Aftermath

I've totally used that title just recently and a million times before, but this is the first time I've done so after playing support for Tricky :)

SO YEAH. We opened for Tricky!

It were reet emotional! But also quite good :D

GETTING THE BAND BACK TOGETHER

I actually got asked about three-to-four weeks ago, and sat there gasping, eyes-popped, saying "What the fuck??" every ten minutes before realising that I had a bit of a problem...

After some studio work, we had been tooling up to take on some new gigs later in the year, but...

Phil, my god-like drummer (since DeathBoy as a live act began) is hoping to ship out to Canada and accordingly quit the band earlier in the year, citing such poorly constructed and selfish reasons as needing to not spend half his free time rehearsing for the band. Obviously, as gutted as we were, you can't exactly gripe at the man for wanting to pursue a dream, but equally, I had nowhere near enough time to recruit another drummer, so with some trepidation, I called Phil to ask if I could bully him out of retirement for one last gig. Getting a session drummer in of Phil's calibre would have been near impossible - he's spent the last six years playing drums that emulate three or four breakbeats, like a multi-armed demon, and I'm going to be lucky to find someone else who's up to the task, let alone on that sort of timescale.

If he wasn't up for it, we were pretty much stopped at the first hurdle... Fortunately, Phil's a fucking star and knows how much it meant to me, and said he would pick his sticks up one more time :)

Within the same evening, I also managed to recruit the very awesome Lee Chaos (of Chaos Engine / Wasp Factory / Judder fame) to play synths and backing-track glitching, and the scarily-talented Ben of Earth Loop Recall / This Is Radio Silence / SonVer to relieve me of my barely-passable guitaring duties. SUPER-GROUP!

BLIND PREPARATION

So, we said we'd do the gig, BUT while the venue wanted us, it was down to Tricky's management to OK the warmup bands... and that became a bit of an issue as after a few days, they hadn't got back in touch.

We started rehearsing in this new configuration without being confirmed, and it really clicked. The first or second pass through each track felt like we'd been doing it for weeks, and I left the rehearsals pretty overjoyed.

Still no word from the management...

The next week passed, we rehearsed again. Sounded good still!

Still no word from the management...

By this time, it was the week of the gig!

But, fuck it, you don't get that sort of gig just any time, so we ploughed ahead as if it WAS on because if we didn't, we'd not be able to rock up and do a good job.

Thank fuck, the gig was eventually confirmed on the monday, and we'd done the right thing :) Bit of a relief as rehearsal studios don't come for free ;)

Next surprise, Tricky's lot had asked for two support bands... and so our set time was chopped down a bit to a meagre 20 minutes. OOF. We'd been rehearsing a 30 minute set and it was a bit gut-wrenching dropping three tracks, but again, special gig, we took it on the chin.

BIG DAY / MEETING TRICKY

Fast-forward to the day of the gig, we travel down (in three separate cars, as the last-minute timing of it all had knackered organisation a wee bit) and arrive in Bexhill on Sea. Venue looked really nice, less intimidating in size than I'd feared (Ben had inadvertently shit me up by mentioning that their capacity was QUITE A LOT OF PEOPLE INDEED, but it wasn't so bad in the end).

The promoter lass that had contacted/hired us was lovely, in fact everyone was. The other band was above us, so there was the usual "ooh, wonder what they're like..." - they were incredibly affable lads from Brighton, dead friendly and chatty.

I broach the subject of saying hello to Tricky himself, and we're told he's actually very approachable and we should indeed just walk up and say "hi", he will be OK with this.

It took me about half an hour to actually pluck up the courage to do this, but eventually I did, and popped my head in and introduced myself. Tricky was indeed dead fucking friendly. Wearing a MASSIVE parker jacket (which he wore until he went on stage), he asked when we were on and promised to listen. Also asked for a CD, which I duly ran off and flung at him. This may just be well-ingrained pleasantries, but I did feel pretty pleased that he seemed to give a fuck.

I also embarrassed myself quite awfully by geeking with him twice, once about Asus EEEs (his synth player had one, we discussed their cheapness and aceness and the availability of WiFi at the venue), then I noticed that he has the same fucking phone as me, and before I could stop myself, showed him the Light-Sabre application. At which point, any coolness I ever owned tore itself from my body and slunk off down the stairs to be quietly sick.

You love a guy's music for 14 years and a quarter of the conversation you have with him is "LOOK! MY PHONE GOES WOO-WOO!" Yessssss. I'm a winner.

OUR SET

As we got our shit ready back-stage and our gear assembled at the side, we soon realised that Tricky's soundcheck was going to eat up both support band slots. This is not at all unusual, if a bit gutting, but as Lee put it when Tricky turned round and apologised (which is cool in of itself), Tricky's the star, he's why the gig is happening.

So, we got ready for a line-check only and I started shitting myself in earnest. I still haven't stopped getting butterflies before a gig, and frankly, I don't want to, it gives me a bit of ARRRRG and edge and reminds me that I'm still lucky to be some angry prick shouting at people for money.

The stage crew are all really good. Friendly, efficient and professional, they sorted us out a good sound fast, but we still knew we were all running late and already had a short set. We basically told the stage manager the second there were people walking through the doors we'd go on, so he didn't have to cut us off, which he was fine with. Minutes later, we're on and rocking.

At which point, I basically go into my gig-trance, because I still can't concentrate on much more than singing half-decently, trying to move a bit so I don't look like a twat rooted to the mic stand, and involving the crowd with a little banter and staring at them a bit. (like a twat, but one that's mobile)

I get total dry-mouth (haven't had that for a while!) and my finely-tuned balance of SMOKING A LOT and singing / shouting gruffly starts to peter-out right on cue, so that the last track, Cheap Shot is (appropriately) mostly-shouted (by me, with Lee and Ben, too - ace!)

Throughout the set, I'd got very good on-stage sound - Benj was a bit low for me, but Adam was ploughing into it like a good 'un, and coming through strong (which gave me a lot to sing off) and Lee's keys and the backing weren't at all bad. As always, though, we didn't know if that was reflected in the front-of-house mix.

Anyways, we get some entirely reasonable applause as we fuck off - and indeed we had been doing from one track to the next, which had kept my spirits up. The room was fairly sparse and still filling as we went on, but we could see people looking in from outside the main room and choosing to come in and listen, which was quite a lovely change from gothic-bar-apathy.

We bail off the stage pronto and let the second band on and being singer (with no hardware to haul), I stay out of the way and get my motherfucking drink on. Me and Benj dive out the back for a ciggy and decompress, the synths and bass of the second band sound pretty good from outside.

AFTERMATH

Benj tells me about Phil's wandering drum kit - we had put stage weights onto the legs, but hadn't managed to get the frame stable enough, and while you couldn't tell by listening (that is to say, he pushed through it like a trooper), his kit had been slowly but surely trying to escape him and run me and Benj over, creeping forward and rotating. Christ! More props to Phil for that, he played like a hardcore bastard throughout, I was pretty surprised to hear he'd been struggling against that during the set.

I have to confess to only catching a small amount of the second band, which was interesting, but when I was actually in the room, didn't grab me as much. Given the nature of their ad-libbed stuff, I get the feeling they were yanked off a bit early due to the late running time and there was a crescendo they would have otherwise reached that was robbed. They seemed happy but mentioned the shortness of the set, and had to fuck off pretty much immediately. Extremely nice lads, but in all honesty, I think they would have fit the first slot better. I know that sounds egocentric, hopefully, anyone who's booked us knows that I'm not in the least adverse to playing low in the bill (I get to go and get drunk sooner).

A verrrry interesting point that became clear as the evening progressed was that from after our fourth track, Lee had acquired a shadow, in the form of a stage guy shouting at him that we had to stop and get off, our time being up. I know the guy was only doing his job and that we were the lowest of the list of priorities, but (having been oblivious while on stage) I have to give my utterly heartfelt thanks to Lee and his Righteous "FUCK THAT" of Doom, for literally closing his eyes, grinning and pushing on the through the set while being shouted at. We hadn't, as Lee put it, driven that far and done that much rehearsal to play four fucking tracks. If we had thought of it at the time, we could have used Lee's testicles for stage-weights. :)

TRICKY LIVE

Tricky's set was an interesting beast. It was (I'm embarrassed to say) the first time I'd ever caught him live, though I'd watched a few YouTube videos and it seemed to be in-keeping for that. Tricky himself, as on the album tracks, isn't necessarily singing at any given time, and when he's not, he was generally running around, crouching, exploding and thrashing his head like an absolute maniac. I hadn't realised it would be entirely like that! (given that a lot of the tracks are relatively down-tempo).

Wound up chatting to a very nice (aussie, I think) crew guy, who had been friendly and quick to sort us out on the desk, and (among other people) mentioned that there had been some pretty constant issues with Tricky's vocals (though I can't now remember what) - but it was evident that even when he was singing, you weren't always hearing him. Bit of a fucker, as obviously, that's a lot of what people were there to see, but that's live gigs for you. He was jumping around like a mentalist quite a bit, with a fairly casual disregard for singing into the mic at any given time.

DECOMPRESSION

Another thing that was really nice was that over the course of the night, about six different groups of people (from all ages and demographics - people there for Tricky were a VERY varied lot) took the time to walk up and say that they liked what we were doing. We even sold a few CDs :) It was pretty good to get that sort of response given that people were still filing in when we played, and the brevity of the set.

Also, at some point, the bar literally ran out of vodka. I won't claim that I didn't have at least a small hand in that.

As we were packing up, I decided it'd be nice to try my luck and get a photo with Tricky, but the man and his retinue had closed up shop, the backstage doors were closed and knocking got heads peeping out, realising we were nobody of importance, polite apologies and doors closing again.

There was a brief surreal moment when an incredibly friendly older guy from Tricky's lot (who I'm sure was earlier described as Tricky's uncle) came and asked if we had any earplugs. I said the only ones we had were used and would need a wash / boiling (you know, ear-gunk and all), but he seemed absolutely happy with this... and took a pair of used (ugh!) ear-plugs from me. Never did find out why! Then, just to make things weirder, asked me if I played the lottery...

I said "nooo... why?" - at which point he explained that he was in some way like a lucky gypsy (I'm sure that's what he said, it makes as little sense now as it did at the time) and that I was now blessed with awesome luck and should totally play the lottery now.

I was happy but freaked out to have helped and, frankly confused. Lovely bloke, though. I shudder to think that someone from Tricky's crew wound up with my used earplugs. That's not a claim to fame I had entirely expected.

FANBOY

Shortly after, I spotted the (new and utterly wonderful) singer and we let her know how much we'd enjoyed her stuff - she was absolutely excellent (and just a tiny bit gorgeous) - she popped her head in to speak to Tricky and said he was decompressing at the moment but would be happy to oblige if we were still around in half an hour or so... at which point the bassist lass seemed to say something along the lines of "of course they'll still be around now" - and I realised we'd hassled people too much and should make a move.

Wasn't dead keen on the abiding memory of me as an irritating fan-boy who didn't know when to fuck off.

So, we packed up, the majestic Lee and Squiddy Action Assault Combo Special Team GO! hugged and legged it into an anime sunset, and Adam and Claire did much the same, leaving only Team Liver Abuse.

Well, me, Phil (who now doesn't drink), Rich (who also wasn't drinking) and Benj.

OK, so me and Benj were Team Liver Abuse Super Mega Squadron, because we had to make up the stat sheet for the more sensible team members.

We packed up. Got in car. Rich got us to the hotel with a minimum of fuss and we checked in while a faintly smug, arsey bloke took our details and gave us our room keys.

The more responsible half of Team Liver Abuse went to bed, and me and Benj got ourselves set up to solve the world's many ills from the luxury of our hotel room.

AND THEN IT GOES A BIT WEIRD

A short time into mine and Benjy's ENTIRELY REASONABLE and INTELLIGENT DISCOURSES ON THE NATURE OF LIFE, smug, slightly-arsey man from the front desk knocks on our door.

I didn't remember ordering room-service, and indeed I hadn't. He had come to ask us to talk quieter. Not because of a complaint, no, because he could apparently hear us talking from down the corridor. Not being massive arseholes, we agreed that we would - to the detriment of the civilised world who could otherwise have benefited from our rational and sane orations - keep it down a bit. And we called him a cunt a bit. After he'd gone.

Eventually, we ran out of booze. Problem. So, discovering that unlike a real hotel, this place didn't have room-service, we decided to go and convince someone to sell us alcohol. This proved immediately futile. There wasn't even someone on the desk. Smug-man had fucked off, and had a sign on the desk to say as much. We were informed that if we needed service, we should merely ring the buzzer.

Annoyed, we went out for a smoke.

OK, ACTUALLY IT WAS AT THIS POINT THAT THINGS WENT PROPERLY WEIRD

The door was locked.

Front door to the hotel: locked.

Smug-bloke: gone.

Rang the bell: Nothing.

Rang for about 10 minutes (could hear it ringing from the locked porch): nothing.

Rang the phone (and could hear it ringing from the locked porch): nothing.

Shit. We're locked out.

And then began a magical and surreal wonderland journey.

MAGICAL AND SURREAL ... YOU GET THE PICTURE

We walked around the outside of the hotel for a bit and found, much to our surprise, an open door. To the back of house. As in, to the bit where the staff dwells. Wide open. Trying to get back to our rooms for a kip, we trapsed, bewildered through squalid corridors, fire-exits with signs saying "FIRE EXIT: KEEP CLOSED" on doors with marker-pen writing above reading "KEEP THIS DOOR SHUT" - propped open by (ironically) fire-extinguishers, and in one case, a "CAUTION: WET FLOOR" sign.

We found the back entrance to the bar. You know, with the till.

We found the BOOZE ROOM.

By which I mean the store room with over £1,000 of bottles of alcohol in it.

We majestically didn't rob them blind, but instead retraced our steps outside, and, expecting at any moment to be pounced upon / arrested, walking back through the whole labyrinth with our phone cameras blazing, giving a running commentary (yes, I have the files, no I'm not posting them in case they arrest me).

We went back outside, fucked, basically. 4am by now. COLD. Having a ciggy now seemed like a foolish manoeuvre. All of the building we could access was locked off from the rooms. Because you're not meant to let the public walk from their rooms into the sore-closet. You know, unless they can just walk in from outside.

Eventually, we went around the perimeter of the building, and would you fucking believe it, I noticed a fire exit from the outside that seemed like the door was not properly shut.

"Benj, mate, I can open this."

Clawed the door open.

"You're fucking joking."

We got back in.

COMPENSATION

The morning after, Benj pointed out that they did, as I had suspected, have a big sign saying that if you weren't entirely happy with your stay, they would refund you fully.

I wasn't entirely happy.

I told the nice lady on reception, she looked bug-eyed and brought the manager.

We explained our evening to the manager. His eyes popped out a bit and he kindly instructed the pleasant receptionist to refund my card for two rooms. WIN!

Both the manager and the girl on the counter in the morning were totally lovely. The suggestion that Smug Man had bollocked us on the way to having a sleep in a guest-room was not denied. The manager inferred something along the lines of "He'd better bloody well not have". I do hope he got a roasting.

Anyways, we got five or six hours in bed, Rich gave me a breakfast call and we went and scored food for brekky and the journey home, picking up Benj and Phil and piling into the Richmobile for the journey home.

AFTER-AFTERMATH

Saturday and Sunday, I mostly spent dead and very much feeling for Super Power Squadron Lee and Ultra Benj, who both had gigs of varying sorts the next day. I only had Super Hangover Ignoring Pain Device Corben to cope with, which was plenty, but how they got through, I do not fathom. I believe they are made of materials that man has yet to quantify.

In the week following, I have received several emails from the hotel company, asking me to fill in a form about my stay at their hotel. I assume, because we successfully called them on their refund policy, but while we did in fact do nothing wrong, I'm not going to give them anything that, in addition to CCTV footage could put together a story of me and my associate lurking around their forbidden hallways at 4am, Looking For Biscuits.

So yeah.

We opened for Tricky :)

THANKS

Stupid amounts of love to Me Boys for their unending support of my increasingly bizarre musical dreams, and I want to redress a small imbalance by saying that while he's not featured in the Hollywood Screenplay version of this story, Adam (my remaining original band-member!) was - as always - up for the adventure, reliable when I needed him, and spanked that fucking bass out like it owed him lunch-money. He's the toughest fucking bassist in the world and I love 'im to bits :)

CREDITS

Massive, world-destroying thanks and love to, in no particular order:

Phil "Vishnu" Palmer - Breakbeats Above and Beyond the Point of Duty or indeed Sanity
Lee "Substantially more hardcore than yow" O' Chaos - Synths, Righteousness, Adventuring
Adam "Your Human Basslines are Indistinct To Me" Gelman - Bass, Animal Crossing, More Bass
Richard "Wheels" Kilpatrick - Transport, Photography and tolerance of, well, Us
Ben "Prog/Punk as fuck/required" McLees - Guitars, Conversation, Booze, Adventuring, Clandestine Manlove
Laura "Squiddy" Hilton and Claire Powers-Hynes - Adventuring Support / Alcohol Containment
Rebecca "What Have I Wrought?" Ellis - Booking us / Proceeding As If We Were Largely Competent