I’m
sitting in a room filled with sex and insults.
No surprises there I hear you say, You are a bloody musician Walshy so get used to it. I would agree with you most wholeheartedly if it weren’t for the fact that this the dressing room of the Borderline in Central London where (in a few minutes time) I will emerge to play my very last gig as a jobbing drummer. The room is covered from floor to ceiling with every manner of graffiti know to the English (and possibly Martian) language.
Sectors of the walls are given over to almost competent cartoons of partially clad women with alarmingly exaggerated body parts inviting their male equivalents to indulge themselves in an orgy of sexual predictability. Nice rendering of the testicles though.
Other areas are bound over to exploration of what verbs and nouns can do in the hands of the ‘special needs’ brigade e.g. ‘I’ve a cock like a blind cobblers thumb’ or ‘Your mum owes my dog fuck-money.’ You don’t say Mr Freud, tell me more…
The entire tableau is completed by a subtle blend of sweat, piss and beer that signs itself into my nostrils like a cowboy administering a brand onto the backside of a bemused steer who’s only goal in life up until that point was to shag lady steers and eat grass with Buddha like serenity.
I’m here as a gun for hire courtesy of a band called The Random. The group lead by two guys called Mick and Tim and they have forty minutes to prove to a full house of mates and dates that it’s worth the seven quid that they paid to see them.
My partner in the rhythm section is a man mountain of a bass player who is also called Simon. This guy is a seasoned session man and everything about him screams it; the five string music man, the fluent way he runs his fingers across the fret board, the fact that he is only dressed in a loincloth and clutches a hunting knife between his teeth…
This has been an odd night for me. After the sound check, I had wandered off for a bite to eat with my fiancé and her friend. We had gulped down some cheap mutton in a restaurant who’s clientele included trendy but formulaic bohemian David Blaine look-alikes and a pack of wild hounds masquerading as Dutch tourists. Afterwards we went looking for a quiet pub in which to hide until it was time for me to return and play. We wandered into the Kings Head in Chinatown and were treated to a drunken punch-up between two gents, mouthing off at one another with well practiced combat Cantonese. I hoped beyond hope that this didn’t turn into a leitmotif for evening.
Back in the present, we mooch on stage to a choir of cheers and who-hoos. The house lights go up and I take up station for the last time in my stunningly obscure but surreally entertaining career behind the kit. The drums that I use have been largely found on skips or bought second hand from shops that also appear to specialise in wardrobes and war medals. By some dint of luck, most of it is of the same shabby white colour and the occasional bump or scratch only improves the already road-used look. I’m already thinking how the kit is going to look in a corner of my flat with a pot plant on it.
I watch the other musicians around me fiddling with guitar leads or stamping of F/X pedals while Mick banters with the faces in front of us. As I’m waiting for the floor show to begin I start to think back to of all the gigs I’ve played though the years. The crap show at The Ruskin Arms with a terrible, terrible prog rock band who played to three people and a dog, the show that descended into a mass brawl at another pub after I tried to act hard in front of a couple of guys who actually WERE hard, playing to a thousand baying rock fans at the Marquee Club in London behind a drum kit that was so stupidly huge, nobody could see me and being sprayed with piss from a balcony by a bunch of women who really should have known that I wasn’t going to find it either funny or attractive.
I’m suddenly acutely aware that I’m being looked at by the whole venue. Mick is staring at me as if to say ‘Welcome back from la la land, fuckwit, may we proceed to play the gig that we are paying you for please?’ Sheepishly, I smack the sticks together and the evening lurches into life.
The sound is good, better than I had hoped. There is a stage monitor to my left that is giving me a good mix of the other musicians and as an added bonus (due to an open mic channel from the mixing booth) I’m also party to a conversation between the sound engineer and her boyfriend about purchasing some tampons after the show.
I gauge both the intensity and the frequency of the looks I’m receiving from the other members of the band in order to ascertain if I’m playing like a cunt or a god. Current indicators show that I have only just left Pussy Street and trundling ever so slowly up Talent Hill to Valhalla Crescent.
My hands are beginning to blister which is a bad sign this early in the gig but understandable as I’ve been playing less and less drums of late. The once familiar calluses that used to cover the lower reaches of my fingers have migrated up to the tips as the balance of my playing has moved to guitar. I use a change of instruments up front to grab the gaffa tape and wind some of the black material strategically around some of my pinkies. Ah, gaffa, where would the music industry be without you? Who ever invented it (be you boy or girl) I’d like to have your babies.
We head into the tail end of the set and the material is beginning to pick up pace. My brain argues with my limbs that it would be more fun to continue playing instead of detaching themselves from my torso and nipping of for a quick lie down. Meanwhile, the sound engineer is unhappy with the level of commitment that her boyfriend is currently showing for the relationship. It hasn’t been the same since they’d been to Greece and they’d argued over those travellers cheques.
Everything is going great and I begin to doubt my decision to give all of this up. However, almost instantly my brain nips down a mental back alley and ushers out the tired old street whore that is my memory. The slapper asks me if I’d forgotten all of those instances of waiting around for hours to play in shit hole after shit hole for no cash, the looks of distain from the venue staff, the fights, the shattered dreams, the long drives to the middle of nowhere and would I like a hand shandy?
We’re on the last song and it’s a bitch to play. I set off at a sedate one hundred and sixty BPM and realise I’m never going to make it to the end. I throw my face into a fixed grin and watch my body retreat into the distance. The room is vibrating with the combined noise of four gentlemen playing too fast and an audience enjoying the visible loss of control. My vision is getting misty and I begin to feel my heart crouching down in order to leap through my rib cage. All around me I hear tiny voices whispering things like ‘Not long now, hang in there’ and ‘they’ll still respect you if you piss yourself.’
All of a sudden there is cheering and I’m returned to reality with the realisation that my body has completed the song without me. However, it would like a quiet word after about how we are all a team and that I’ve got a lot of fast talking to do at my next review.
With my gear packed down I’m handed one last small slap in the face that confirms everything this moment has lead up to. I’m lugging the gear out, knackered, sweating and having helped towards generating a considerable amount of revenue over the bar for the venue, I’m told by a disdainful doorman that I can’t leave my kit in the foyer as it’s a fire exit and I’ll have to wait outside in the cold. The foyer is bigger than a ocean going liner and the alley outside is smaller than my savings.
I turn to the doorman as I leave and grin at him.
‘You’re the reason I’m getting out of this business.’
He looks at me blankly and returns to his book. I hope it has pictures.
I remain, inured to it all.
Simon Walsh.