started back in the summer of 1997: I’d finished my A-Levels, had a place at a university in Manchester and a whole summer ahead of me to watch videos, listen to CDs and play arcade games via the magical “emulators” I’d just discovered. Using my then-girlfriend’s job at a local library to my advantage I hired out loads of films and CDs for free, but none made an impact on me like At the Club did.

I’d been buying NME since I was twelve or thirteen so I’d read about Kenickie but, as I didn’t often listen to night-time Radio 1, I’d never heard them played on John Peel or the Evening Session. I spotted their album in the library’s racks and leapt at the chance to listen to it.

Sheer magic from start to finish.

Sheer fucking magic.

I loved that album like I’d loved no other before (although not quite enough to buy it at that time; I ended up buying it a year later when I saw it in a Virgin Megastore for £8 or so); I taped it and played it endlessly all summer, driving round town in my parents’ Hyundai X2 with the windows down and Lauren and Marie singing about nights out, PVC and robots (later, after I’d bought a few singles from Vinyl Exchange in Manchester, I made up a compilation tape of their B-sides for the car and would drive around, endlessly looping Can I Take U 2 The Cinema — my favourite Kenickie B-side by a country mile).

September came along and I packed myself off to university; after a few weeks I found out that another Stuart on my course also liked Kenickie, and when the band rolled into town a few of us went along to see them — my first live gig (not counting the local bands I sometimes went to see when I was in sixth-form). We all sat in the car of one of other-Stuart’s mates, drinking cheap cider while the support band (I don’t remember who they were, Electric Sound of Joy perhaps) were on. When enough time had elapsed for us to miss the support we went in, past the touts and security and into the gig itself.

Again, sheer fucking magic.

We waited round the back of the venue for what seemed like forever after the gig finished, shivering in the cold while we waited for the band to come out and hopefully sign the CD sleeves we’d brought along. I managed to get three of them to sign my Punka one-track promo CD sleeve (which drew admiring words from Marie) but Emmy-Kate made a beeline for the tour bus so I didn’t get hers.

And then everything changed.

There was only a year’s gap between At the Club and Get In but the two albums are poles apart; their debut was rough in places and lush in others but Get In was swathed in glossy synthesizer pads that caused other-Stuart to pronounce it “over-produced”. I didn’t really feel that way at the time but listening to the album tonight, I realised he was probably right.

It wasn’t an entirely unexpected direction; when the single I Would Fix You came out it was clear that they were going in a poppier direction than before, and the traditionally-strong B-sides had been partially replaced by a couple of remixes (one from friend-of-the-band DJ Downfall which I personally thought was 8 minutes of sheer beauty, the other by Mint Royale which, while not particularly bad, seemed to be something of an attempt at riding the big beat bandwagon). It would be fair to say that expectations had been lowered somewhat.

Kenickie visited Manchester on their final tour, although nobody knew for certain that it would be their swansong; I couldn’t persuade anyone to go with me and, being a timid child, stayed at home instead of going on my own — something I’ve regretted ever since, to be honest.

As time went on I stopped listening to Kenickie; I don’t know why, my interest just faded over time and my affections were captured by other bands instead.

Reading Kieron’s post has rejuvenated my interest in the band somewhat (much more than when I heard the Mint Royale remix of I Would Fix You on a sofa ad the other day), and I’ll probably copy my collection (which is pretty much complete, bar the promo remixes I haven’t got round to ripping from vinyl and Catsuit City, which sadly remains out of my grasp for the moment) to my MP3 player over the weekend and make a playlist of all my favourite B-sides.

I might even dig out At the Club, wind the windows down and share my once-favourite band with the rest of the world, just like I did nine years ago.