Evening all. Actually, it’s about 2am on a Monday morning, and I’ve just got back from the Dublin Castle show and a weekend of general fun, chaos and total kebabery!! More of that in a minute…
First, I thought an update on how my “Internetaphobia” (I’m sure there’s actual word for that but I’m lazy. Answers on a postcard kids!!), therapy is going now I’ve joined the wonderful, comfortable world of laptop users.
So what’s new? Well, tragically, I seem to have become somewhat addicted to Facebook. The capacity to gibber complete nonsense to various people well into the wee small hours is immense. Anyone who read my last blog will attest this is obviously a passion of mine – talking bollocks at length.
Everyone has to have a hobby.
I’ve delved deeper into the wonderful world of You-Tube, although couldn’t claim to have done much more than watch hundreds of music videos, wrestling matches, and Kimbo Slice kicking the piss out of people… for those who follow MMA, how much of a letdown was the Shamrock fight-that-never-was? …Knocked out by a skinny, white “Substitute” with Pink hair in 14 seconds. Kimbo, Kimbo, Kimbo?? What went wrong???
Oh God. Tangent-ing again. I’ll try and keep it in check
I had my eyes opened and my brain frazzled by the mind-bending Zeitgeist movies on Google Videos. These films should be compulsory viewing for everyone, everywhere by the way.
And… well, that’s about it really. But hey, fuck it! That’s impressive for me!!
Have I started downloading stuff though? Nope. I’m still a Dinosaur… and fucking proud of it!! So I guess if I venture into any further new uncharted territories (and indeed find the inspiration to stay up beyond any kind of reasonable hour typing complete bollocks) you’ll hear it here first. The anticipation is obviously palpable…
Anyway, let’s travel back a few days to last Friday.
Before I start, I must stress that some of the names, places, substances and locations have been changed to protect the guilty (me) and the innocent (pretty much everyone else).
In other words, you probably can’t trust an inch of this, but what’s new?
We played a not-too-shabby show at the Peel in Kingston upon Thames on Friday. It’s reasonable to say it was a little sparsely attended.
Who am I kidding?? It was nothing short of a metaphorical Bomb Scare. But in a pleasing turn of events, the Few and the Proud that were there seemed to dig our oddball Thrashy thing, and there were any number of old and new friends to drink and giggle incoherently with throughout the evening. A special mention must go out to the… errrrrm, Exotic Dancers working at the Peel that evening. God bless ‘em!! Despite clearly not fielding what anyone could describe as the Peels “A-Team” that particular day, none the less they did provide a welcome distraction in the dead time after soundcheck and, well let’s not fuck about – during Skorges set. Nuff said.
On a slight tangent, I couldn’t help but piss myself with merriment at the way we appeared to scare the living b’Jesus out of Skorge’s teenage girly fanbase!! 8 or 9 little teeny-bopper girlies, all clearly friends of the band, all lined up right in front of the stage, screaming and whooping on cue. Hey - Credit to them for breaching the invisible wall of the dreaded Bermuda Semi-Circle, but when there’s 9 of you lined up in front of the stage and not a single soul in the 30 or so feet behind you (aside from ¾ of the curmudgeonly old bastards in Dragnerve, shaking their heads in disbelief. The other ¼ was in the Strip Bar, espying the dubious Poontang), it comes across as a little forced. But fuck it, we were all kids once. And this lot were kids
.
Suffice to say, us old, hairy, desperately unfashionable metal heads take the stage, start doing our thing and lo and behold the Teeny-Bopper crowd evacuate their bowls and run off screaming off into the cold Kingstonian night.
Fuckin’ genius.
Anyway, suffice to say we had a rip roaring evening and much fun and beer was had by all in a fairly major way. It was a pleasure meeting the boys from Colt 45 for a start.
Somehow, I ended up with half the Peel (minus the strippers) back at my (not exactly spacious) flat afterwards until god knows when in the morning. I do know I finally got to bed some time after 6am.
It was a epic night.
Saturday - needless to say - began in a very hazy, painful and unpleasantly tasting way, far enough into the afternoon to have missed lunch completely and be well on the home straight towards Dinnertime. A shower, a very light bite to eat and the slow painful passage of time convinced me that, yes – it would in fact be an awesome idea to head out to D&D @ Sin (nothing at all to do with fantasy role playing games, I assure you. If you’re in to Metal [if not, why are you here??] and at a loose end in the West End of a Saturday night, I can’t recommend the place enough! Good tunes, great people, masses of craziness. Wonderful stuff), and party till 6am all over again.
…in my defence, I never did claim to be a fast learner in the first place.
I was going to be good though, honest yer’onnah. I’d just had an uncommonly massive Friday night after all (believe me when I say I’ve glossed over a lot of the details), shredded my throat a little bit (30% singing, 70% smoking copious fags), and was still a little groggy and knackered. We had another show to get through on Sunday for Gods sake! And just because of the location I knew from the get go it would be another “tomorrow morning” job, saving a fuggin’ fortune on Cabs by getting the first train home. But I wasn’t going to drink that much. I was going to be restrained and well behaved all round. Maybe hand out some flyers, try to drum up some last minute business for Sundays gig? Nice, chilled evening with faces and friends. Nothing wrong with that, right?
Nope, not a thing. All good there. Except all of that went completely to shit inside of about 17 minutes. It turned into debauched chaos with alarming alacrity!! Again, in order to protect the guilty (still me) and the innocent (reduced to merely a handful of certain others by now) I will gloss over the details. It’s enough to say I caught up with some old friends, met a whole mess of new ones, and had the unparalleled pleasure of meeting the most gorgeous and wonderful lady, who will no doubt complicate my life dreadfully in a variety of interesting ways in the weeks and months to come… I really can’t wait!!!
But I digress. Somehow, despite leaving the club at 6am, I didn’t get to Waterloo to catch a train until about 8.30am and was still, thoroughly, rocked of my bollocks.
Actually, I know exactly where those 2 ½ hours went, I’m just not telling!! =) Don’t all freak out at once, it involved coffee and a sausage McMuffin.
I finally got home and to bed about an hour or so later, and managed to grab a couple of the most un-refreshing, pointless, and freakily dream-filled hours of sleep I’ve ever had. So when my alarm goes off at 2 on Sunday afternoon to signal “Time to get Ready for the Gig, Chuckles”, you can imagine my general disposition.
I’m aware I have to drive and lug equipment around, which will automatically prevent me from being tempted to get trashed again (this was a good thing), but fuck me, I could count at least 208 ways I would rather have been spending my time, and nearly all of them involved lying down. Despite being told we have to be at the venue at 5pm for soundcheck Lee and I get there at about half 4 (what a couple of fuckin’ mugs!!) - the sound engineer finally rocks up a gnat’s cock away from 7pm. Oh, and the 4 band bill has become 5, as one of the bands pulled out at the 11th hour, and the promoter managed to find a replacement.
Only problem was, nobody told the band that apparently pulled out, that they’d pulled out. So of course they turn up.
Doors are meant to be at 7.30, there’s 5 bands to soundcheck and I, frankly, am in absolute fucking pieces.
Fucking. Clown. Shoes.
This is turning into an unmitigated disaster. My throat is raw as arses – I have this strange Barry White quality going on in the dark recesses of my tortured larynx, my brain is trying to make it way out of the front of my face, everything aches and this gig is beginning to test the limits of my (currently) extremely fucking limited patience.
Oh, and Skorge are on this bill as well.
Was I a rapist in a previous life or something?? With everything else that was clamouring for the title of “Most Annoying/Painful thing Happening to me Right Now” this was a cross too heavy to bear. So we wandered away from this nightmarish cluster-fuck for the relative sanctuary of the Worlds End in Camden.
I am, quite literally, just waiting to die at this point. I’m so hoarse I can barely speak, I’m surrounded by friends and well wishers, several of whom I’d only just met who must have been thinking “What a miserable bastard this wanker is”. I was not a happy boy.
We traipse back up to the Dublin Castle shortly after 9 and at this stage, I’m secretly hoping there’s been yet another fuck up, and maybe we accidentally missed our set??!!?!? But not so. We get back just in time to catch the last couple of tracks from Skorge.
It’s just a fucking laugh factory in my head at this point.
I’m in the little “Backstage” bit (which is actually no where near the stage) trying to do my best to psyche myself up for this, and its just not working. I’m shitting myself. I have NO confidence in either my singing or roaring because my throat is so shot to shit. There isn’t a muscle in my body that isn’t screaming for me to lie down. I’m pretty sure I was mildly hallucinating from sleep deprivation, and it appeared there were about 6 people in the venue room to watch us.
I’m beginning to think maybe going out last night and hitting it as hard as I did, might not have been the best idea I’ve ever had.
Fuckery.
Show’s on. Game Face time. Lee breaks a string before we even start. I go and sit down. Fuck fuck fuck. I do not want to do this. NO disrespect to the few people who were in there to see us, but this was not how I wanted to spend my Sunday evening. We’ve finally got our shit together, a quick flash of eye contact all round signifies the Abortion is ready to commence. We bust into “Random Acts”. I suddenly notice, all the pain, fatigue, frustration and general all round nastiness is fluttering away on the breeze. People start PILING into the room. All of a sudden – butter my arse – We’ve got a fucking crowd!! This feels… good. No, Great!! OK, my throat isn’t holding up quite as well as I’d have liked, but it's a THOUSAND times better than I’d imagined. Heads were bobbing, feet were moving. The first song finishes and the sounds of people clapping, shouting and squeeling fill my ears. This… is officially awesome. Just… Awesome. =)
Once again, Andy is a happy boy. It's turned into another Epic Night.
...it's all coming up Milhouse.
I’ll spare you the rest of the evening, mainly because not a lot happened, other than the fantastic, weird and proggy Crack Silence. I really did feel fine after the show, which is saying something!! I must have a Muse or something out there, looking out for me in times of desperate musical need. God bless her wherever she is!!
The moral of the story?
When you’ve got something important to do the next day, go out and get as Arseholed as you want, coz the Universe will generally look after itself and sort it all out for you.
See? Not a fast learner.
