Back in 2006, The Cribs were riding high. Their jaunty, fresh, and rallying take on guitar music, demonstrated brilliantly on their Self-Titled debut album in 2004 and The New Fellas in 2005, had placed them on the precipice of being a very big deal, toeing the line between indie sleaze and rallying rock and roll. For vocalist Ryan Jarmen, it was a case of toeing the line of being on the right side of their success and things going too far.
Things went too far, and were almost fatal during a now infamous moment at the NME Awards. When going up to accept the award for Best Live Band - a nod which had actually been given to Franz Ferdinand, who weren't there to accept so presenter Peter Hook handed it to the Kaiser Chiefs to stand in, who then nominated The Cribs to grab it - Ryan threw himself on the Kaiser Chiefs' table, smashing the glasses and bottles that were on there and inadvertently stabbing himself in the back with the remaining shards. He ended up having two trips to the hospital, the second after returning for the afterparty, where it was revealed that he had punctured a kidney and was experiencing severe internal blood loss.
“I guess when you do stuff like that, you don’t feel it because there’s no nerves in there or whatever and when I came offstage after getting the award, I put my hand on my back, and my fingers just went straight inside," he told The Rise And Fall Of Indie Sleaze Podcast earlier this year.
“I was like, ‘Oh my God!’ So we went straight to the hospital, and they stitched me up, and they said, ‘You’ve got to go straight back to the hotel and go to sleep, do not go back out tonight.’
“It was a really good job. I went back to the awards because they hadn’t stitched me up properly, they hadn’t stitched me up internally, and I was like blowing up like a balloon. I was leaving like trails of blood everywhere, and if I had gone back to the hotel, I don’t think I would have made it through the night anyway.”
You can see the incident below, but be warned, it is pretty disgusting.
Such a brutal event usually ends up in some lessons being learnt. But for Ryan, it has resulted in him being given something which is now his most treasured possession: a lock of Kurt Cobain's hair.
During an interview with Far Out Magazine, Ryan revealed that the hair of the legendary Nirvana frontman was given to him by Courtney Love on one of the many occasions when the band would stay with her in LA. Though the gesture was less a present and more a sign of what happens if you don't slow down and take stock of where you are.
"I’ve literally never told anyone about that because I felt a bit embarrassed to tell people. There's almost like a rub of whether that's bad taste or not. She gave it to me as this talismanic kind of thing. I had had this incident, and she was like, ‘This is what happens when you die young,’ when she gave it to me. I thought it was this cool gesture, but it wasn’t like a fun gift. It’s funny because I just keep it in a bag, it’s at the bottom of my sock drawer. I can’t think of anywhere safer to keep it."
The Cribs' new album Selling A Vibe is set to be released on January 9th 2026, via Sonic Blew.
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