Thirty years ago, or thereabouts, I lived on Reservoir Road in Birmingham, with some members of a band called Good Question Derek. They were a close-knit group of friends who had met at Birmingham Poly and after graduating, stayed in a cluster of houses, almost on top of one another, with roadie, manager, and girlfriends all in the mix, a few streets off the Hagley Road. The band gigged and gigged across the country, from the South-West to the Shetland Islands, recorded a few LPs, appeared on BBC TV with Danny Baker, and had an almost hit with a tongue in cheek song called Ugly. At times, it was like living in a fly on the wall documentary, lodging “amidst the sights, sounds and smells” (Marty DiBergi) of a hard-working and talented band. For me, a fish out of water in Brum, I learnt lots and despite having a besuited job, slept little. I’m not sure what happened, or rather why it didn’t happen, for them.

GQD were great live, worked hard, had a sack full of tunes and tonnes of personality. I saw them live at The Powerhouse in London and they shared dressing room riders with Wilko Johnson, The Sultans of Ping FC and various others. They didn’t become famous and split a few years later, though they did get back together to record a nostalgic single just a few years ago. The thing that struck me, messily embroiled in those heady days of 1992, is how simultaneously near and far “breaking it” feels to a band every time they go out to play, and how perilously close to saying “fuck this” they equally feel the next morning. GQD played when there was no social media, so they relied on word of mouth, entertainment officers who took a chance, band members and managers on the phone ALL THE TIME, sending out tapes and clippings from newspaper reviews. All this, with the vague chance of some serendipitous one in a million happenstance of being spotted, loved and signed for a six album deal later that night. There is no rhyme, nor reason, no magic formula, no secret sauce. I have no idea why fame didn’t grab Good Question Derek, but I was privileged to be in their bubble for a while and grateful to experience the ride.

Memories of GQD came flooding back on Monday at a small gig at The Grace, above The Garage in Islington. It could have been 1992 again. A new band from Manchester, Fuzzy Sun, were in London on a miserable wet night. On tour again, after the disrupted shit-show that was much of 2020 and 2021. Fuzzy Sun are an indie guitar band, fronted by a long-haired guitarist and singer Kyle Ross, who sounds a bit like a young Roger Hodgson, and their music is strangely genre-defying, part Blur, part Nile Rogers, with touches of Radiohead and The 1975. Because of this, they may well be completely stuffed in a world of “categorisation” where the algorithm of Spotify or iTunes will not easily find them perfect song-list bed partners.

But at The Grace, they play with verve, the songs soar and the set slowly builds, creating a joyous singalong and they shared enough earworm tunes to keep us humming on the Tube. I had a brief chat with Kyle after – while he was selling t-shirts and vinyl (again nothing much has changed for bands since 1992) and he was warm, genuine, humble and generous with his time. I don’t know what will happen in 2022 for Kyle and the band. Like GQD in 1992, all the ingredients are there: the playing, the song-writing, the ambition. I wish them well. You can see a glimpse here.