Posts Tagged ‘gig’

A few words unto The Lord

Sunday, May 9th, 2010

A twisted deity

Dear God,

It’s me, Stef.  Please hear my prayer.

I fail to see what kind of perverse pleasure you get out of sabotaging my musical equipment on an almost ritualistic basis, invariably in the context of a live performance.  It is getting tiresome.  Can I please make it clear that no one is impressed.  You are not funny;  you are not big;  and you are not clever.

Last night just about drove me to the end of my patience with you.  Although my Marshall has been with an engineer for six months (yes – SIX months), it still has not been fixed.  As always, in your deified perversity, you managed to lull me in to a false sense of security, ensuring that no hint of the problems to come were evident during the soundcheck.  It was only when we were live before an audience that you allowed the electronics to go for a Burton.  Thanks.  Thanks a lot.

I couldn’t help but notice, too, oh Lord, that you picked a symbolic moment to pour your unction of destruction over my performance.  I can easily imagine the look of boyish glee on your face, as you watched me launch in to a much anticipated Status Quo number.  You know how I feel about Status Quo.  And you know that rocking out to classic Quo is, to me, the equivalent of a heroin addict scoring an uncommonly pure hit.  Thus it is, you know how badly it will hurt me to ambush my equipment as I sail hopefully through the gates of Quovana.  And yet this is exactly what you chose to do last night.  You’re a bastard.  A complete and utter bastard.  I was hungry.  You dangled a succulent steak before me.  And then you defecated on it.  You piss me off.

Of course, you had had pre-empted my foresight in overcoming the obstacle you put before me.  The answer to the technical failure of my Marshall, would naturally be to use another amp.  As you are only too aware, I took a spare amp to the gig, knowing full well that the Marshall was less than reliable.  In theory, if the Marshall was to malfunction, I could plug straight in to  the spare amp and continue seamlessly with the gig.  An easy solution.  But you had forseen my diligence, oh Lord.  You venomous, malicious son of a bitch.  So it was, on the way up to the gig, you ensured that the van developed a strategic leak.  The back of the van was full of gear and yet, miraculously, only one item of equipment endured a soaking.  As a direct result, my spare amp became unusable.  You intentionally put it out of service, so that I was fully dependant upon my Marshall.  You thereby took full control of my destiny for the evening.

You may think you are clever.  You may think you are powerful and awesome, with your ability to control the elements.  But let’s just put this in some perspective, shall we?  In ancient times, you instigated The Great Flood.  It demonstrated control of the elements on a vast scale, to impose a firm moral point that was a reflection of your harsh but principled expectations.  Regardless of one’s moral point of view, what you did back then was impressive.  It had impact.  But compare that with the measly act of making a van leak and sprinkling it with rain in order to wet a small Laney amp beyond use – frankly, it is a come down from a once masterful career.  You’ve become a bitter, twisted and rather pathetic deity.  What you are doing in relation to me is the pettiest form of victimisation.  Just and terrible god my arse.  You’re a twisted bastard.

And don’t think I’ve forgotten the guitar, either.  What a delight it was to discover that there is now – completely out of the blue and just in time for the performance – something badly wrong with my Ibanez.  I don’t know what that noise is, or where it has come from.  It is horrible and has put the guitar beyond use.  How you did it, oh omnipotent one, I don’t know.  But once again, it was a cheap trick and frankly, not worthy of a god of your stature.

Look.  You’ve had your fun.  I don’t know what I ever did to make you hate me so badly.  I can only think it comes down to that time I put that rock through the church window that time.  I was young and misguided.  For crying out loud – I must have been nine or ten years old.  Give me a break.  I’m sorry for what I did;  I must have paid for it by now, with interest.  It comes down to this, God.  I am an average sized man.  I am 5′9″.  I’m not a big bloke.  You, on the other hand, are omnipresent.  I suppose what I am trying to say is pick on someone your own size.

Amen.

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The Eclipse of Glory

Friday, June 26th, 2009

Matt.  Sean.  Nice to see you here.  Sit down.  Have yourselves a brew

*                    *                    *

For anyone who has ever taken an interest in affairs of The Stef, it will be known that I have been the pointy end of Mother Nature’s randomly placed malevolence  for many years.  The woman hates me.  She loathes me.  I don’t know what I ever did to earn her bitter animosity, but she uses it to beat me severely ‘pon my jaded arris, as she chases me round the crazy golf course that is My Life.  I am the termite to her indeginous African tribesman that feeds off of hapless termites.

History has shown that she will use all of the weapons in her arsenal to bring misery upon my life.  Usually, this comes in the form of biological warfare.  She will wait until the optimum moment – when I have a gig, when I have a job interview, when I have an important presentation – before using her skills and cunning to bring me down with hayfever, a cold or the bubonic plague.  Sometimes she will use other powers in her remit.  The weather is particularly favoured.  If I’ve planned to do something nice outdoors, she’ll make it rain;  if I have to stay inside to finish some important work, she’ll bring out the sun to torment me;  if I forget my coat, she brings the snow;  if I leave the house with wet hair, she can’t resist summoning the four winds and giving me a ghastly look that puts one in mind of what Adolf Hitler would have looked like, had he been a flower-power hippy with bed-hair.

I’m never surprised when she pulls out something new to try my resilience.  Last night, she hit a new low.  It was way below the belt, even by her standards.

So here’s what happened.  The band had a gig last night and we had the unbelievably good fortune to get Don Airey on the stage with us.  Don Airey!  An incredible musician, a keyboardist of the highest order – and a genuine 24 carat rock LEGEND!  Not only did we share the stage with this icon of rockliness, but we did a couple of acutely Airated numbers with him.  You couldn’t wish for more (unless your wish involved Britney Spears, Sarah Palin, a cucumber and a pot of strong tea).  It is the kind of thing that humbles any musician and the smiles upon that stage said it all.  We were the cat not only that got the cream, but was also given a packet of mouse-dips to help soak it up.  I won’t bore with details;  suffice to say it was a very special night for all of us.  Five lads “done good”.  Street urchins, one and all, who had risen from the pavement of obscurity, to the dizzy heights of esteemed Rockvana.  I couldn’t help but think (as I know we all were thinking):  If only Anne Widdecombe could see me now.

So anyway, it might be imagined that we were somewhat post-coital when we finished the gig and came off stage.  We had played with Don Airey and, the gig at an end, it was time to lap up the glory from an awe-struck audience.  I remember thinking, as I came off stage:  We will be adored.  We have played with Don Airey.  We will be worshipped and revered by our gushing public. 

And then I remember thinking:  The only thing that could possibly eclipse this, would be if Michael Jackson died!

And guess what?

When we oozed our bandly way in to the audience to lap up some of that adoration, we discovered that the one thing – the one thing – that could possibly overshadow our incredible achievement, had happened.  Michael Jackson had died.  And so our desperate attempts at self-promotion began; and so they fell flat.  “We’ve just played with Don Airey!”  Said we.  “Michael Jackson has died.”  Said they.  I knew immediately that she was behind it.  I mean – how often does Michael Jackson die?  Never!  And yet the one time we have something special to celebrate, he’s whipped away like an old sheet.

She’s an evil, horrible woman.  Just to get at me, she took away one of the world’s great talents.  That’s bitter.  He’s had some rough times – as David Milliband was supposed to have said on Twitter (he’s denying it, but I stick with my conviction), “never has one soared so high and yet dived so low”.  And who is in a more authoritative position than David Milliband to pass informed comment on an international pop icon?  But I hoped, as did so many of us, that he would redeem his reputation, after so many years of negative press.  He could have done it; but she took that chance away from him.  She wants locking up.

I have such high regard for Michael Jackson.  I always have – as have the majority of people in my generation.  I am so very, very sad that he has died.  But let me say this.  While the entire world mourns today, and the air is thick with talk about the Prince of Pop, five lone voices will be piping proudly from the sidelines.  And they’ll be saying, “We played with Don Airey last night!”

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Training the mind, Lesson 2: Resignation

Sunday, June 14th, 2009

Following on from my last post, I have categorically proved that positive thinking is a pile of steaming defecation.  At this moment in time, I am fuming.  Fuming.  I wanted to illustrate my current mood with a picture of a kettle, to suggest that I am at boiling point.  But then I realised that in fact a kettle has homely connotations and would belie the strength of my rage at this moment.  I then thought that maybe a volcano in full eruption would be a great metaphor for my rage.  But even that powerful image has its drawbacks, often being seen as a concise metaphor for male ejaculation.  While this might be seen as a positive thing – particularly for the ejaculator in question – for the woman who is scared of getting pregnant or for the innocent chap serving the said ejaculator his pie and chips, it is nothing less than disturbing.

I don’t know.  Perhaps there isn’t an image powerful enough to reflect my current state of mind.  Except this one:

Was e'er there a man with a blacker heart?

Was e'er there a man with a blacker heart?

So why have I got the hump?  Well, I had a gig last night.  It was an absolute disaster. 

I came down two days ago with something tantamount to the bubonic plague and while this gave me some anxiety as to whether I would be in a fit state to do the gig, I remained positive that in fact all would be fine.  I hardly slept a wink on Friday night because the plague was slowly but surely drawing the veil of mortality over me and I could feel my time on this Earth drawing to a close.  However, Death “his scythe did not to me introduce” and I witnessed Saturday’s dawn with tired eyes, but a determined spirit.

I spent yesterday doing all I could to get myself in to a fit state for the gig.  My voice was ropey, so I rested it all day.  I spent an hour in the steamroom at a leisure club, relaxing and lubricating the vox box.  I drank more concoctions than I care to think about – honey, lemon, orange, Ibuprofen, Paracetemol, Berocca.  I chewed on cloves and spent a fortune on some special honey that has excellent medicinal quaities.  I told myself all day that all would be well for the gig.  When I got to the gig, our keyboardist – a fantastic GP with a comprehensive knowledge of the secrets of many an olde wifes poshion – did all he could to alleviate my plague.  He has pulled rabbits out of the hat before and frankly, if he can’t cure it, no one can.

Now what I want to make absolutely clear is that I was positive about the gig all day.  I didn’t want to let the guys down; I wanted the gig to go well.  Had I been of a negative disposition, I would have called it off yesterday morning.  But I didn’t.  Because I was positive.

The gig was an utter shambles.  My voice went for a Burton and I managed maybe four songs.  Badly.  Really badly.  Susan Boyle, who I keep seeing everytime I open a newspaper; while she has (so I am led to understand) a good voice, by rights her voice should match the way she looks.  In short, she should sound like Regan from The Exorcist.  Well, that’s pretty much how I sounded last night.  I sounded Boylesque.  Matt (said doctor) took over for a few songs, but we were doomed to suffer the indignity of a failed gig.  We packed up and left, in disgrace.  Despite my positivity, my voice failed me and the gig was a non-event.  Positive thought, as I have said, is only relevant to people to whom positive things happen.

And, by the grizzled beard of God, the loss of my voice wasn’t all.  I hit an invisible kerb last night on the way to the gig and now need to get a new tyre for my car.  And for absolutely no reason whatsoever – beyond pure spite – my guitar shed a bolt last night, which attaches the strap to the body of the guitar.  I picked up the guitar to do a song (thinking that if I couldn’t sing, at least I could play) and the strap just came away, swinging proudly through the air like a willy on a nudist beach.

Positivity my butt.  In terms of dealing with my luck and the knackered hand that life deals me, I can either get angry (which will please life immensely because my anger will be futile and I will just get frustrated) or I can wear the duffel coat of resignation.

And so it is.  I have retrieved the duffel coat of resignation from its hook in the cloakroom of despair and even as I type, am fumbling with the varnished toggles to fasten it securely to my plague-ridden bodkin.

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If music be the food of love…

Saturday, May 30th, 2009

…then make mine a steak and ale pie, please.  I would ask you to ensure, however, that it is a real pie, sitting fully on the platter, organically complimenting the rest of the foodal content thereon.  I’m talking a full three dimensional pie, with a pastry base, a wall and a lid.  Should it be one of those soulless pies, crudely separated from its foodal brethren by a cold china bowl; a bland, culinary death masquerading as a pie, with nothing but a token pastry lid over a slop of meat and gravy to justify the claim; then I will be insulted.  Frankly, if that’s the pie you are thinking of offering me, you can take it straight back to  the kitchen.  I would sooner make my own pie.

So.  Music.  If there is one thing I enjoy more than Sarah Palin’s graphic love letters (which arrive at my house with an obsessive frequency, and detail the filthy, depraved things she would like to do to my Palinly-objectified bodkin ‘pon the alter of her insatiable lust), it is the act of getting together with a bunch of musicians and making a noise.   Hang on a second.  I’m going to shove a picture of She Who Craves My Physical Ministrations on the page, while it’s on my mind:

Sarah Palin - desperate for a few crumbs of affection from the table of Stefan's carnal offering...

Sarah Palin - desperate for a few crumbs of affection from the table of Stefan's carnal offering...

Well, there she goes.  Actually, while discussing her attributes (on a purely academic basis) with a friend the other night, it was suggested that she looks quite a lot like Ruth.  I have to admit, the resemblance is definitely there.  It must simply be a case of women with that particular look wanting to get me on their libidinous hook.  It’s something I am having to learn to live with.

Anyway.  I’m here to talk about music.  Actually, I’ve changed my mind.  It would be an exercise in pure self-indulgence to do so.  There are a million things I’d love to bring to the cyber page, about the gigs I have done, the songs I have performed, the musicians I have played with, the venues I have worked in – not to mention the equipment I have dabbled in – but it would be more boring, for anyone who is not me (ie.  anyone who is not me), than having to sit quietly next to Alan Bennett while he writes his next play.  How is it that Alan Bennett has spent pretty much the whole if his life looking like a schoolboy?  My belief is that when he extracated himself from the confines of his mother’s womble on that fateful day (fateful for him, anyway; and for Thora Hird) when he was born, he came out already looking like the schoolboy he was e’er destined to be.

Sod it.  It’s Saturday.  The power of technology is such that a few lazy mechinations will allow me to illustrate my point.  So illustrate my point, I will:

Alan Bennett - the man who discovered the elixir of eternal schoolboyhood

Alan Bennett - the man who discovered the elixir of eternal schoolboyhood

The only reason I want to talk about music and the whole experience of playing live, is because I did a wedding gig last night and thoroughly enjoyed myself.  I won’t indulge.  Instead, I am going to use this opportunity to raise the age-old question:  How long does a worm live?

The thing about worms is that they don’t seem to die natural deaths.  When I look back over my life, in particular, my experiences in worm-observation (a bit like Mr Charlton’s Ghost Hunting experiences; but a lot less frightening – unless it is a particularly big worm – and requiring trowels and compost, rather than EMF meters and thermometers), I can truly say, hand on heart, that the only dead worms that have ever presented themselves to me have either been baked in the sun, or have drowned in puddles.  Either way, their deaths were freakish accidents and not the conclusion of a well-lived and contented longevity.  I have never dug up a dead worm.  They are always very much alive and kicking.  If it were not for the sun and the rain, I find myself wondering if worms would ever die.

When I was sixteen I had a girlfriend called Samantha.  As a tender expression of my love, I once made her a stark and beautiful sculpture, which I entitled “Iced Worm”.  It literally was a worm, encapsulated in a block of ice.  It was a work of art.  It was beautiful.  I feel quite priveleged to have conceived of a third way to terminate the life of a worm.  Unlike the violent death resulting from the burning sun, or the undignified end that comes with puddle-induced wormacide, my way, at least, had a certain immortality to it.  Mine was in the name of Art.

Garfunkel.

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