Around the turn of the millennium, one of the friends of friends' bands whose gigs I used occasionally to go to in the basements and back rooms of North London pubs was an indie guitar group called Keane. One Friday night in the early summer of 2001 at the Monarch on Chalk Farm Road, my girlfriend gave their manager (an ex-boyfriend of hers) a couple of quid for a homemade CD. 'That'll be worth a lot of money one day,' he said. I assumed he was joking; I privately thought it was slightly affected of the band even to have a manager - couldn't they book their own gigs at the Bull and Gate? Shows how much I know. Three years later, having traded in their guitarist for an electric piano, they released their first album. It went on to be the UK's second biggest-selling record of 2004.

LRB 19 June 2008 | PDF Download