Tour 4 of 4

Ok so by the time it got to Florence I realised I’d cracked my rib from the fall on the first night. Biggles’ medical advice was that there’s nothing doctors can do about it anyway and they just heal up after a month and a half, so it wasn’t too worrying, just a bit annoying.

WE drove the van up this steep gravelly hill with a churchtower on top of it, next to where the venue was. Every Italian show meant amazing food before we played...In fact everything about an Italian show is pretty different to a London show. In Italy you get paid, fed, have a free run of the bar, play to crowds that are hungry for music, and get put up in hotels. In London you get a few cans of Red Stripe and a packet of pitta bread, play to people that are usually too cool to clap, and maybe get petrol money. Sometimes you also get a boiler cupboard to sit in.

Ok not every venue’s like that, but most.

I love London tho.

Don’t knock it.

We’re just a bit spoilt for music here.

It turns us into cunts.

This is meant to be a blog about the last gig in Italy, but really I don’t know...i don’t really want to bang on and describe the show like a step by step thing, or tell you about our “oh-so-rockstar” episodes afterwards...(altho the one with 4 policemen after this show and a close call with Italian jail is interesting enough to tell...but too incriminating anyway)..so I’ll just wrap it up by saying that as a band we are the most physically unfit careless self-injuring bunch of weaklings. We were totally destroyed; stiff necks, cut hands, sleep-deprived, bruised over, and living on borrowed money. We would never last a whole tour.

Even our van we were having to push start everywhere and at one point would only go 15 miles an hour on the motorway. that was kinda worrying…but it all worked out.

It all ended with a 25 hour drive from Modena in Italy to London (2 hours was just a ferry ride tho) ...but yeah, somehow we managed it. And like all tours they end without any excitement, when you’re all too tired to even recognise eachother, the van spits you out in front of your house at 4am, minimal goodbyes, pretty much numb to all emotions and sensations, and no adventures to look forward to the next day.....

tour pt 3 of 4 - roamin in rome

Rome…. It’s one of the great centres of modern civilisations and for some reason all I can remember about it is just stuff to do with driving...

Everyone in the city drives round like they’re pumped full of amphetamines. Our van was fucked beyond the point of legal and we were trying not to get in any scrapes. It was hard. The police were standing on every corner like plumped up fascist peacocks.

We get to the the ‘free car parks’ and they turn out to be run by gypsies, each with their own little patch. You pay them 3 euros so they don’t smash your windows while you’ve gone. There was no space for the van, so we do the whole ‘when in rome’ thing and ram some trash containers out the way to make a space. Reverse, ram, reverse, ram, park, pay 3 euros, go to venue.

Venue was cool. One of those rooms with no distance between stage and audience. I like that. A sweaty business. My finger cut even wider and my guitar was grizzly smeared with blood, thick drops of it all over the stage, and the set lists, and maybe some of the people at the front. There was a 20 piece brass orchestra before us and a metal band after. It was busting with people. occasionally I saw stef stick his guitar over his head and wander into the mob.

On the way back to the hotel we dropped the guys off, and the van wouldn’t start. It was 5 in the morning. Things were a bit confusing. We were in the middle of the road, drunk, and didn’t really know what to do. We left it there. After 3 hours sleep we came back and it still wouldn’t start. I was hoping it would have fixed itself somehow, so I felt a little disappointed, not really sure what to do, how to get to Florence, or back to England, when there’s no parts for an ldv van in mainland Europe. We decide it’s a good moment for a cigarette. I ask for a light from a bunch of drugfucked drag queens that were sprawled out on the pavement still havin the dregs of their night before. I think they took a shining to the green and purple colours I was wearing. When I went back to the van they came over a few minutes later. After another minute or two it was happening….we were being push started by 5 drag queens, all giving our van their almighty strength. I thank them for that. Not just cos of their help, but mainly because it was one of those things that is never gonna happen again.

It was nice to hear the engine running.

We had to get to Florence to play a show.

It was late.

we decided not to switch the engine off anymore and keep it running.

For the next two days we pushstarted the van all round Italy.

Tour stories pt 2 of 4

Not really sure how I fell. It was the first song, rising pretty hard. Huge sound in this place. Guess I lean too hard over the monitor and go straight over. Must’ve taken the mic stand with me. It was about a 10 ft drop. I don’t remember the fall but I open my eyes on the ground at the audience’s feet. I’m surrounded by feet. The band’s kickin into the end chorus. Got to play. Guitar’s making no sound. The mic turns up in my hand. that’s all I need. no time. I start screaming everything into this last chorus,..making up for the dead guitar… like my whole fucking existence is this last chorus. The back of my head’s hitting people’s shoes. There’s a crazy Italian wolf man lying on top me. he’s roaring in my face. literally ….Roaring..In..My..Face. how he got there. he’s lying on top of me, at everyone’s feet, grabbing my collar with both hands, and roaring. And I’m screaming back. In another language. In His Face. I could be shouting any old shit, and he’s ditched words altogether all tarzan, but there’s a weird recognition that shit’s pissed us both off and it’s the same shit. My face is wet. Someone’s pouring beer onto my face from above. So now I’m squirming around trying to avoid the beer killing the microphone before the song is out, lying there, at everyone’s feet, mouth bleeding from the fall, screaming as loud as I can, and there’s an Italian wolf man with crazy eyes I’m never gonna forget lying on top of me roaring into my face…
…and that’s how the song plays out.

I walk back onto the stage holding my mic stand and guitar out like they're weapons and I’m maximus decimus meridius or something stupid like that. What a dick. But the Italians were going nuts. pretty much more than any audience I’ve known. We start playing again.

I only remember flashes from here.

I remember glimpses of Stef charging through the crowd with his guitar. Guitars can be pretty dangerous in the wrong hands. He looks fucking crazed. A space clears like a fight starting but I think it was just people getting out the way of this lunatic throwing around a half-working guitar.

I remember someone climbing onto the front of the stage and stagediving into crowdsurf.

I end up in the audience again and the wild man is still there roaring. I think that’s all he does now.

Seven guys dressed in monkey suits turn up at the front of the crowd. I wave them onstage and they rush it. I turn round and there’s bouncers bundling them away.

My finger’s bleeding pretty badly from the guitar. I feel my guitar picks slipping around, but then realise it’s stuck to my finger from all the blood.

Halfway through Trust I look over and Bryony’s climbed the scaffolding of the speaker tower on my right. She’s got this glazed look in her eyes, swinging left to right, staring out over the stage, holding the scaffold in one hand and a mic in the other, singing the song’s mantra. she’s gone to a different place. You can see it. She’s somewhere else. Some wild dusty land out there. Photographers scrabble around at the base of the tower trying to get a shot.

I got off the stage before the band finished the last song. I was trying to get to the exit. It was a thick mass of people and a long route out. Hands grabbing. Words I didn’t understand. Head down. Get out. Need air. Some girl holding her boyfriend’s hand grabs my head with her other hand and tries to kiss me. I pull out the way and she grips harder trying to turn my head and force her tongue into my closed mouth. There’s no inhibitions here.

I hear the electric guitar still playing the whole time I’m slowly trying to squeeze my way out through to the other end of the room through six or seven hundred people. I was thinking how Stef must’ve been thrashin around way longer than usual. I found out later he’d given his guitar to someone in the audience.