London

The van was parked around the side of the pub. It was a miserable morning. Cold, grey, and a drizzle that stealthily soaked you to the bone. Frank’s bright red face certainly lit the scene up a little, though. Despite the weather, he was in fine spirits. In fact, he was fucking wasted. He’s sat in the back of the van, shouting, a lot, about how he hasn’t slept a wink. Been on the cocktails all night, as well as some other shit, I imagine. I sit up front with Daz and Walpole, to gain as much distance as the van will allow from the constant cacophony that is Reagan.

His moods divebombs rapidly south, though, when Tony turns up, minus John. Poor Tone, ever was it thus… Just because he’s his brother, everyone expects him to have some sort of a check on him. When Franks barks at Tony, asking him where John is, Tony just laughs. “How the fuck should I know?” I remember even in the early days of the band, when the two Loughlin brothers were made to travel down to London to do press, Bianchi telling me that when he went to pick them up from St. Pancras that they’d alighted at opposite ends of the train… Frank is not amused by John’s piss poor punctuality, which in turn amuses Daz and I. The volume of Reagan only escalates when Gordon calls John and is told that he’s at Gregg’s buying breakfast. Frank erupts in a barrage of exasperation, “Nothing fucking changes, does it?” Followed by, “Still wiping his arse after all these years Gaz!” Then silence for a couple of seconds. And then, “Nonsense CUNT!” Daz and I piss ourselves laughing as Frank sits there shaking his head. Just then an ambulance flashes past the car park, sirens wailing. “There he is!” Frank parps up again, and with that he returns to amused with himself. I’m still laughing at Nonsense Cunt…

John and American George turn up five minutes later, by which time there is only a whiff of annoyance left in Reagan. I assume he’ll pass out as soon as we hit the road. I assume wrong. But he’s back in good spirits for the entire journey down to London, him and Daz tucking into a couple of tins on the way. Until we get to the outskirts of the capital city. “Fucking hate this place…” he mutters in disdain.

The weather hasn’t picked up any by the time we arrive outside the back of the Electric Ballroom in Camden. The situation with Polly has improved a little, at least, but speaking to Jen she still isn’t sure if she’s going to be able to leave her with Lindsey tonight. She hasn’t puked since last night, which I guess is a good sign. It would fucking suck if Jen couldn’t make it to the show tonight. Polly had really been looking forward to playing with Lindsey and Leon’s boys, as well. Kids and sickness...always the worst fucking timing. Jen is toying with the idea of coming by the venue with Polly to hang out for a while in the daytime, which would be really nice, too. She says she doesn’t have to check out from the hotel for another couple of hours, so we’ll see how the little cub is then.

With not much to do, we head inside and up to the tiny dressing room to check out the rider. Dressing rooms in London venues are always tiny, no matter the size of the venue. Don’t get it. The rider is healthy, though. Chuffed that they went to the trouble of putting on some vegan scran. I make myself a sandwich and take a handful of crisps and sit myself down next to George. It had been great to see him last night, but he was a little wiry since he was stoned off his tits. Today he’s in better form. It’s great catching up with him, it’s been years. We used to be really close when he toured with us back in the early days. I’m glad to see that he hasn’t changed a bit, still the same old pisstaker, Frank his main target, as usual.

Gordon makes a point of saying to Big Jim in front of everyone else that he doesn’t want the dressing room filled with hangers-on, rinsing the rinder later in the evening. Just partners and old crew. He says he’ll be fucking fuming if there’s no beer left after the show. I can’t imagine who he’s making the point to…

With no soundcheck in the foreseeable future I decide to head over to All Ages records to do a bit of shopping. Daz tells me he’ll gladly follow, so the two of us head off. Again, it’s nice to hang out with Daz, just the two of us, for a while. When he’s not drunk, and he’s on his own, he’s pretty chilled. I pick up the re-release of the Negazione 7” that Paco put out on La Vida Es En Mus a while back, which I’m pretty chuffed to get my hands on. Daz buys himself a copy of the latest Church of Misery album. Always like coming to the store when I’m around, picked up a lot of good punk records here over the years. Whilst we’re stood there flicking through records some random guy comes up to me and tells me he’s a big fan of the blog, says he’s been reading it for years. I’m always taken aback in these situations, it’s always really humbling to meet strangers who like the stuff you’re doing. Daz looks a bit confused by the whole situation. Afterwards we walk back down the road and stop in for a pint at the Camden Head, which I know has my favourite tipple on tap, Beavertown Brewery’s Gamma Ray IPA. I treat myself and Daz to a pint.

After a while a couple of older Corby lads turn up and start talking a lot. From what I can make out, one is Daz’s father in law, the other is his step-father-in-law, or something like that. They’re friendly enough but I get the feeling they have their sights set firmly on getting sauced up. I finish my pint and leave the three of them to it. It was nice hanging with Daz for a while, anyway.

By the time I get back to the venue Jen has texted and says that Polly has perked up quite a bit and wants to go to Leon and Lindsey’s, so they’re on their way to the train now. Then Jen and Leon will head back into the city. It’s a big relief, both over Polly feeling better and Jen being able to make the gig tonight. She has been on the Speedhorn journey almost as long as I have and I really wanted her to be there tonight.

John has a friend with him who he has brought along to take some band photos of us. She seems friendly enough, but I can’t help thinking that this could easily become a hassle. I know the guys and how hard it is getting everyone to gather and stand still for two minutes. I also want the day to be as stress free as possible, and I can sense that this might lead to obstructing that aim.

We stand around on the big stage, with all signs suggesting that we’ll soon be ready for soundcheck. I take a look out at the venue and reflect over the past, back to a short window of time when we were much younger and we were headlining venues of this size. I haven’t played a headlining show of this magnitude for a long time, although we’ve played to some very large crowds with Victims at festivals over the years, but this type of gig isn’t really part of the agenda anymore for me. I get a slight shudder looking out at the huge room. This is going to be fun. For one night only.

Unfortunately Daz is striding back towards his worst side already. From what I can make out he’s been drinking since we left this morning, as has Frank, although it doesn’t seem to affect him as negatively. He just turns into a big loud tool, and it’s fun for the most part. Daz always seems to go a bit darker. He shuffles up behind me, bass strapped over his shoulder, eyes slightly glazed, and asks, “When are we doing the photo shoot with this tart, then?” I could swear he thinks he’s in a Guy Ritchie film. I ask him why he’s talking like that, and tell him he sounds like fucking Alf Garnett and I don’t think it’s funny. Not for the first time this weekend, Daz looks at me confused.

After soundcheck we get around to taking the pics, and it goes by without much hassle. There is a lot of chirping, but it’s all piss taking focused within the group. It’s yet another flashback to a time gone by. How many times have I done this routine with this lot, I wonder. It’s now that the real reunion-theme of the day will begin in earnest.

The Scurge guys have turned up, as well as Charger. To have Jay and Little Dave here playing, as well as Jim in Charger, all three having played a part or still playing a part in the Speedhorn story, as well as those two bands as a whole, means a lot to me. It’s nice having everyone who ever played in the band on stage in some form tonight. Everyone except Kev. I really wished Kev would have been here. He’s at some witch convention in Sheffield, or something.

Everyone else is waiting over the road at the World’s End pub. Bianchi has booked out the balcony above the bar for the gig party tonight. It’s wonderful to see everyone. Bianchi, Carter and his family, Doug and his wife Jo, George and some other old Corby friends. Our friend Richey who used to play in Shaped by Fate and then A Thousand Arrows with Gordon, who now is one of the most sought after artists in the music industry, is there too. It’s great seeing him, such a lovely guy. It’s a nice story that, in Richey’s own words, the Victims album cover he did a few years ago kind of got him on his way. On top of everything, he’s a great person and it’s lovely to catch up with him. Everyone, except Kev, who’d I hoped to see tonight, is either here or on their way. There is only one person that is truly conspicuous in their absence, and that is Roddy, our long suffering roadie and mentor. Frank had texted him yesterday and asked if he was coming to the gig. “No. Because of the shit with the Corby gig before”, was his simply worded answer. I have no idea what that particular beef is about, it’s in reference to something from the latest period of the band that I wasn’t involved in. The fucker sure can hold a grudge, though.

It really is great seeing everyone else. It’s like being back at a high school reunion with your closest friends. There is a buzz in the air, it feels like everyone is pretty excited about seeing the original line up of the band one last time. I don’t think anyone would ever have imagined it was something they’d see again. Bianchi is visibly delighted. He’s been buzzing about this night since we agreed to it over six months ago. It’s nice having the chance to speak to Carter and his partner, as well as his parents. His dad is over promoting a book he’s written on the decline of various industrial cities, former giants now sleeping. It sounds really interesting, right up my street, and I’ve been on at Carter for a copy. It’s great speaking to them. More than anything, though, it’s great speaking to Doug. We were really close during the time he was our tour manager, but we lost touch after it all fell apart. He was one of the funniest people I’d ever met and I’m delighted to see that hasn’t changed. He still has that cheeky smirk plastered to his face.

Jen and Leon arrive just before Scurge go on stage, which is not that long after doors. Our old friend Slaven is here, too. Two of the people from my first bands in Corby, and still two of my finest friends. I’m glad they could be here for this show. I’m happiest of all, though, that Jen is here. Watching Scurge is a buzz, they were always a vastly underrated band. I’ve been watching them since they were fifteen years old, it was great to see them up on the big stage. Jen is chuffed, she always loved them. It’s funny looking at Jay and Dave, what a journey we’ve had together. It’s funny, because as much as this show tonight is about the original line up of the band, I have some of my happiest memories from the era of the band when Jay and Dave were playing with us.

Afterwards we’re hanging around in a little room with a couple of sofas, just behind the stage. It’s all hugs and kisses. It is a little awkward, though, no denying that. It was only a couple of weeks ago that both Jay and Jim, who is playing next with Charger, left Speedhorn. The situation with Dave is unclear. He’s still officially the bass player, but with his brother now gone, that might change. Fucking soap opera, as always.

It’s starting to get busier now and there are more and more people buzzing around the backstage area. Precisely as Gordon had feared, Daz and his Corby clan of four, his wife and her best mate have now joined the two dad-in-laws, have completely besieged the dressing room and swarming over the rider like flies on shit. I can’t be arsed, so keep myself downstairs. Gordon is getting more and more angry about everything, though. As a tension-reliever, Doug comes to the fore. One of the production people wade through the crowd in the tight room and start asking people for their passes, obviously wanting to clear the space a bit. Doug doesn’t have one, or if he does, he refuses to show it. He simply points at his face and making a circling motion around his coupon, and says, “This is my pass. It’s the only pass you need to worry about”. The promotion bloke looks flummoxed by the giant Scotsman and leaves.

To add to the ingredients of the already vastly incenstious mix, Frank is now singing with Charger. I have to say, the big lump impresses me. Despite the fact he’s been drinking since four pm yesterday, and taking fuck knows what besides to perk him up, he still puts in a monster performance on stage. His fucking pipes just seem to get stronger with age. Fucking respect to him. He always puts on a show, no matter what condition he’s in. The first time I saw Speedhorn without me, as in the first time I went to a show after they’d reunited, Jen and I had bumped into Frank in the pub in the afternoon and he’d almost fallen into me. He had white powder in his moustache and a piss stain on his crotch. He somehow still put in a banging performance that night. I’m happy he’s not quite as bad as that tonight, though, despite the incredible innings with the booze.

Charger put on a great show. We toured with these guys a lot back in the day, and although there aren’t many members left from back then, it’s brilliant to see Jim and Jez up there again, with their first love. I couldn’t have imagined anyone better to take over my position in the band than Jim. We had some great times together. I’ll never forget the time he crashed at my parents house one time, and he was absolutely wankered by the time we got back. For some reason my mum and dad had this stuffed squirrel on the wall of the stairs and Jim couldn’t get past it, he thought it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen, at that moment in time anyway. Then the next day my mum had put on a huge fry-up breakfast for us, giving it the usual Smith-family hospitality they were known and loved for, and Jim was so hungover he couldn’t bring himself to eat it. He was exhausted with anxiety by the end of the ordeal. My parents had seen it all before, though. Even if it’s all a bit up in the air at the minute with Jim and Speedhorn, I get the feeling he’ll be back in the band again soon. I hope so.

Crowbar were on after Charger. It was a bit of a random slot on the bill, more to do with the promoter than anything, I guess. We barely saw them all day and nobody exchanged as much as a sentence with them. It was a bit of mismatch for them, maybe. They probably felt like the outsiders at the party, which is what they were in all honesty. I didn’t see them but apparently they made remarks along those lines before they started the show. Fuck knows. I’d had a mild interest in them once upon a time, but nothing that did anything to excite me enough to watch them tonight. But it might have been different if the occasion wasn’t what it was tonight, and we weren’t on stage right after them.

As they played, we retreated to the small dressing room upstairs, Big Jim had told the Daz party in no uncertain terms to clear the room. One of the dad’s had actually asked Tony who he was as he helped himself to a bottle of what they apparently assumed to be their rider. It was fucking nice to get rid of everyone. Now it was just the band, Jen, Katy and the crew. It was time to concentrate on the job at hand.

As we walked down the narrow staircase to the back of the stage, I could really feel the buzz starting to rise inside me. It had been a long time since I’d played what felt like a “concert”, as opposed to a punk gig. We made our way through a passageway of smiles, Bianchi at the end of the line, like a chuffed dad. We gathered behind the curtain at the back of the stage. The lights went down, and the crowd erupted into a familiar chant, “Raging fucking Speedhorn! Raging fucking Speedhorn!” It sounded more like a football match than a gig. It was amazing to be part of this one more time.

We walked on, and, even though I’d heard it was pretty much sold out, I was still blown away by the size of the crowd. A sea of faces and arms held aloft. I looked down to the front at my side of the stage and saw Jen, Leon, Slaven and Richey, all with huge smiles on their faces. Another mate, Jimmy, had flew over from Sweden, and he was at the front on the other side. I’d only had the one beer during the day, but this feeling right now would top any booze rush. My whole body, from the tips of my limbs, was tingling…

And then Gordon counted in Deathrow Dogs and the place erupted. I don’t think anyone was expecting us to start with a seven minute sludge fest. It was the perfect statement of intent, I felt. Unfortunately, Gordon missed the phase into the second riff, which comes in at about four minutes, and for just the shortest of moments of chaos, it was all falling apart. Gordon looked at me, smiling panic, not knowing where he was in the song. It was so close to just grinding to a halt, which would have been a fucking disaster, but somehow, somehow, we pulled it back from the brink. I’m sure most of the fourteen hundred in the crowd noticed it though, you wouldn’t have had to have known the song to realise it was going tits up for a little while there.

Even though we’d pulled it back in line, just about, I was still anxious now that Gordon was going to lose it. He’d been so looking forward to this, and he’s so involved behind the scenes, that I could imagine this fuck up throwing him off completely. And right enough, he looked mardy as fuck through Hate Song and Superscud that followed. But I knew how to handle this. During the next block I made my way over to him and played as hard as I could, right in front of him, giving him a smile as I did so, hoping it would perk him up. It did the trick.

The next hour, which is more than twice as long as I’ve been used to performing this last ten years, simpy flew by. I couldn’t believe how good it sounded on stage and how tight we were. The gang of friends and family behind us were cheering and smiling, the crowd in front of us were moshing like fuck. The only thing that came close to spoiling the experience was when Daz stood on my pedal giving it the ridiculous Steve Harris move, and cut my sound. I stamped it back on quickly and gave him a hefty elbow to the ribs, letting him know he should fuck off. I don’t think he even noticed.

As we walked back onstage for the encore, the house lights were lifted as I played the long solo intro to Heartbreaker. It’s still on of my favourite songs, even to this day. It was the first time I’d had a proper chance to look at the crowd. I was almost overwhelmed with emotion. As I looked out at the sea of raised arms, I realised that I hadn’t always been just with my views of Raging Speedhorn and it’s fans. I’d always been so focused on making sure the band was about us and nobody else, on the attitude that it was us against the world, that I’d neglected to consider what this band actually meant to the fans. That it wasn’t simply just about us. Right at that very moment, I knew. And I realised that I hadn’t always appreciated what the band meant to me, either. Being the emotional type that I am, I felt close to tears.

Before we played the final song, High Whore, the tears did just about trickle. As Frank was making a crack about how the band had started twenty years ago, and that if we reformed again in another twenty years he’d be fucking sixty!, Tony and I met in the middle of the stage for a hug. I knew how much this had meant to him, but not as much as I thought I knew. He grabbed me tight and said thanks, that it really meant the world to him.

And then after five or six minutes of the long outr riff, it was all over. It had been an amazing night. There wasn’t much left of it as far as the venue was concerned, they wanted everyone out because they had a club night opening afterwards. It was perfect for me, though. It was only ten pm, and having only had the one beer all day, I was now ready for a couple of pints and a chat back over at the World’s End, where the entire party was heading. We hung out for a short while in the dressing room with Doug and Bianchi, the two of them on top form. Doug telling me how he’s officially announced himself the mayor of Weldon, the village connected to Corby where him and Frank live. He says Frank lives at the trampy end of the village. Gordon was pissed off, though. There wasn’t a drop left of the rider, and he also couldn’t find Katy, who he thought he might have given his phone to. Just another jog down memory lane. I didn’t want him spinning out though, I was really looking forward to a drink with him after the show, and now he was banging on about just going back to the hotel. Fuck sakes. I got ahold of Jen on the phone, and she told me that she was with Katy and they were having some food at some place next door, and Katy had indeed Gordon’s phone that he’d given her. It wasn’t quite all sorted in Gordon’s mind, but he levelled out just a tad.

I went back upstairs to get my bag from the room and there was Daz, at his worst by now, lurched on the sofa. I was just passing through, he was there on his own otherwise. “Yo Gaz, I heard that there were some people pissed off about the fact there was nothing left on the rider after the show?” he asked me. I just kinda shrugged, just couldn’t be arsed. I said yeah, I guess there was a bit of a bad vibe about that.

“You know what I reckon, mate? If you want a beer then you should fucking drink it when you have the chance!” he continued, smugly chuffed with himself. Yeah cool, I said, and left him to it. It would be the last time I saw him that night. Maybe ever, who knows…As of now, I didn’t know when I’d see these guys again after tonight, but it had been over ten years since I’d last saw Daz and our paths aren’t that likely to cross again anytime soon, I imagine.

Gordon and I went to meet the girls at the falafel place next door and then we went over to the pub. It felt like the entire crowd from the gig was in there, the place was packed. Gordon still couldn’t really settle, it felt like he was having a hard time relaxing until all the business side of the gig was taken care of. Been there many times before. Don’t miss it. The only thing that felt like a bit of a anti-climax after the gig was that I barely saw the rest of the guys in the band, or Carter and the crew. Bianchi had fucked off already, since he seems to be in a lot calmer place these days, too. I saw Doug for a while at the bar and we chatted a while longer, saying we’d meet up again next time I’m over, but I barely saw the rest. Only Gordon, who handed me an envelope of cash with my share of the earnings for the weekend. I’d been looking forward to hanging out with everyone for one last trip down memory lane, but it wasn’t to be. You could barely move in there and everyone was dotted around various parts of the establishment. I did have a good chat with Richey, Leon and Slaven, as well as Jay and Dave and the other guys from the Kettering crew. It was a nice couple of hours.

Jen, Leon and I took an Uber back to Tring around one am, Leon up front chatting away to the driver the entire time. I was knackered and grateful for Leon taking that particular duty. After all of the emotions I’d been through during this last couple of days, it came to a head when I went and checked on Polly and found her fast asleep in the spare bed we’d all be sharing, her gorgeous cute cheeks resting on the pillow.

We had a nightcap with Leon downstairs before hitting the hay. Gordon texted me, telling me Daz had been kicked out of the hotel they were staying at for acting the cunt with the receptionist, and was now sleeping in the van. Fucking brilliant.

Corby

I was sat at work, checking out for the day, that’s procedure at the shelter, it’s important to “pulse out”, to wash yourself of any stress that the day has incurred. The day at work had been fine, though. That wasn’t the reason I was feeling anxious. The source of anxiety I had turning screws in my stomach was the upcoming trip. I was rushing home after work, picking Polly up from school and then heading out to the airport, meeting Jen on the way. The team at work seemed a little confused by my not overly enthusiastic demeanor. Surely it was going to be fun reuniting with the old band mates again? I was sure the actual show was going to be fun, yes. I had no fucking clue as to how everything else around it was going to be. I hadn’t even spoken to Daz since his rather acrimonious split from the band back in 2006. And Frank, well, we’d been back to talking for a few years, but I didn’t know how hanging out for a couple of days in Corby would be with him. More than anything, I was wary of just how much I’d changed since we all last played in a band together, and how that would bother some of them, and how little they’d most likely changed would bother me.

I’d been trying to get a hold of Tony on the side, to ask him how it was going. Like Gordon and I, Tony had left Corby and created the final piece of the expat group. He’d been back in Corby since the Monday. It was now Wednesday and we’d be practicing for the first time tomorrow, before a warm up show in Corby on the Friday. He’d been offline all day today. When he finally got in touch, it only confirmed what I’d suspected. He’d been lying in bed all day, feeling like the devil had taken his soul. When he finally pulled his hungover ass out of bed, around three pm, he’d driven himself over to the KFC two hundred meters away from his hotel, and sat in the car park shaking. Frank had destroyed him the night before with jug after jug of cocktail. It was precisely this that I feared. I hadn’t been drunk in about five years, could I stand firm against the might of Reagan’s charm/demands?

I didn’t really know if I could be arsed with three days of being called a Swedish nonce because I didn’t want to get fucked up. When I first stopped raging on the booze, I thought it was just a period I was going through. I understand how fucked up that sounds...as if cutting back on the booze is some kind of deviant behaviour. But I’ve heard the concern in the voices of old acquaintances and family members when I’ve been back in the UK visiting: “Is Gareth not drinking? Is everything okay?” Fucking mental, when you think about it. I’ve been over five years without a hangover now, though. I simply can’t take them anymore. But more than that, I don’t enjoy the feeling of being drunk, like, properly drunk, which was always the hook before. The buzz of the party almost made up for the feeling of despair the day after. No longer. I still love a good beer, though. Just after the show. And just a couple.

So the plan was to practice all day on the Thursday and then meet up with Jen, Polly, my dad and whoever wanted to tag along from the band, for dinner in the evening. Gordon picked me up at my dad’s house in his splitter, which we’d be taking down to the London show. We drove up to the practice room which was located on the edge of town, in the car park of the Rugby Club, the place where all of my uncles were members and driving forces in the running of the place. It was also the venue for the first Speedhorn show upon reforming a couple of years ago, with the new lineup that didn’t include me, the place which was run by Roddy, The Zombie Hut, he called it, which was actually the old function room. I’ve never seen a show there. I’ve been to a few naff weddings and birthday parties there when I was a kid, though. It was also right behind the cemetery where my mum’s ashes are buried. Mixed feelings as we pulled into that car park.

Of course, the more things change, the more they stay the same. The practice room, or “Practice Pod”, as it was advertised, was actually a steel shipping-container. Fucking tiny. And the only people here waiting, despite the fact we were already a half hour late, were Tony and John, sat in Tony’s car, looking bored. The others were nowhere to be seen. Frank was sorting something out down his yard and Daz had to work until twelve, so wouldn’t be here for another hour or so. The three expats, the ones who actually travelled to get here, first as always.

It was good to get the chance to have a bit of a chinwag with Tony, anyway. I figured he must have been feeling pretty nervous about the upcoming shows. He had barely played guitar since he got his P45 back in 2003, nevermind played a gig. And now he was about to play to a pretty much sold out show at the Electric Ballroom, which holds around fourteen hundred people. If my feelings were mixed, his must have been all over the place! It was good seeing him again. We’d met up on a couple of occasions over the years, at Gordon’s wedding, and a couple of other do’s, and it felt like we were pretty good. I still carried guilt about the way we sacked him from the band, though. And as well as this being a chance to celebrate twenty years of the band, this was something I wanted to do for Tony, as much as anything. We owed him this...

It felt surreal, standing there with the five of them, in that tiny metal box. Looking at them all, Frank’s beaming grin across his coupon, Daz in his work gear, John stoned, it literally felt like the last sixteen years had been erased, that nothing had changed. At all. We didn’t really even say that much to each other before we started, a bit of small talk but nothing else. We just looked at each other, and then said, “Okay, let’s doing the fucking set, then!” If I’m honest, I hadn’t gotten that much of a buzz whilst playing through the old songs at home leading up to this trip. It felt pretty difficult plodding out riffs to songs I wrote almost twenty years ago, when we were in the middle of writing the new Victims album. But when we banged into the intro riff of Deathrow Dogs, which is the same riff for about four minutes, the buzz came back. It was way heavier, and slower than I remember it. In that tiny space it sounded like the pit of hell opening up. I was wondering if Frank was actually going to be able to sing since he was smiling so broadly. In that moment, none of the rest of it mattered. Whatever had passed under the bridge, all the bullshit we’d put each other through, it all washed away.

We got through the entirety of the one hour set with barely a hiccup. Even if I’ve played these songs thousands of times, I was still positively surprised by how well the set clicked. Daz hadn’t played in a band for at least six or seven years, but he was still a hell of a bass player. “He might be a weird cunt, but no one can beat that fucking bass sound!” Frank chirped afterwards in the car park.

It was a beautiful day, defying the time of year, and we sat around on the curb in t-shirts during the break, for the first time having a proper catch up. I had been most nervous about Daz, I think, since he’d turned pretty sour after he quit the band, and he could always be a narky sod when he’s had a drink, even when he hadn’t sometimes... But sitting there with him sober, chatting away as he puffed on a roll-up, was really nice. It was just simple stuff, about what we’re doing with our lives and shit. It hit me then how weird it was that we all had kids now, even John. Daz had been the only one who hadn’t been in contact during the lead up to the show since he wasn’t on any form of social media, there were rumours going around that he’d taken himself off after clocking some stepkid of his or something, but it wreaked of just the normal Speedhorn bullshit gossip led by Reagan, so this really was the first contact of any kind we’d had since he quit the band, apart from a text after my mum had died, which I’d really appreciated. He told me that his mum was on the go now, same bastard disease as always… He seemed to be doing okay, though.

We played through the set one more time and then headed over to the pub just down the road for some lunch. After a pretty cack veggie sausage and mash and a markedly better pint of Greene King IPA, we decided that we didn’t need anymore practice. It had gone way better than expected. One more run through the set tomorrow and then we’d take the stuff down to the White Hart for the warm up show. Daz give me a lift back to my dad’s in his work van and said he’d see me tomorrow. He was having a night in with the family so wouldn’t be able to meet the rest of us down the Weatherspoon’s for dinner later.

Everyone else turned up, though. It was great, sitting down to a band dinner, with Jen, Polly and my dad, even my auntie Chris and uncle Vic turned up. It was a proper family dinner with everyone. To my surprise, and after all the concern I’d had about the guys wanting to go out and get fucked up tonight, I was the last of the band to leave the pub. I guess the other night had knocked them out for a bit. I only had a few pints of weak bitter, though, and was enjoying the evening, so we stayed for one more after the others guys all left for home. It had been exactly the night I’d been hoping for, and I was really happy that everyone had gotten to meet Polly.

The next day, Jen was heading down to London with Polly to meet up with Kev and the rest of the Deptford crew, taking in a nice hotel for the night. I felt kinda jealous to be honest. I’d have rather just done the one show, but I understood that Tony needed the practice. We all needed the warm up gig, in truth. I was probably being overly cocky thinking otherwise. I’d been the same with the question of having a road crew. I’d quite deliberately made the point in our chat group about not wanting any techs on stage. A driver/merch and a sound tech/tour manager I thought was fair enough, given the size of the gig, but I made it quite clear I could manage myself on stage. Bianchi had jokingly reprimanded me, pointing out that, unlike myself, Tony hadn’t been changing strings in pitch black Polish squats for the last ten years.

We met up at the steel box and ran through the set one more time and then packed the van and made our way to the White Hart pub. It had been a long time since I’d set foot in the place, and it had changed a lot since. What used to be the bar was now a fully kitted out venue. I was pleasantly surprised. It was good to see Walpole, one of the old Kettering crew, who would be driving and selling merch, as well Big Jim who is Speedhorn’s tour manager these days. But most of all, Carter. If it was anyone else, I’d have been shocked at them making the journey from LA to Corby to see Speedhorn. Not him, though. He was always as big a fan of the band as he was its manager. It was wonderful to see him again.

There wasn’t a whole lot to do before and after soundcheck. Frank and Daz were already piling into the beers, but I wouldn’t be having one until after the show, and sitting around watching them drink wasn’t all that fun, so Tony, Gordon and I went for a walk around the old village area of Corby, before grabbing a bag of chips for dinner and sitting on a park bench to tuck into them. When we got back there were a few more people buzzing around the place and Walpole was setting up the merch. Much to Daz’s annoyance, he’d hung a rainbow flag above the table. “What the fuck’s he putting that there for?” I asked him what he had against it, to which he replied, “A lot!” I had the feeling he was already on his way, and I could sense that it wasn’t going to get any better. I told him that I thought it was a great flag. He said nothing to that, but the chasm between us was painfully obvious, a chasm that could not be measured in geographical miles alone. He sort of grumbled, and then walked off, a little confused.

Jen had texted me earlier in the day, saying that Polly had gotten a stomach bug and had began puking as soon as they got down to Deptford. What an absolute nightmare. Jen had to make her way across London back to the hotel, comforting Polly and keeping her from throwing up all over herself. I felt so sorry for my girls. You couldn’t make it up. It feels like Polly gets sick every time we come to the UK. Jen was supposed to come to the show tomorrow whilst Polly stayed with our old friends Leon and Lindsey. Leon would accompany Jen to the show and then we’d all head back to their place afterwards. But Jen could not possibly leave Poll if she was sick. I called to check in on them. It wasn’t looking good. I was really hoping she would be better tomorrow.

The pub started filling up quite early on, obviously a lot of old friends and family in attendance. I hadn’t thought about the need for a guestlist, but rumours were going round about half hour after doors that it would soon be sold out and my dad and a couple of other relatives were at some other pub. I was by now acutely grateful for the presence of Big Jim, for he came to the rescue and snuck us a couple of extra wristband passes that he’d found. Unbelievably, my dad seemed to spend most of the gig in the other room with his mates. I don’t know, He’s seen us a bunch of times before I guess, and I understood that his other mates weren’t too keen on paying the tenner to get it. Besides, the room was packed by the time we went on and he could well have popped in at the back for a while.

The gig itself was pretty fun. It was a little strange in the fact that I couldn’t really get a grip of how the crowd was, the stage was deep in an alcove so it kind of felt like we were playing in a boxed off corner of the room, and in front of the stage there was a clearing made by some overly enthusiastic moshing. But the actual playing experience was cool. We played really tight and it sounded good from where I was stood. I wasn’t overcome with any massive high, though. It just felt like a solid gig. It felt exactly like what it in actual fact was, a dress rehearsal for the next day.

It was pretty hot in there after the gig, and I was grateful for a pint, even if it was just pissy lager in a plastic glass. I hung around chatting with some old faces and friends for a while, but the night quickly came to a close after the show was done, the landlord wanting to close up quick sharp. As I was loading the van I met a by now cloudy-eyed Daz at the back doors.

“You enjoy that?” he asked, somewhat curtly.

“Yeah”, I replied.

“You wanna do it again?”

“Well, yeah… tomorrow night, like”, I said, completely aware of where he was going with this.

“Yeah, but after that?”

“No”. That was all I could offer. I had no wish to get into a conversation about it.

I don’t think he was even serious, but if felt apt to nip that subject in the bud all the same. Everyone who had been part of any correspondance leading up to this gig was aware of my stance. This was a one-off thing. Tony felt exactly the same. In fact, he told me that he was probably going to get around to selling his guitar after this weekend. I realised then that this was something he’d been waiting on for a long time. He’d never played in any other band after we’d sacked him. But he’d been waiting for this. Some kind of closure, I guess. I felt really touched by that thought. And then like a fart at a funeral, Daz, totally boats, turned the mood completely sour. When Tony had gone out to the van with gear, Daz had informed him that the only reason we weren’t getting back together as a band was because everyone hated him. He was always a fucking arsehole when pissed. I don’t think Tony took much notice of him, and rightly so. Daz’s drunken nonsense was ironic on a few levels, though. For a start, the band was already back together. Daz, nor I, nor Tony, had any bearing on the future of things, whether we wanted back in or not.

Like a lightning bolt from a clear night sky, the reality of this band struck me. It had been a mildly warm, nostalgic trip during the last couple of days, as whenever you jog your memory back over the past you only filter through the good times, but Daz’s shit had brought reality crashing back with a bang. This is how we always treated each other. Not just Daz. All of us. And it fucking sucked. Not to say there wasn’t a lot of good, but the negative shit hit me hard.

So the plan was to be back at the White Hart at eight-thirty for departure. We had an early get-in. The van would be staying put and we’d all have to make our way back to it in the morning. There would be no pick-ups. With the clock closing in on one already, I was more than ready to head home. Frank and a bunch of others were going to hit some cocktail bar. The only thing that surprised me with that was the fact Corby had a cocktail bar. My dad and I took a walk back to my old house, the place I grew up, where he still lives. That walk, often a stagger, I’d taken so many times as a teenager after nights out at Channel 2 in the old village, the place we played our first ever shows with our old bands. I didn’t really think I’d play a show in Corby ever again. I didn’t ever think I’d play a Speedhorn show ever again, to be fair. After tomorrow, I think I could safely say that those two particular chapters would be well and truly closed.

The Biggest Thing That Never Happened

Another year, another clean slate. More water, less coffee, more fruit, less sweets, sleep more, read more, it feels like you can always read more… phone less, eat better, stress less, exercise more… It’s the same optimistic resolutions every year. January 31st. It’s going so so thus far. I think I’m drinking more water, at least.

In adhering to another immutable pattern, I’m still finding ways of adding to an already packed schedule. Sometimes my life feels like a game of Kerplunk. It’s hard saying no to fun stuff, though. Just as long as it doesn’t all come crashing down. So on that note, I decided that as I’m busy studying for a degree in sociology, working a job and raising a kid as well as playing punk rock, I’d release a book this year. Why not?

I’ve been thinking for a long time about putting Punk Rock and Coffee into print. I’ve achieved my teenage ambition of having my own records on my record shelf, now it’s time to fulfill a somewhat later ambition and have my own book on my bookshelf. I’m compiling a book from a lot of the writing I’ve done on the Speedhorn era of my life, and as well as rewriting large chunks of it, I’m also writing around another ten or eleven chapters of new material. It’s going to be in paperback format and will be a collection of short stories in loose chronological order, mapping the story of Raging Speedhorn as seen through my eyes. But it’s not just the story of Raging Speedhorn. It could be the story of any band. It’s also a story about friendship, about the ups and downs of belonging to a dysfunctional group dynamic. It’s about love and hate, ecstasy and despair. It’s about being a working class kid desperately searching for an identity. It’s about growing up and growing apart. It’s about taking your dream further than you ever thought possible and then blowing it up.

The Biggest Thing That Never Happened: Ten Years Of Snatching Defeat From The Jaws Of Victory With Raging Speedhorn will be released this year in late fall. Further details will follow in the coming months.

Now, back to working on those New Year’s resolutions...

Rehearsing

I know I sounded like an asshole just saying it to Jen as the St Pancras to Corby train approached the outskirts of my home town, “Every time I come back here I’m filled with a mixed bag of feelings. On the one hand there is excitement about seeing people I love and care about, on the other there is a feeling of trepidation, like a knot in my stomach”. Jen batted that comment away as nonsense not even to be entertained, as she rightly does with a great deal of the things I say, but I knew she wouldn’t understand. My joyful memories of childhood and early adolescence are countered with strength by experiences of teenage angst and violence, of constantly running the risk of being jumped purely for making eye contact with someone looking to make their mark, of sitting on the agency bus and the hell of the food factories, of making sure to avoid the glue sniffers when walking through the woods and the chaotic jungle that was senior school. Of course, this environment led me to find an escape, a release, in the guise of music.

One of the things I do still love about my hometown is my dad’s local pub, the Rockingham Arms, or the Rock as it’s known to the town’s inhabitants. The people in this place, mostly men, mostly Scottish, mostly alcoholic, are a scriptwriter's dream. I’ll never forget my friend Anders reaction when he was in town visiting. I wasn’t there then, but my mate Snitch took him to the Rock on a Saturday lunchtime and when I texted and asked him how it was he replied, “Well the first thing I saw upon entering was some old guy in a wheelchair at the bar, pissed as a fart, drinking his pint through a straw. Amazing place!” I never miss the Rock when I’m back visiting. It’s always good to catch up with dad and his gang of mates, as well as some of the other profiles in there. It’s always the same faces. When I was back this time, Crawley, one of the pub’s more permanent customers, caught my eye through the hole in the wall between the bar and the lounge where my dad sits. I say he caught my eye, it’s hard to tell sometimes. He was looking straight at me with a huge smile on his face, but that’s how he looks constantly, and the fact is he could just have well been sleeping with his eyes open. The old boy exists in a perpetual state of being fucked. Whilst considering whether to break the staring game and give him a shout he gives me the big thumb, “Alright Gareth boy!” And with that he comes shuffling through to the bar, laughing as he goes. Randomly Crawley starts mumbling something about the old days, about the racket we used to make with the band in the garage. He lives around the corner from dad and we used to practice with our first band in the garage sometimes when mum and dad were at work. Crawley is gleefully recounting listening to us, “Sounded like a right load of shite but it turned out alright for you anyway didn’t it?” he laughs whilst clapping my back. I’d totally forgotten about practising in mum and dad’s garage. As Crawley turned his attention to my dad who was waiting for the pint I’d just bought him, I started to think about all the places we’ve practiced over the years whilst Crawley and dad stood taking the piss out of each other, slagging each other off. Corbyites have an uncanny habbit of using the word "cunt" as a term of endearment. As this was going on I began racking up in my mind all the places we’ve rehearsed…

Our first band Morphene was never really a band. Not in the sense that we ever actually threatened to do anything with it. Our drummer Beany only actually got around to buying a drum kit for the last couple of months of the band’s short existence. For the most part he sat drumming on his thighs. We rehearsed both in my parent’s garage, with our 30 watt amps and Beany’s legs, plonking out rudimentary metal riffs in the middle of the afternoon whilst most of the neighbours were at work, barring Crawley apparently, and on occasion my dad, who had a very independent, flexible work schedule at the post office. On occasion he’d pop in for a cup of tea in the middle of his shift and look in on us banging away in the garage. It must have been a right din, three kids learning to play as we went along, but my dad’s face always had a chuffed smile on it. When our other guitarist, Chalmers, this awkward computer geek from school, got himself a Marshall JCM 900 stack, that never once left his house, we began practicing in his parent’s living room instead. Chalmers parents were a wonderfully odd couple, Pat and Fred. They were quite a bit older than everyone else’s parents, at least they seemed it anyway. Fred was this grey haired Scot who always spoke with a strained voice, like he was desperately frustrated all the time, and Pat looked like a fifties housewife and had a marvelously comical monotonal drole of an accent, something Chalmers himself had inherited and which led to the rest of us brutally taking the piss out of him. Pat and Fred were a pair of gems though, always really kind, and helped us out a lot. Whenever we were round Chalmers place the first thing Pat would do was sort us out with tea and biscuits. If we knocked on the door and Chalmers wasn’t home she’d still invite us in for a brew and it got to the point where me and Beany would go around knowing full well that Chalmers was out. I’m not so sure Pat swallowed our mock disappointment at having missed Chalmers..

Anyway, every Sunday Pat and Fred fucked off to Towcester to visit Pat’s mum and when they were away they let us practice in their living room. Me and Slaven, the bass player, with our tiny Gorilla amps and Chalmers with his big fucking stack. Slaven used to tape a kids karaoke machine mic to the wall and sing through that. Beany would either be slamming away on his thighs or rummaging through the kitchen cupboards looking for food, claiming his diabetes was playing up. Chalmers, who had been by far the most serious of us all at school with his grades, would be panicking as we ate the kitchen bare, but it didn’t take long for us to turn Chalmers. Once we all found booze, some time around thirteen, fourteen years old, Chalmers embraced it more than any of us and there and then his life started taking a different path. Before long we were pushing the boundaries further than Chalmers mum’s biscuits. On one occasion we tried experimenting with getting high. Booze was one thing, it was easy enough to get our hands on at the weekends through Beany’s older sister, or our friend Adam, who although was our age had a fully grown beard. But we were a bunch of long haired high school nobodys and as far removed from the weed scene in Corby as you could possibly be. One Sunday whilst practicing at Chalmers house we figured we’d try smoking Pat’s thyme plant, since it was green and a herb. We convinced ourselves this was going to be amazing and I remember the excitement of doing something really bad, something my parents would kill me for if they found out about it. Within ten minutes of smoking the thyme we were all clutching our foreheads in agony. The pain of the thyme headache put me off trying smoking again in a hurry.

Beany finally got himself a drum kit around the time we became aware there was actually a couple of rehearsal spaces available in town. One was at a community centre called the Connaughty Centre, where on Tuesday nights you could hire one of the many rooms there cheap. There were loads of bands practicing there, a couple in smaller carpeted rooms that actually looked like rehearsal spaces, others either in the big hall on the high wooden stage or in the foyer around the pool table. I practiced there with every band I played in in Corby between fourteen and eighteen, Speedhorn actually wrote a lot of the first album there. As a young kid I’d trained with the football team in the big sportshall out the back and now I was here on Tuesday nights playing with bands. This place meant a lot to all of us. Had to pay for the fucking biscuits and pop from the kiosk though, which was one negative compared to Pat and Fred’s.

The Connuaghty Centre is where I first met Frank. I’ll never forget taking a break from practice and hanging out by the pool table when I heard someone playing guitar, like really fucking playing guitar. I looked up to the second level of the foyer and saw this big tall kid with shortly cropped hair and a broad smile across a big baby like face. We all went up to look at him playing Hendrix solos and shit. I was in awe of him and also embarrassed by how bad he made us all sound. I soon found out that he was just as good, maybe even better on drums. I never would have thought then that he’d end up being the drummer in two other bands I had, Sect and Soul Cellar. Ridiculous really that despite being by far and away the most talented musician of all of us in Speedhorn, all he did in that band was scream.

The other place to rehearse in Corby was a couple of rooms at a professional recording studio called Premier Studios, which was at the back of this big nightclub called Bip’s, which was owned by my dad’s mate and local entrepreneur Bip. Bip’s brother Iain, was a guitarist and had been in this cheesy seventies rock band called Energy. By all accounts they’d done pretty well, releasing the odd single and album back in the day. Iain was a really nice guy and decent recording engineer. We would end up recording the two Speedhorn demos there before the first album, as well as demos with Sect and Soul Cellar. The practice rooms there were great for a while, although we complained like fuck about the price, being that it was twenty quid for four hours. It did come with a PA, amps and drums though. But still, we were narked about the price and used to bemoan the fact there was no other places in town providing competition to Iain. For some reason, Leon, the bass player in Sect and the leader of that band, christened him Nob Iain, and although we would all grow up recording with Iain and become good friends, the name stuck, at least behind his back. I think Leon took umbrage with him on one occasion where we cancelled a session late and Iain still charged us. Was kind of the vibe there. The thing I loved about Iain though was his friendly laugh, easy going manner and the fact that whilst everyone else called us “Speedhorn”, Iain was the only person who referred to us as “Raging”, in that slightly cheesy style befitting of someone who played in a band called Energy.

As is the standard in that town we came from, we did take the fucking piss though. There was always some conniving fucker in the band that booked the room and put it in someone else’s name. Gordon did this all the time, usually booking it in Little Dave or Daz’s name, knowing that if anything happened to the room or we had to cancel it would be them getting the call from Nob Iain. I remember this one Saturday night I was sat at my parent’s house, it was late, around 10 o’clock. It was pretty unusual for me to be home on my todd on a Saturday night at that age but nonetheless I was just sat on the sofa watching tv and pretty content with how my night was panning out. Then I get a call from Snitch telling me to come down to the practice room, they’re practicing with their joke band Richard T. King and the Minstrels, which was Snitch as a 70’s porn Elvis impersonator and Gordon, Little Dave, Jay and other Speedhorn/Scurge members as his backing band. I had to be convinced to get off my arse but Snitch said they were having a party and there was plenty of booze. What the hell, I thought, it’s only a fifteen minute walk. When I got there they were stood around jamming but I could tell they were all pretty minced. Within two hours I’d gotten completely fucked along with the rest of them, and the last thing I remember is stumbling around with a guitar and then myself and maybe one other smashing guitars through the polystyrene ceiling panels. The place was completely trashed. Nob Iain was on the fucking rampage the day after. Of course, Gordon had booked it in Little Dave’s name and was hiding low. We ended up back down there the next day tidying the room up and paying a symbolic amount of money for damages. Iain’s wife happened to be there and she was disgusted with us.

It was a pain in the ass, having to lug your gear back forth to the practice room for a four hour session, especially later on when I was flying in from Sweden, often direct after my shift in the bar on the dawn flight, and then I’d be the first twat there, beating others in the band who lived five minutes away, sometimes the fuckers would just fuck practice off altogether, which would really fry my piss. I guess they had their lives going on as well but at the time I took it as them marking the fact they felt betrayed I’d left Corby. We were like that. Speedhorn were always fucking fighting, it was truly tiresome, if not on occasion entertaining. I remember one time we were practicing at the Connuaghty Centre and John and Frank had an argument right off the bat. John stormed out, telling us he’d had it. We just carried on and practiced for another hour or so and when we finished up and went out for a breather John was sat outside on the wall shaking his head, “I can’t believe you just carried on without me!” Lesson right there. We’d made it clear to everyone in the six piece band that there was no leader and everyone was dispensable. That attitude worked for and against us.

Speedhorn were never happier though, in fact, I was never happier rehearsing, than the couple of years or so we had a rehearsal space we could call home. Kind of. Frank was a car mechanic and his dad had a breakdown/recovery business and for a while we rehearsed at the their car yard. There were broken cars everywhere, a pretty large garage where the Reagan’s worked on cars during the day and a beautiful German Shepherd called Thumper, who was the night watch dog. We named the song from the first album after him, everyone loved him. We wrote songs from the first three albums at the yard and had some great times. It wasn’t only our rehearsal space, it was our base, where we’d all hang out most nights of the week. Frank’s dad Stan was a mean looking old Scot though and we were all fucking terrified of him. I’ll never forget his face when he turned up one Sunday afternoon and not only were we practicing in the garage without telling him, Frank was stood there with a bass high up on his chest, fucking around slapping the strings with a big joint in his mouth. I wish I had a picture of Frank’s face when he turned around to see Stan stood there with a face of thunder. I’ll never forget Stan’s pained voice, “What kinda kids huv ah raised?!” Frank’s younger sister had just gotten pregnant.. Guess it was a tough time for old Stan.

Stan, to his credit, didn’t evict us from the yard though. He would never let on, and he told us constantly that we were shite, but that was just tough love I reckon. Nevertheless, we came to a new arrangement with him. He’d gotten hold of a couple of static caravans and they were sat down the yard, we could have one of them for a practice space. It was perfect. We hollowed out most of one of the caravans and set up all our gear in there and the other caravan we had as a chill out space. In retrospect it was a pretty tiny space to practice in, and with full stacks and Gordon’s 24 in ride cymbal it’s amazing we’re not all deaf today. It sounded like a fucking tornado in there. The chill out caravan was as you can imagine, a couple of rooms with a bed in one and a sofa in the other, completely engulfed in hippie smoke. Our friend Raymond and his cousin Barry were regulars down there and they used to roll up whilst we rehearsed. Those two were our first real crew members. Those nights were the happiest I remember in Speedhorn. No pressure from any record labels, just hanging out and writing songs and getting wasted. I don’t even know where Raymond and Barry are these days.

Before we had that home we had tried to find others, desperate to defy Iain and what we thought were his extortionate prices. We even practiced a couple of times in Gordon’s bedroom at his mum and dad’s house, which is unbelievable looking back at it. They had this three bedroom house at the end of a terraced row. Their garden was also full of dogs and old cars and general scrap, Gordon’s dad Moggy was friends with Stan. The living room was a trip too, three or four parrots, one of them used to say “cunt” all the time, the other one used to impersonate the telephone ring, they had an old pinball machine in the corner too. Place was a mad house. The parrot swore because I guess cunt was the most commonly used word in their house. It was shocking to me to hear Gordon and his mum calling each other daft cunts and the like. They were a right bunch of hillbillies, I loved them to death though. Even then it struck me as bonkers that we were up in Gordon’s bedroom with three full stack amps and his big drum kit, playing full blast in the middle of the day whilst Gordon’s mum Isobel was downstairs watching tv. I remember asking her if their neighbours weren’t gonna go mad and she replied, “Ah fuck em”, totally not interested. Amazing.

The yard is the place I remember with most fondness though. It was pretty unusual in the UK to have your own space, places like Iain’s were the standard. And we used a few different spaces over the years, both in Kettering and Northampton as the band members changed. I remember even writing songs from the last album in a room at the old Tech College building in Corby, which was weird because only a few years before I’d been a very depressed student there. Moving to Sweden I was shocked to find that pretty much every band I knew in Stockholm had their own space. Just the luxury of being able to leave your gear set up so that when you arrived you just turned on and played. It was like another world.

Battle of Santiago had a space out in Bromma, a really small room in a building that the drummer Tompa’s family owned or something. Their friend Kasper had a recording studio there and his cheesy pop/rock band rehearsed there. We had a small room to there too. That was a pretty cool set up, although we had to work around the studio. And Tompa. The fucker was always late and totally nonchalant with it. I remember him calling Erik one time, “I might be somewhat late to practice”. He was already late and the rest of us were waiting for him. Erik asked him if something had happened. “Nah, I just ordered a pint at Retro. But I’ll be on my way soon”. Erik was fuming when he hung up, “The wanker doesn’t even respect us enough to make up an excuse!”

Santiago would later move into Victims old place, which for a while was one of the best places I’d ever rehearsed. It was in an old bomb shelter, underneath a park in the middle of the city centre, right next to a great pub. It was a long tunnel shaped space underground sectioned off into four parts. I practiced with Victims in the first section and Santiago, sometimes DB, in the third. Victims had been there for a long time and it was there I first tried out with them, but the place suffered a lot with humidity, even in the summer it was wet and cold down there, and when someone’s guitar got fucked due to the damp we ended up moving out. Erik Santiago still rehearses there with his band Mary’s Kids though and they put shows on there now and again. I remember when we did the Santiago record with Stig Larsson we rehearsed with him there. Stig likes to fucking talk, doesn’t require anyone to listen, and Erik, being a bit stressed about meeting his girlfriend’s family for the first time after rehearsal wanted to get things moving along. He’d said to me on the way that whatever happens we can’t let Stig start babbling. But when we got there Stig was already reciting a poem, not one he was doing as part of the set we were playing with him mind, and Patrik and Olle were stoned off their tits, eyes closed, absorbing every word. “Ah fuck sakes!” mumbled Erik as we arrived. Erik snapped everyone out of it and got us into gear so we could whizz through the set. Stig, a bit disgruntled, shuffled into the main practice space and we got on with things. Erik pissed off as soon as the set was done but I stuck around for a bit, sensing some fun was to be had. Before you know it Stig is stood there again, eyes closed, reciting another poem. Patrik, totally engulfed in the genius of Stig and the copious amounts of weed he’d smoked, stood with his guitar, rocking back and forth with his eyes also closed. Next thing Patrik sways a little too far and falls flat into Tompa’s drum kit. Tompa’s is well pissed off, as is Stig, feeling that the moment has been ruined. It’s an almighty task stifling the laugh inside.

We moved three times in as many years with the Victims/DB collective. First we moved to a place in Hammarby Sjöstad, in the old industrial part of the city that is now full of Sim City looking flats and expensive as shit. Johan had a hook up through his job there and the place worked out pretty well for a while, it was where we had our first ever rehearsals with DB. Unfortunately the place flooded during a particularly wet autumn day and we found the place drenched in a few inches of water. Thankfully the only damage incurred was to one vinyl record floating around the room. So we moved out of there.

The next place was an old storage room underneath the ground of the inner courtyard of a housing complex in Vasastan. The room was huge and right in the middle of the city, it felt too good to be true. An old woman had actually contacted us through Blocket and said they had a space, someone had used it as a studio before apparently. It took a lot of a work, and along with members of Johan’s other band Swarm, and another band that was going to rehearse in a small room beside ours, we collectively built the room into a practice studio. I remember smirking when Andy turned up in his builder slacks complete with tool belt and Mackan from Swarm laughing, calling him Industri Andy. When we moved in and started rehearsing it was the middle of winter and there was a thick layer of snow on the ground. When the snow melted so did a lot of the sound insulation and before long we were told to fuck off. Shame, it was the biggest room I’d ever practiced in. Almost too big really.

And now we are where we are today. Uffe from Swarm/Entombed had a hook up with a place in Hökarängen, some kind of cultural/art collective that was taking over a big house there. Our room in the basement is pretty small but it’s cosy and I like it. Above us there are various rooms where different artists and musicians have small studios, there is a stage room on the top floor where they have kids theatre and dance etc. It’s the longest we’ve been anywhere for a while. We’re around twelve or thirteen people and amongst us there are four or five bands. I really like that. It’s great having your own space to practice. I still remember being blown away by Misdemeanor’s huge practice room the first time Jen took me there. No wonder there are so many active bands and musicians in Sweden when this is the set up. Not only do bands have their own spaces but you can even get grant money where you can claim back on some of the rent you pay. When we rehearse in the UK with DB I realise how lucky we are here. To be fair, the place in Deptford owned by John Conflict is great. The rooms are a good size, it’s just round the corner from the Waiting Room and you get to hang out with John and Sarah Conflict, which is worth it on it’s own. It’s about as good a set us as you can get without having your own place. One thing though, moving practice rooms is a huge pain in the tits. It seems Andy and Johan are constantly on the lookout for somewhere better. I’m hoping that nowhere better comes up. But that’s just because I’m a lazy bastard.

Lost Ritual

It’s been said many times before, but it’s true. A cliché is a cliché for a reason after all. Being in a band is like being a relationship.

For a long period of my life Raging Speedhorn was my significant other. We were in a relationship together for ten years. My first real love. It was sometimes turbulent, sometimes intoxicating. When we first met we were head over heels in love, we spent pretty much every waking hour together. We’d both been in some half serious relationships before but we knew that this was the one. Soul mates. But after the first six months or so our individual personalities, both equally strong and pig headed as they could be, started to create cracks and the honeymoon period was coming to its end. But like with any strong relationship, it’s the good stuff that comes once the honeymoon is over. If you make it past the seven month itch then you’re in for a lasting journey together.

Post honeymoon comes the comfort zone, where you can be yourself with your partner, no longer afraid to express your true feelings on matters, or to state your case in a dispute, completely comfortable with each other's presence.. You know, when you get to that stage where you feel at ease farting in front of each other. It’s then that the good stuff happens.

Our relationship was certainly a feisty one though. We had tremendous arguments that on occasion led to vicious fights. There was a lot of passion that stirred the fire within us. When things were good we felt that we had the strength to take on the world together, when they were bad I would feel as though I was on the brink of caving in. It was without any doubt a most dysfunctional relationship. And like so many trapped in a dysfunctional relationship, it was hard to take yourself out of. We’d been through so much together. There was a time when we even tried putting things on hold for a while, took a break from each other. And for a while it seemed like it had helped. We felt happier for it afterwards. And for a few years towards the end it was good again, we were strong, or stronger anyway, although the odd flare up here and there inevitably awoke lingering doubts that we’d last forever.

After ten years of ups and downs, we decided to call it a day. It was completely amicable. We left each other on good terms and we both knew it was the right thing for both of us. We were no longer in love, it had developed into something more platonic. The passion had fizzled out. We had one last holiday, an amazing trip to Japan for a fortnight, and when we arrived back in the UK we went our separate ways, promising each other we’d stay friends. And we have. Although for that to truly work we needed a break from each other. In my experience to make a friendship work with an ex you need to have a period of time after the break of zero contact.

When Speedhorn and I broke up I already had my eyes on another. I’d been flirting with Victims for a while and it wasn’t long after the trip to Japan that we got together. It’s been seven years now and although not as intense as my time with Speedhorn we’re pretty happy. With Victims it’s more like we’re friends though. And that being so it’s pretty laid back, in fact I’m in another relationship with Diagnosis? Bastard! I’m all for polygamy, at least in terms of this by now rather long drawn out metaphor.

So… After a couple of years apart and getting on pretty well, I started getting the sense that Speedhorn wanted to get back with me. And after ignoring its advances for a while I had to make myself clear that I wasn’t interested. It was a mix of things. It wasn’t practical for one thing, we don’t live in the same country as each other and I wasn’t interested in getting back into a long distance relationship again. But on top of that, I’d moved on. I wasn’t the same person anymore. I wasn’t feeling it. I was truly happy with Victims and DB, and I thought Speedhorn was better left in the past. I have to admit though, it was a bit strange seeing Speedhorn together with someone else. Even though I’d moved on, it is weird seeing your ex with a new partner. To add to that, you really like their new partner, they’re actually an old friend of yours.

It took a while to get my head around. And then it happened. I was struck by an epiphany. And it came in the form of their new record Lost Ritual. The ex and their new partner have had a baby? Ok, maybe it’s time to let the metaphorical go.

What happened was this. Frank sent me a copy of the new Speedhorn album. He told me that he was proud of it and really thought that I’d like it, and whilst he was at it he told me that he missed me. I was actually in Corby at the time taking care of some personal family stuff, it would have been nice to meet up with him but I had my hands full.  It wasn’t until I got back home to Sweden that I got around to listening to the album. In all honesty, I was curious about how it sounded, but also a little awkward about it, the first album without me, it was going to be a bit weird. And then I listened to it. And then I listened to it again. And the epiphany was that the band wouldn’t work with me in it today. Jim, the old friend who is playing guitar instead of me, is far more suited to the band than I would be now.

Lost Ritual sounds like old Speedhorn, but more relevant maybe.  I hate to milk another old cliché, but it sounds mature, like Speedhorn grown up. The production is huge, really well done. Massive guitar sound, like the ultimate Eyehategod sound. Gordon’s drumming is more confident and flowing than ever. The first song, Bring Out Your Dead, in my opinion is one of the best songs the band has ever written. And the fact is that I couldn’t have written it. Jim is perfect for them. I can hear a lot of his old band Charger in the record, it’s slower and doomier than I expected it to be. When I listened to the album I felt truly happy for them for the first time since they got together with their new partner. Because it became obvious to me, the fact that we wouldn’t work together anymore. And I’m truly happy for the new couple, may they have a long life of happiness together. It kind of feels like when you get invited to your ex's wedding, they’re marrying someone who was an old friend of the two of you when you were together, and it truly no longer feels weird.

What else is there to say?  Lost Ritual is out in July.  Check it out!

Driving

I don’t know how many miles I’ve travelled in a van during almost twenty years of touring. It’s up there in the tens of thousands though. There have been some gargantuan stretches on the asphalt during that time, drives that have taken me to the edge of sanity, at least that’s how it felt at the time. The longest journey between two gigs I ever did was with Victims when we drove from Oslo to Birmingham. That was pretty brutal. We had Martin from At the Gates with us for the first stretch, he drove from Oslo to his place in Gothenburg. I remember feeling totally fucked, having had a hard time sleeping in a moving van, that was usually the case if I was sober, when we pulled up to Martin’s at six am. We drove until around ten pm later the same night, stopping for a few hours at a roadside hotel somewhere in Holland, before leaving at four am the next day to catch the ferry from Calais to England. By the time we got to Birmingham we were pretty pulverised.

I learned first hand just how overwhelmingly large the USA is via the virtues of touring in a van. Speedhorn were on tour for around five weeks. We’d began in Houston, Texas, the opening show was supposed to be New Orleans but Katrina had put an end to that. We had one day off in El Paso near the start of the tour but from there we played every night right the way through Arizona and up the west coast to Seattle before we had another free day, a couple of weeks later. I asked the guy who was driving us, Dutch, where we would be spending the day after Seattle, hoping for some sightseeing, or maybe a day somewhere sat in a bar. Dutch just laughed at the naivety of my question. “Where will be be spending the day? In the fucking van! After Seattle the next show is Denver and that’s a twenty four hour drive”.

There have also been plenty of occasions where we’ve had huge drives between shows without a day in between to accomplish the journey. Driving from Syracuse to Chicago with Victims to make a show the next night was a particularly challenging journey, where we packed up and left right after the show to make it. It was knackering but worthwhile since the Chicago gig was an opening slot with Amebix. If that wasn’t worth it alone then the old screamo band Nema were also on the bill, although it was only me who gave a fuck about that particular detail.

Through all the years of travelling we’ve owned or rented an assortment of vans or busses. When I think back I remember them all with varying degrees of fondness. The vans themselves almost became like a member of the band, they all had a character of their own and they were all witness to a multitude of incidents and dramas. I own a memory for almost all of the vans or buses we ever travelled in.

When Speedhorn started playing shows up and down the UK we were playing a lot of one off shows, or at most a cluster of two or three. Here, there and everywhere. For these shows we used to hire vans from a rental place in Corby called Longmarsh Motors. We used to hire these long wheel based Transits and for the most part it was Roddy who took care of the driving. We’d be sat in the back, using speaker cabs and drum cases as makeshift seating. Sometimes there would be a divider between the back of the van and the cabin. Sometimes there would be a light in the back, sometimes not. I remember once driving all the way up to Scotland in the dark barr for one slither of light that shone through the smallest of holes in the wooden divider. Every now and again one of us would peer through the hole to try and get a gauge on where we were and relay the information to the rest of us in the back. These kind of journeys were made bearable by two things; copious amounts of hash being one, John and Tony wrestling being the other. Even if you didn’t actually suck on the joints yourself you’d be high purely off the exhaled smoke trapped within the back of the van. Hotboxing, they used to call it. When the van would pull over at a service station the smoke would literally billow out of the van when the driver slid the door open. The other time killer was the wrestling. John and Tony, the Loughlin brothers, used to go at it pretty hard. What started out as fun could turn a tad serious on occasion. Of course, being stoned off their tits most likely dampened the sensation of having their head banged off the walls. We were all in a pretty unhealthy state in those days.

Obviously there was a shit load of booze about too. Being on a tight budget we’d kitty the money and buy the cheapest wine or cider we could find. Most of the drinking was done after the gigs but there were times when we’d fuck up and arrive at a venue worse for wear. We were living in an age of innocence. We had minimal responsibility. Most of us didn’t have jobs to worry about, or if we did they were of no priority whatsoever, except for Frank who worked for his dad. But in general we were going through a fairly narcissistic period. Fuck whatever the future holds, we know this shit isn’t going to last forever. All that matters is the next gig, the next bottle of vino and who’s rolling. We were young and didn’t give a fuck about what went on outside the van. It was wonderful. For a time…

One dark journey home I was lying on the cold van floor listening to the radio up front, which was muffled by the dividing wall. There was a bottle going around and we were all pretty hazy. Roddy brakes suddenly, I don’t know what happened, chances were he was pissing around. He did that a lot. Whatever the reason, the sudden breaking resulted in a Jenny can full of diesel falling over and emptying its contents on John. We couldn’t see fuck all, we just knew what had happened since the glugg, glugg, glugging sound was followed by the suffocating smell of diesel and then John moaning, “Ahhh for fuck sake!”

Amidst the ensuing chaos a spark of light appears in the corner. The spark it turns out, is coming from Daz’s lighter. The fucker decides now is a good time to spark up a fag. We all bellow in unison, utter disbelief. John tells Daz in no uncertain terms to put his lighter away. Daz being drunk and cocky, as he was prone to be, assures John there is no danger. A tense argument ensues between them and then we all join in, telling Daz to shut the fuck up and put his lighter away. “Soz guys, forgot that I’m an engineer and know more about this than you..” Don’t know what the fuck he meant by that. Sarcastic cunt never knew when to shut the fuck up. Needless to say the van opened up and we all piled out on to the side of the dark road. John soaked in fuel and severely pissed off, threatening Daz with his life. This would not be the last time John issued such threats to Daz.

Another time we were spread about the back of a rental van. It’s so dark in there you can’t even see your hand in front of your face and it’s cold. We’re all pissed up and in pretty good spirits, listening to the muffled sounds of one of Frank’s mixed tapes up front. There is a bottle of luke warm cider, flat as piss, being passed around in the void. Out of nowhere we hear Daz gagging. Woaaaah! Stop the van Roddy, stop the fucking van! We’ve got a vommer! Roddy pulls into the next service station and we all rush out, inspecting ourselves to make sure Daz’s puke hasn’t got us. To our amazement there isn’t any sign of puke in the back of the van, or on Daz for that matter, although the poor sod is looking fucked, pure white and eyes rolling. Turns out the vom is in the inner pocket of his bomber jacket. Hats off. Don’t know how the fuck he pulled that off in the pitch black of the van but I’d be lying if I said I was unimpressed. As we’re stood there commending him on the save, he wanders off to the back of the van and continues to throw up, lurched over, legs bent out of shape. Frank goes up behind him and shunts him up the ass with his foot, just because. Daz falls over into his newly formed puddle of sick. Best of mates.

The first van I remember us owning was an old British Telecom van. It was a yellow mini bus that was previously used as a transporter for the engineers. It had a few rows of bench seats and a table up front, with and an empty space at the back where we could store equipment. We boarded up the windows at the back so you couldn’t see into the back compartment. The great thing about this van though was that it was equipped for camping. It had a mini kitchen area between the back row of seats and the equipment compartment. This kitchen area had a worktop, some shelves attached to the wall, a kettle and an electric stove. It was fucking magic since it saved a lot of money on food. We rarely got fed by the venues in those days. No more expensive fast food, now we could scrimp by on the cheapest stuff the supermarket had to offer. Food was by no way any kind of priority in those days, the cheapest way to fill the hole was all that counted.
We bought the yellow van from a gypsy who went by the name of Bimbo. He was this big fucker you wouldn’t want to mess with, a rather infamous character around certain circles in Corby. He was an acquaintance of Gordon’s dad, Moggy. I don’t remember how much we bought the van for, it couldn’t have been much, the twat was always breaking down. It looked good, granted, but it was about as trustworthy as a fart after a vindaloo. Not that we’d taken out any sort of insurance policy with Bimbo.

The first ever real tour we played we were in the Yellow Van. We were doing a tour of the UK with Ninth Circle from Scotland, a lovely bunch of metalheads that we’ve remained friends with until this day. We were fucking chuffed. Our first ever “tour” and we have this ace looking van to travel about in. On the way down to the first show, on the motorway just outside of Hastings we caught sight of what we knew must be the Ninth Circle van, a white Tranny that had a few tell tale signs of being a band van. Namely a few gaffa taped skulls on the sides and a mane of black hair flailing out the passenger window. We’d soon learn that the hair belonged to their bass player Curly. Anyway, we spot them and instruct American George to put his foot down and overtake them. Much obliged he does so and when we pass them their devil horns and gurning are met by our bare arses mooning them. We tear away laughing our heads off and leave them behind. Of course, ten minutes later the van has broken down and then we’re mocked by the tooting of the Ninth Circle van as they pass us pushing our piece of shit up a hill on the side of the road. I’ll never forget Tony pushing beside me and moaning, “I fucking hate our van.” Credit to the Jocks though, they came back and assisted us. A friendship was born.

That van broke down all the fucking time. I think it broke down again upon leaving Hastings the very next night. Or at least on another occasion after Hastings. The thing is we had Frank in the band, our own mechanic, plus Gordon came from a family of car people, so the situation was rarely completely beyond fucked. The blame wasn’t always entirely on the van though…

We’d argue a lot about who was driving, especially if we didn’t have Roddy or American George with us, and even then there was still plenty of arguing. Smartly I fucked off learning to drive until Speedhorn called it a day so I was never much involved in the conversation, but the others, barr John, all had licenses. One time we played Southampton and driver’s duty had fallen upon Gordon. We were heading back to Corby the next day since we didn’t have a gig but Gordon got the hump, and told everyone that if he was driving back to Corby then he was doing it after the show. Just to piss on the party. He pulled the van out of the carpark behind the Joiners with a total gob on. It was already late and the drive back to Corby was a good four hours. As we left someone mentioned that we’d need to fill up on petty at some point. “No, not stopping, Want to get home. We’ll make it on that,” says Gords. Not totally convinced but too tired to be arsed arguing with him. We all fall asleep in the back of the van. An undetermined amount of time later I’m woken by a sheepish looking Gordon, whispering to me. The fucking van has ran out of petrol and we’re on the hard shoulder of the M1, about an hour from home. He’d come to me, not daring to wake Frank and hit him with the news, knowing too well what the consequences would be. I could not fucking believe it. It was three am and I longed for my bed. Telling Frank was unavoidable though, he had to be told, he’d know what to do in the situation. Well Gordon knew what had to be done too to be fair, but the sense was we couldn’t keep it from Engine Man, as Roddy called him. Funnily enough, when Gordon roused Frank and told him the news in the most innocent voice he could muster, Frank wouldn’t even credit him with eye contact. He just rolled over in his seat, refusing to address the situation, “Don’t give a fuck. You sort it”. That kind of tickled Gordon I think, I guess he realised it was fair enough. Gordon trudged off, with an empty Jenny can, taking poor George with him, back to the last service station we’d passed. It seemed like a fucking age waiting for their return, sat there in the back of the van, no engine. Freezing.

The Yellow Van broke down many times over the course of the first year or so of touring, most of my memories of that van seem to be of pushing the twat. The pushing was always preceded by an annoyed sigh from Frank, “Right, get out...” It finally died somewhere up in the North. We’d broken down in the dark somewhere and had no option but to ring roadside service. On occasion when the van was playing up Gordon would call Moggy for advice, if Frank and Gordon couldn’t figure it out for themselves, a couple of times I remember Gordon waking up his dad in the middle of the night, and on those occasions we managed to sort it. But it was never going to last forever. The pick up truck came, towed the van on to the back and we hitched a ride in the cabin. Tony and I were sat in the back, contemplating our finances. We’d paid Bimbo from some advance money we’d received from the label and now we were fucked. “We got that fucking advance and what do we have to show for it? That!” he says, thumbing back to the Yellow Van, now lying dead on the back of the pick up truck, refusing to even look at it. “The rest of it we’ve pissed away”.

Yep. I thought then that the band was fucked. Not only were we without a van, we had no money whatsoever to buy a new one. How could we continue to tour full time without a van? And more to the point, how the fuck were we going to get home tonight? We were miles away.

Needless to say, things worked out. Somehow. We ended up lending Iron Monkey’s old van, the Big Blue. I don’t ever remember paying for it. We just seemed to be using it all of a sudden. Maybe the label had forked out? I guess if they did then it was all coming out of our pocket at some point in the future. I paid it no thought. I didn’t really give a fuck about what money was going where and who owed who what. That was all just boring details.

Big Blue was the hottest van I have ever travelled in. It kind of reminded me of those old vans that they used to use as mobile grocery stores, although fitted out for bands with bench seats and a table. The nice thing was that was no dividing wall between the back and the cabin, just a curtain. It was carpeted all over, walls, floor, ceiling. It was like riding in an oven. We used to travel about in it, the lot of us stripped down to the kecks. It was a heavy old fucker as well. The first time we went out in it was down to a show in Margate. Upon approach to the venue we had to climb a hill and when we looked out the window we noticed that people were walking faster than we were travelling. Fucking embarrassing. Even so, I still thought it was a really big deal, it was Iron Monkey’s old van! It felt like the first step on the way to being a serious band.

We travelled around for a while in Big Blue. We slept in it too. It was pretty torturous since you’d wake up and have to peel your face off the carpet in the morning. It was suffocatingly hot in there, even during the winter. During the summer we’d open the back doors to the storage compartment and grill cheap bangers on disposable barbeques. We thought it was a really nice idea, until we realised that the smoke had permeated the cardboard boxes we had our merch in and we spent the next six months trying to flog t-shirts that stank of smoke. I remember one time we had a grill going on, parked up somewhere by the seaside and someone, could have been Daz, vigorously shook the ketchup bottle without realising the top was off. A huge squirt of the stuff hit Roddy right in the eyeball and we all pissed ourselves laughing. Roddy was fucking furious though, said we could have blinded him.

Roddy never had it easy with us lot. Big Blue had a few problems, it seemed to struggle to pull around it’s own weight a lot of the time and the engine was always running dry radiator fluid. The tank for the fluid was actually inside the van, between the driver and passenger seats up front. One hot day we were trudging down the M11 at a snail’s pace, traffic packed. The engine starts overheating and Roddy starts panicking. We start pouring water into the tank, hoping to keep it cool enough. Not optimal but better than nothing. There are only a few half bottles lying around though and it’s not enough. Roddy, now in full panic, commands us all to piss in the tank. Without questioning we line up and one by one, aim our cocks into the hole. A couple of miles down the line the plastic cap on the tank blows off due to a buildup of pressure from within and a cocktail of steaming hot piss sprays out all over Roddy. I laughed so hard I thought I was going to puke. Big Blue didn’t last much longer than that.

We had a few other vans that flitted in and out of the band’s history. Usually old boats that Frank dug up from somewhere. I have a vague memory of a white Tranny that lost a wheel in Kettering. Just rolled off at a roundabout. Otherwise we had rentals. Until we entered the era of the tour bus.

For a few years it felt like we were fucking Metallica. Not that we were playing to extravagantly big crowds, although we were doing okay. It’s just the high you get when you’re travelling on a tour bus can be intoxicating. It was absolute luxury to wake up in the morning parked outside the next venue, having the whole day to go sightseeing, if you hadn’t spent the whole of the previous night up getting fucked. Which was often the case. We could never travel in a tour bus today on the money we were making then, our tour costs were most likely very unrealistic and swallowed up a lot, if not all of any tour support we got, which of course would all be debt in the future anyway. But we didn’t think about that crap for a few years. And the memories of travelling like royalty for a few years will stay with me forever. Even if I probably wouldn’t do it that way today.

The first bus we ever stepped on board was this old clapped out thing that suited us down to the ground. It had a couple of lounges and beds for all. It looked like it hadn’t had a touch up since 1970 but that just meant we could wreck it. Well, that’s how we interpreted it anyway. Not that we intentionally ever wrecked anything, it’s just the booze normally blurred the edges of right and wrong. Bob, the old boy who drove the bus, loved us all the same. Treated us like we were his own mischievous kids. Our first trip in Bob’s bus was a two day journey from Corby to Helsinki, we were all steamboats before we got to the ferry at Dover and remained in that state until we got to the first gig. The boat trip from Stockholm to Helsinki hardly helping matters, the ferry was like a floating nightclub.

There were some bad things that happened during our time on Bob’s bus, some have been written about on here earlier, some have still to be recounted. My finest memory of Bob’s bus though was being sat there with Frank, Daz and Bianchi, driving in the hills up above Lake Como at four am, listening to Led Zepplin. I was high as a kite and at that moment felt an unwavering love for the guys and life itself. I’d never felt such harmony within the band. Bianchi then asked Bob to pull over so we could look down at the lake, telling us that this was the area his ancestors came from. He was pretty emotional about it. High, obviously. We stood there, breathing in the fresh, early morning air, looking at the astonishing view. It was a beautiful moment. One I’ll never forget.

We had Bob for a couple of tours and then we moved on to Chop, the crazy Welshman with the pierced knob. Everyone in the business seems to have seen that knob. If Bob’s bus was like an old hippie’s caravan, then Chop’s resembled a hotel. And he was extremely proud of it. If you fucked with it, you’d be in the shit. Chop might have looked daft with his Chuckle Brothers style mullet, but he wasn’t to be messed with. We did two European tours and a few festivals, as well as a UK jaunt with Chop. It’s weird how quickly you take things for granted. After only half a year of touring on nightliners it felt like we’d been doing it forever. Things change, quickly. The band was entering a darker period. The fighting began to take on a more sinister edge. Up until then knocking lumps out of each other seemed to work the steam off the tension in the band but now everything was becoming a little underhanded and certain people in the band couldn’t seem to stand being together anymore.

Still, the happy memories are the ones that stick the firmest. Jen and I became official whilst we were touring with Chop. We’d stayed in touch since the first time we’d been in Stockholm and when we were back with Chop, a few months later, supporting Mudvayne of all garbage, and she came down to hangout. She ended up travelling with us to Copenhagen the next day since we had a free day between Stockholm and Hamburg. That night we shared an uncomfortably tight bunk, nothing happened, we just lay there talking all night. It was amazing. It was the night. I knew then that I was in love with her. The next tour we did in Chop’s bus was in the UK with Jen’s band Misdemeanor and Jen travelled with us. She ended up puking in the bunk one night, steamboats. I knew then, as I was doing my best to clean the mess up that we’d probably end up getting married. It was very unlike Jen, she’s had to clean my mess up far more often than vice versa in the years since then. We had two puke incidents in the bus that tour, some girl John had hooked up with puked all over his bunk, he hadn’t even managed to get into bed himself, she just crawled in first and threw her insides up. John looked fucking gutted.
My lasting memory of Chop’s bus though is from that Misdemeanor tour, being sat on it in silence in Oxford, wondering if the world was coming to an end. Two planes had just flown into the World Trade Center in New York and armageddon was being reported on the news. 

I think the Misdemeanor tour was the last we did with Chop. We did a European jaunt with Bacardi Barry, a total sleazebag of a driver who was a raging alcoholic to boot. Bad mix. I’ve written about Barry on these pages before, as have I Bob and Chop, the stories don’t need to be duplicated. Other than Barry I only really remember one Scouse guy, might have been called Craig. He was driving us in Europe on a bus owned by the same company that employed Chop and Bacardi Barry. He backed into a post somewhere in Belgium and the pole ended up piercing the back window. Turns out he was hungover to fuck. He got sent home. Barry turned up as his replacement…

Things were coming to an end as far as the tour buses went. We started hearing rumours that the accounts weren’t adding up, that we owed the bus company money. We had no fucking clue. We left it to others to sort. But that was the first telltale sign that things weren’t exactly as they should be. It was the first thread in the seem that started unravelling and before I knew what was going on the band was falling apart. Burnt out, disillusioned, and broke. We were on the verge of imploding. Something had to give. Tony went first, then Frank. Daz was the last of the originals to go.

We managed one tour of the States, in an RV van driven by a pretty special guy called Dutch. They’re all special. A whole account of that tour and that van lies within these pages. As does the story of the last van we ever bought. Betty. Our love. Betty was unreliable and caused no end of grievance but we loved her dearly. We spent the bulk of our recording budget for the final album on her. Never was money so well spent. The band was happy again. And then we broke up.


Happy or not, ten years was enough. And very few people even give a fuck anymore.

Since Betty I’ve been back travelling in rentals. The quality of rental vans in Sweden is generally pretty good, although there’s always the odd incident here and there. Like heading off from Stockholm to Oslo in the snow and realising half way that the rental company had forgotten to change to winter tires. But otherwise vans have come and gone with little incident. We just hire them, get on them and drive. We usually sleep at the venues or at someone’s house. When we’ve toured the States with Victims we’ve travelled with our great friend Matt Sachs in his green A Team van. Pure luxury. Again, tour diaries exist for those trips. Matt has become a pappa since the last time we toured the States and his long life on the road has come to an end, the green van has gone. I was shocked to hear he’d sold it, that van was a part of Matt it felt like. It was time though, understandably he didn’t want to leave Jasper for weeks and months on end. Matt had put a lot into the scene, more than most. It was time to hand over the keys. It will be strange to be without the green van next time we’re in the States. But that’s life. Every van has it’s day.

I guess it’s something I think more about now than I did before I was a parent, but through all the years of driving we’ve never had an accident. I have friends who have been in some bad smashes, I’ve toured with bands who have later had tragedies befall them. We’ve had some near scrapes though, some too close for comfort. Gordon once drove off the motorway in the wrong direction in Italy. American George nearly drove us head on into an oncoming vehicle at full pelt in The Yellow Van. We’ve had a couple of tires blow out on the way. We’ve had windscreen wipers blow of the side of the Alps in a storm in the middle of the night. We’ve had the engine go up in flames half way up a mountain in Italy and the brakes give up halfway back down it. There have been many a late night sat fighting desperately to keep my eyes open and being struck by rigid panic every time the van swayed. I’ll never forget leaving Gords and Daz on duty up front as Frank drove home after a gig one night. The two of them gabbing like old fogies at the social club, completely oblivious as Frank slept beside them at the wheel, all cozied up against the frame of the door, his thighs blindly steering the van.

I guess after all the years of touring, more than anything, I should be happy to still be around.