Sorry about the cliffhanger. I wanted to spare you all from staring at your computer screens for too long but so many people have been cross with me for dragging it out that I'm putting Part 2 up now...
WE have a problem and the problem is that we're not going to get in - the SWG3 is at capacity! Support band Punch & The Apostles are only just on but the place has been turning people away for the previous 20 minutes. Andrew, the sharp-witted bass player, is having a cigarette outside, "You'se'll not get in now," he says in his best Dad's Army Fraser voice. But I can tell he's not serious because of the grin on his face. One of the guys on the door recognises us and we're in.
Inside, it's absolutely heaving. The capacity is 300 and I'm sure for Health, Safety and Fire Regulations sake they haven't gone over but ... well, you know, it's bloody packed. The clientele is a mix of cool 20- and 30-somethings, plus a nice smattering of older hipsters. Behind the bar cocktails are being poured, onstage Punch & co. are blasting out a Lanarkshire version of Gogol Bordello and everyone seems to know each other. I get the impression that the whole audience is somehow involved in the local arts scene, I'm not sure why other than there doesn't seem to be the level of insecure posing that happens when a club is full of wannabes; everyone seems to already be someone. If we were in London, say at the ICA or the Scala - or in one of the studios in Hoxton, the sense of competitiveness and jealousy would be palpable; the girls would be checking each other out more, the men would be more obsessed with their clothing; superficiality would have been in the air. Of course, I'm making huge generalisations from the perspective of someone who is very excited that MY BAND'S PARTY IS THE HIPPEST PARTY IN EUROPE but hey, these are my thoughts at the time.
Soon it's eleven o'clock and the band are still not on stage. Just as I am going to round them up they appear from the doorway, clutching instruments. Christ, there are no lights on stage, William isn't wearing his bright top, Jack is wearing a grey T-shirt that some fan has forced him to, no on will see them ... It'll be fine, it'll be fine. I give them beers and retreat to the back of the room.
No lights go down and no intro is made. Suddenly from nowhere they kick off with Volcano - a cover of local blues band's tune which they've turned into a off-kilter, keyboard-squeaking monster. Except you can't hear it. The vocals are non-existent, the bass is barely audible above the continued conversation of the crowd and the keyboards sound like an 80s computer game. Shit! I see Geoff weaving through the crowd towards me. He's a self-confessed sound fascist, deriving pleasure in taking live engineers to task and I can tell he wants blood. At this point the vocal pokes through but it's still cripplingly quiet - like a builder's radio in the corner of the room. I've already turned to George behind me, "You can't hear anything, mate! - can you get the sound up?" George is calm as ever but his fingers are all over the desk like a card sharp.
Amazingly, by the time Geoff reaches me the sound is alive and well. The crowd are now rapt and the band have hit their stride. Within two songs the whole room is captured. I turn to Charlie and we smile. The room is loving them, they manage to convince without lights or even much chat between songs. At one point there's a crowd surge and audience members collapse in a heap on top of a Jim Lambie table. A casualty is carried out through the back exit by two members of staff - disastrously it's not one of the drunk audience but a £10K table. Hope they're insured.
The rest of the evening is a blur, of course. They play the single, the gig finishes. The DJ starts playing old Motown records which must be against some sort of DJ bylaw but somehow works in this context. Someone tells me that since the venue reached capacity they've turned away over 150 people, including Stuart Murdoch from Belle And Sebastian. That'll teach him to be fashionably late. Wonder if another Scottish rock celebrity who had promised to DJ suffered the same fate ...
A large proportion of the audience head back to Jack's flat where the partying continues. There, I chat to the ex-keyboard player who now appears to be working in the House of Commons, the video director who is an old friend, and Jack's lovely girlfriend... By the time I leave, I know I'm too drunk to walk back to the hotel because I'm deciding to walk back to the hotel. On my journey to Room 504, I discover a street booth selling bacon rolls at 4 in the morning. I buy one and, pulling my manager's coat tighter against the cold, continue walking whilst I eat. It's the most delicious thing I've ever tasted.
Showing posts with label Rock 'n' roll antics (TV out of window etc). Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rock 'n' roll antics (TV out of window etc). Show all posts
Tuesday, 22 April 2008
Sunday, 17 February 2008
I'll have a Babyshambles ...
How nice to get all that response from people on the last post. Clearly, the anxiety of growing up in a young person's world affects more people than I thought. Mind you, I uploaded some really oafish pictures of me yesterday and that knowledge didn't make me feel any better. At least my daughter Maddy still asks me to be the handsome prince whenever we play Cinderella or Aladdin or whatever fairy tale is topping her weekly chart.
"Daddy, you be Prince Ali and I'll be princess Jasmine and then we'll get married."
"Great!" I groan, anticipating another lost half hour. I have to be the entire supporting cast in these productions, so my thespian talents are stretched to their limits but despite the plum roles of prince I'm given, I find myself warming more to playing the evil Jafar or of course, the Ugly Sisters.
Talking of pantomimes, our band supported Babyshambles this week. Relax, I'm not having a go at the Shambles - actually, the little we saw of their crew and the band themselves suggested a well-oiled machine rather than the train wreck the tabloids would have. Even the handful of songs I managed to catch live had a slickness which I was surprised and maybe a little disappointed with. I have to confess to never having seen them before but I did see The Libertines on a good number of occasions, including a heart-stopping show at the 100 Club and if there is an essence of rock 'n' roll, a spirit or whatever the more corduroyed-up music journalists write about, well, they had it. But Babyshambles seemed a little bit characterless. Maybe they were having an off night. Rock 'n' roll antics had been attempted the night before in their hotel apparently but crucially, not by them. The culprit was... get this: the support band's manager! No, not one of us, we were lowly first-on-the-bill band, it was the main support - a local Glaswegian group - whose manager decided that he'd found the essence of rock 'n' roll and indeed it consisted of throwing a telly out of a hotel window. Imagine that! A TV getting thrown out of a window in 2008! I mean, apart from the full-circle cliché (i.e. perhaps it's now so naff it's cool; seen as 'classic' band behaviour) a telly in 2008 is not what it was in 1971 or whenever it was that Jimmy Page or Jimi Hendrix or Jim Morrison or whoever it was that first came up with the idea, chucked one out of the Sunset Marriott. Back then, TVs were big and fat and most importantly represented something rarified and expensive. Now, your average Travelodge is more likely to have a flimsy plasma screen on a tripod from Argos; it would be like throwing a sheet of A4 out of the window. Rock and furthermore, roll. Anyway, Babyshambles' tour manager banned him from the venue and later - so the ginger singer from the group told me in our shared dressing room - the band sacked him.
The group were really nice guys actually. One of them, who looked about 15, on hearing me make some remark about Eisenstein (a director I know virtually nothing about) took me for a film buff and started enthusiastically explaining his Film Noir thesis to me and how he'd traced its roots back to Battleship Potempkin. He then went on to play a sublime version of Heart of Glass on his own in the dressing room in the style of the Proclaimers. What a chap!
Our band were incredibly nervous. And not surprising really, given that two of them worship Doherty and the band had never played in a venue in front of the 1900 people which Barrowlands holds. Added to this, the fact that ahead of the 7pm Doors time the entire crew, staff, management, and hangers-on were male, must have made them feel slightly apprehensive. Interestingly though, despite the fact that they are all very attractive girls, they were treated with the utmost respect by all concerned and I don't recall anyone trying to hit on them. I put that down to the exceptional personal management provided by myself and Charlie. Or maybe everyone there was just being really professional ...
Charlie and myself, despite almost 40 collective years in the business, were on a steep learning curve. Neither of us could count the amount of times we'd swanned into a large venue as the A&R man of the band playing and just hung out with our charges, making wry comments and looking at set-lists sagely. But this was completely different, there was no time for any louche hanging out because we were having to talk to the venue's sound man or the lighting guy (and, it turned out, having to pay them) or giving the production manager a floor plan and DI plan, or gaffa taping up T-shirts to the sales stand or indeed, loading in equipment and really quickly loading out equipment. "Is this ours?" I found myself saying repeatedly and not for the last time on the trip, regretting not stencilling our gear.
We'd bought champagne to have a belated celebration of signing the band but after two sips in our dressing room, I was summoned by a Shambles official to load up our gear again (note to self: get a tour manager next time). When I'd bought the champagne earlier, I'd found some four-packs of Babycham that I coudn't resist - I didn't know they still made it. Geoff, my other management partner, and I took a peak into the Babyshambles dressing room before they arrived to see if, you know, it was full of supermodels or something, and there was a disappointing array of pedestrian chocolate (mini flakes and crunchies) and dare I say it, fruit ... If I was them I'd get a case of Babycham on every rider.
The evening didn't end in the disarray you'd expect from five slightly tiddly girls many miles from home. We were all so exhausted that even the few of us who got taken to the Glasgow Arts School hip night out, only managed a couple of drinks before stumbling back to the the B&B. Actually I tell a lie, two of them managed to have it large and throw some pretty convincing shapes on the dancefloor. And they made it down for breakfast the next day. I got there just as the cooker was turned off and missed the deep-fried oatcakes.
As I loaded in the band's gear into the van that morning - guitars, amps, leads and bags, the one thing going through my mind was not to miss anything. We probably left something in the venue, I was thinking ... damn, we really should have stencilled our stuff. Shortly afterwards, fate decided on shaking things up a little ...
"Daddy, you be Prince Ali and I'll be princess Jasmine and then we'll get married."
"Great!" I groan, anticipating another lost half hour. I have to be the entire supporting cast in these productions, so my thespian talents are stretched to their limits but despite the plum roles of prince I'm given, I find myself warming more to playing the evil Jafar or of course, the Ugly Sisters.
Talking of pantomimes, our band supported Babyshambles this week. Relax, I'm not having a go at the Shambles - actually, the little we saw of their crew and the band themselves suggested a well-oiled machine rather than the train wreck the tabloids would have. Even the handful of songs I managed to catch live had a slickness which I was surprised and maybe a little disappointed with. I have to confess to never having seen them before but I did see The Libertines on a good number of occasions, including a heart-stopping show at the 100 Club and if there is an essence of rock 'n' roll, a spirit or whatever the more corduroyed-up music journalists write about, well, they had it. But Babyshambles seemed a little bit characterless. Maybe they were having an off night. Rock 'n' roll antics had been attempted the night before in their hotel apparently but crucially, not by them. The culprit was... get this: the support band's manager! No, not one of us, we were lowly first-on-the-bill band, it was the main support - a local Glaswegian group - whose manager decided that he'd found the essence of rock 'n' roll and indeed it consisted of throwing a telly out of a hotel window. Imagine that! A TV getting thrown out of a window in 2008! I mean, apart from the full-circle cliché (i.e. perhaps it's now so naff it's cool; seen as 'classic' band behaviour) a telly in 2008 is not what it was in 1971 or whenever it was that Jimmy Page or Jimi Hendrix or Jim Morrison or whoever it was that first came up with the idea, chucked one out of the Sunset Marriott. Back then, TVs were big and fat and most importantly represented something rarified and expensive. Now, your average Travelodge is more likely to have a flimsy plasma screen on a tripod from Argos; it would be like throwing a sheet of A4 out of the window. Rock and furthermore, roll. Anyway, Babyshambles' tour manager banned him from the venue and later - so the ginger singer from the group told me in our shared dressing room - the band sacked him.
The group were really nice guys actually. One of them, who looked about 15, on hearing me make some remark about Eisenstein (a director I know virtually nothing about) took me for a film buff and started enthusiastically explaining his Film Noir thesis to me and how he'd traced its roots back to Battleship Potempkin. He then went on to play a sublime version of Heart of Glass on his own in the dressing room in the style of the Proclaimers. What a chap!
Our band were incredibly nervous. And not surprising really, given that two of them worship Doherty and the band had never played in a venue in front of the 1900 people which Barrowlands holds. Added to this, the fact that ahead of the 7pm Doors time the entire crew, staff, management, and hangers-on were male, must have made them feel slightly apprehensive. Interestingly though, despite the fact that they are all very attractive girls, they were treated with the utmost respect by all concerned and I don't recall anyone trying to hit on them. I put that down to the exceptional personal management provided by myself and Charlie. Or maybe everyone there was just being really professional ...
Charlie and myself, despite almost 40 collective years in the business, were on a steep learning curve. Neither of us could count the amount of times we'd swanned into a large venue as the A&R man of the band playing and just hung out with our charges, making wry comments and looking at set-lists sagely. But this was completely different, there was no time for any louche hanging out because we were having to talk to the venue's sound man or the lighting guy (and, it turned out, having to pay them) or giving the production manager a floor plan and DI plan, or gaffa taping up T-shirts to the sales stand or indeed, loading in equipment and really quickly loading out equipment. "Is this ours?" I found myself saying repeatedly and not for the last time on the trip, regretting not stencilling our gear.
We'd bought champagne to have a belated celebration of signing the band but after two sips in our dressing room, I was summoned by a Shambles official to load up our gear again (note to self: get a tour manager next time). When I'd bought the champagne earlier, I'd found some four-packs of Babycham that I coudn't resist - I didn't know they still made it. Geoff, my other management partner, and I took a peak into the Babyshambles dressing room before they arrived to see if, you know, it was full of supermodels or something, and there was a disappointing array of pedestrian chocolate (mini flakes and crunchies) and dare I say it, fruit ... If I was them I'd get a case of Babycham on every rider.
The evening didn't end in the disarray you'd expect from five slightly tiddly girls many miles from home. We were all so exhausted that even the few of us who got taken to the Glasgow Arts School hip night out, only managed a couple of drinks before stumbling back to the the B&B. Actually I tell a lie, two of them managed to have it large and throw some pretty convincing shapes on the dancefloor. And they made it down for breakfast the next day. I got there just as the cooker was turned off and missed the deep-fried oatcakes.
As I loaded in the band's gear into the van that morning - guitars, amps, leads and bags, the one thing going through my mind was not to miss anything. We probably left something in the venue, I was thinking ... damn, we really should have stencilled our stuff. Shortly afterwards, fate decided on shaking things up a little ...
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