Copenhagen

I have to admit, I’ve been feeling the burn a bit this week. It’s been a bit much recently, practising with three different bands/playing football/working/being a dad.  I’m certainly not as young as I used to be and the lack of a night at home in the week takes it’s toll.  Of course, apart from the work part it’s all good fun and I don’t mean to sound like a moaning bastard, it’s just, after last weekend’s drunken escapades in Stavanger I could have done with this trip to Copenhagen being delayed by a week.  That said, as I sat on the short flight to the Danish capital I began to feel the first pangs of thirst… The temptation to buy a beer from the trolley as it rolled past me was great but I refrained.  There would be plenty of time for that later on.  I could wait a few more hours.

I’ve been to Copenhagen many times but despite that fact, I know very little of the city.   Apart from a couple of venues and a couple of bars near them I’ve only ever really explored the city centre and Freetown Cristiania.  Funnily enough Copenhagen was the place that Jen and I officially became a couple and we’ve been back once together to commemorate the occasion but even then we ended up at a hotel in the city centre and didn’t explore too far afield.  Strange really, not usually our style.  This weekend I was looking forward to righting that particular wrong.

Something else I was looking forward to this weekend was playing the legendary Youth House, being that it’s a staple of the punk community in Europe.  Of course, it’s a different place now.  The famous building in Norrebro that was the scene of the riots a few years ago has since been flattened by bulldozers and wrecking balls and all that’s left is a gaping hole surrounded by a yellow, plywood fence.  The new building is a little further down Norrebrogade in the area of Bispebjerg, something that took the punks sixteen months of weekly demonstrations to obtain.  It might well be a different building but the foundations are the same and I was thrilled by the prospect of adding our mark, no matter how small, on it’s history.  

Once again we were all on different flights.  I was hooking up with Kev later, who had been in K Town since the day before with the rest of the BUGS gang who were playing tonight, but Lucas and Viktor would be meeting up with us tomorrow since they had other plans.  The fest we’re playing is a two-dayer in honour of a friend of Kev’s, Charlie, who is celebrating his birthday by putting on a host of predominantly grindcore bands.  My previous experiences with Victims playing grindcore festivals have been positive so I was relatively sure we’d go down pretty well with the crowd.  I figure that most grindcore has punk in it's roots anyway.

We were originally supposed to be playing tonight but we’d since been moved, although only after we’d booked our flights.  A night at home with the family would have been nice after a hectic week but I’m here now and looking forward to a night of partying with the BUGS gang.  I figure I may as well just get on with things...

I arrive at the airport and decline any attempt at conversing in a mixture of Swedish/Danish whilst purchasing tickets for the train in to town.  Norwegian I can handle but the dialect the people use in this country is way beyond me.  When I hear the Danish tongue it always reminds me of the dancing man from the Black Lodge in Twin Peaks, the little guy who talks backwards.  No offence to my Danish friends intended.  It’s a quick ride into the city and I arrange to meet up with Kev and Jamie at Norreport, the major station on the northern side of the city.   Not entirely sure of where I’m going but I head off in search of a coffee shop since I’m a little ahead of the guys who are making their way on foot from Cristiania.  I find nothing to satisfy my needs though.  A little disappointed I settle on some rank 7 Eleven coffee and stand about amongst the thousands of parked bicycles by the station entrance waiting for the boys, the glare from the sun stinging my eyes as the chill in the air bites at my bones.  I should have taken a thicker jacket with me.

The guys arrive after twenty minutes or so and the first thing Kev tells me is that he’s hungover to fuck.  They’d had quite the night apparently.  We jump on a bus that takes us up Norrebrogade to Anders’ house. I’ve never met Anders but heard a lot about him and seen countless photos of him wearing DB t-shirts.  He and Kev met whilst Kev was here at some gig a couple of years back or something, their drunken minds finding each other in the haze.  Anders has since stopped drinking because as Kev puts it, he’s crazy enough without it.    

He’s one of the main guys involved with the fest and sings in a couple of the bands that are playing, one of which is called Märsvin, the Scandinavian word for guinea pig, named such in acknowledgement of the cute little animal that Anders loves so much.  We jump off the bus about ten minutes down the road and head to his flat.  As soon as you walk in the smell of weed smacks you in the face.  I follow Kev and Jamie into the living room and find Wayne, Clara and Kiwi Chris lying about on a patchwork of old mattresses, a haze of thick smoke hovering about their heads, curtains drawn shutting out the daylight.  The wall behind the door is lined with cages that house the guinea pigs.  I wasn’t previously aware of any allergy I have to them but felt my eyes burning as soon as I walked into the flat.  I’ve slept in far worse places than this in my life and I really don’t want to be that guy but I know that there is no chance I can sleep here tonight.  Apparently Hannah had crashed here last night but that had proven enough for her and she has since booked herself into a hostel with Viv and Misa who came in today.  The fact is there are rooms at the Youth House for bands to sleep in and this place will be far too crowded for us all anyway so I’m taking my chances on there being a bed for me there.  I’m just hoping that the fact I’m not playing until tomorrow will have no bearing on the matter.

Kev, Jamie and I leave the other three there and head up to the house.  We arrive as they’re checking the PA.  A familiar scene.  Not much to do except hang about.  The place itself looks great although I’m immediately struck by the size of the stage and the room it’s in.  The building adjacent this one, just across the courtyard, feels like it would be a lot better since it’s way smaller.  The thing that’s mainly playing on my mind is the fact the Hårda Tider have a huge release party in Malmö tomorrow and Copenhagen’s brilliant Night Fever are playing with them.  Being that Malmö is just across the water it’s generally expected that a huge chunk of the scene here will be heading over there.  Just can’t help feeling that they should have moved this gig to the smaller stage… As I’m thinking about this one of the guys from the venue, who happens to be smoking a comedy sized spliff at the time, then tells me that Dogmatist have pulled out of the show tomorrow.  Fucking gutted about that.  Without wanting to sound disrespectful they were the band I was most looking forward to seeing.  Apparently they pulled out yesterday citing the fact they haven’t rehearsed for a while as the reason for their withdrawal.  If that’s so then it sounds kind of weak.  I can’t help wondering if they’re going to that party tomorrow...

This place is great though.  I can imagine the courtyard between the two buildings would be a fun place to hang out in the summer, with the cocktail bar and barbecue area.  It must have been a blast here at the K Town Hardcore Fest in June.  I was the only Bastard not in attendance at that particular event.  It seemed like fun.  We have to try and get on that next year.

They seem to check the PA for hours.  And then they check the drums for ages when they’re done with that. I’m chuffed to find that there is a bed for me in the band dormitories upstairs anyway.  I pick a mattress in the corner of the bottom row of bunks and throw my bag on to it so as to lay claim to it.  It seems safe enough to leave our gear here.  There are signs all about the place asking others to be respectful of those sleeping and the band names allocated to each room are clearly marked on the door.  I think respect is a big thing here.  It feels good like a good environment.  Along the corridor from the dormitories are some band rehearsal spaces and a studio, as well as an office area and toilet and shower room.  In the building opposite, above the small bar stage is the kitchen and dining room where they have “People’s Kitchen” every Thursday, an event where they make cheap food for anyone who needs it and where a lot of people meet and share ideas,  This whole place is quite an impressive set up.

Whilst waiting for dinner to arrive a few of us sit outside in the courtyard nursing some beers.  As much as I’m in the mood for a pilsner I have a hard time truly enjoying the one currently in my hand due to the fact I’m both freezing and hungry.  After a half hour the eternal soundcheck comes to a halt and we take ourselves into the relative warmth of the stone building.  We find Anders tucking into what looks like some superb food and we make our way excitedly towards the kitchen.  The grub doesn’t disappoint.  The guys have put on some delicious bean chilli with tortilla breads and a guacamole to fucking die for.  All vegan of course.  I notice the sign on the kitchen door warning that anyone bringing food into the building of the non-vegan variety will be told to fuck off immediately.

Feeling completely recharged we head back downstairs to the now open venue, ready to give the bar the attention it deserves.  They have a bunch of different beers and shots on offer, none of it costing much more than a couple of quid.  Anders asked me if earlier if I’d wanted my DB beer tickets today already but I think for these prices I can save my coupons for tomorrow.

The place has barely been open an hour when I see some fucked up punk kid, very fucked up actually, being dragged out of the building by two of the house residents, each taking a leg, the punk so wasted he’s completely out cold.  They just drag him across the floor and out the door, his hands trailing above his head behind him.  I guess the beer is pretty spicy in this place.  It’s going to be a long night.

It’s going to be an even longer night for Kev and the guys though, BUGS aren’t playing until one twenty in the morning.  That in mind, Kev does a pretty good job of staying sober for the early part of the night.  As usual, I start to feel drunk after a couple of beers and by the time Viv, Misa and Kiwi Chris turn up I’m well on my way.  I go through the assortment of beers and each one just seems to get stronger.  After polishing off what must be my fourth I make an inward agreement with myself to take the foot of the gas a little but before I can raise my hand in polite refusal Misa has bought me another.  She, as always, is carrying two for herself, one in each hand, chuffed as fuck.

Most of the bands on tonight go by me without grabbing much attention, but there are a couple who stick out.  Slow Plague open the day, Kev laughing about how they always seem to open these fests on a big stage, referring to Fuk Reddin a few weeks back.  There again aren’t that many in the place to see them but I enjoy them as always.  Preggy Punch, despite the frankly ludicrous name, play a really nice set of punk influenced grind.  What grabs me more than anything though is the guitarist/singer, who looks like a computer science student and wears this mischievous grin on his face the whole time.  He marks the end of each song with a two thumbs up signal.  I don’t know what it is but I love him.

Anders’ first band, Ajuna, are for me the band of the night though.  It’s not my favourite style of music by any stretch, but the atmospheric/epic/melodic black metal doom they play, sounding like a cross between Envy, Neurosis and Burzum is executed so expertly that you can’t help being blown away.  And I don’t know how they do it but their sound is ten times louder and clearer than everyone else’s which just fucking floors me.  But all this being as it may, what truly astounds me is Anders’ voice.  To look at him up there with his crustlocks, Bermuda shirt and Adidas jogging pants you’d never imagine he’d be capable of delivering such a thing, but his high pitched screaming sounds like the fucking Devil himself.  He starts the show on his knees, rocking back and forth to the slowly building music and then it just comes out.  Some of the screams he exposes the crowd to just seem to go on forever without the slightest hint of breaking.  I’m at exactly the right level of tipsy to enjoy Ajuna to the fullest and by the time their half hour set is done I’m left completely buzzed.

After Ajuna the night really starts to take off and with each beer I let go a little more.  Märsvin, Anders other band play a little later and as good as they are, and as entertaining as Anders is once again, I’m a little too fuzzy to appreciate them fully.  Something that has not helped is the horrible drink I’ve just bought that I’ve had to give to Viv, who is only more than happy to accept.  I’d come out of the bogs and noticed that at a table located behind the sound desk appeared to be a food stall, indeed they had a sign advertising Langos, the deep fried bread infamous at Gröna Lund tivoli.  Drunk enough to convince myself I’m starving, I order one.  I’m therefore shocked to the very fucking core when they then pour what appears to be some sort of moonshine substance into a plastic glass and ask what soda I want with it!  Completely confused I manage to answer with, “Errr...the red one I guess”.  It tastes fucking foul.  I manage to drink about a quarter of it before giving it to Viv, who wolfs it down.  I guess Langos is something completely different in this country.
It’s around one thirty when BUGS play and amazingly Kev has stayed sober for the gig.  They whale out their noise for about fifteen minutes, Wayne flying about the dance floor, the rest of them battering it out on the high stage.  The crowd, most likely as pissed as I am, look pretty scoobied.  And the sound guy is obviously a bit lost.  This is most noticeable when Wayne notches up the delay on his voice pedal, building it up into a whirlwind of chaotic sound and the guy immediately cuts it out of the PA, as if he’s scorning Wayne for being a naughty little boy.  I love watching BUGS all the same, I always do.  Hannah is entertainment on her own behind the kit and it’s always great watching Kev play Street Bass.  I fucking pissed myself laughing earlier when I saw his setlist written out, it was nothing but numbers, which of course denote the frets on his bass he is to follow.  Punk by numbers.  Genius.

After BUGS, the rest of the night turns to mush.  Kev and the guys seem to go into turbo mode and they’re all seemingly as pissed as I am within a half hour of their set ending.  I don’t remember a whole lot from this point on except having a pointless conversation with Luk, who was as drunk as I was and in another part of the city with his old college mates.  We spent about five minutes repeating what the other was saying, like a couple of pissed up parrots.  The other things I remember is some guy hooking up with our crowd and sharing a bottle of Ballentines about, and I remember Kev break dancing to the last band.  Funny thing is he wasn’t anywhere near the stage at the time but rather at the back of the room by the bar.  And what always makes me laugh when Kev break dances (he does this regularly when pissed) is that he puts his cap down on the floor like an Eighties disco dancer would her handbag, and dances around that.

It must be four in the morning when we head up to the beds.  Me and Jamie are pretty fucked but compared to Kev we’re dancer.  We throw Kev into his bed which is one of the two campers that are placed in the middle of the room and then head down to the toilet for a piss before lights out.  When we get there the door is locked.  It stays that way for about another ten minutes, until Jamie opens the lock from the outside by some measure or another and we find Anders inside, sleeping on his knees with his head resting on the bog seat.  As soon as we open the door he jumps up and walks off like it’s nothing, bidding us goodnight.
I wake up, or I should say I’m awoken, at around eight am.  It’s daylight outside and the room is brightened by the white sky peering through the thin curtains.  It’s not this that has awoken me though.  What’s awoken me is some cheeky fucking punk kid who has crawled onto the mattress beside mine and simply taken my fucking quilt!  I roll over, amazed to find the cunt snuggled under my cover.  I rip it back off of him and turn over again.  The fucker takes it back again.  I shit you not, we spend about two minutes in a tug-of-war over my quilt, neither of us once saying a word to each other.  He finally gives up and fucks off and I roll back over to sleep wondering if I’d been dreaming.

I wake up for good around ten.  Kev is furious.  He was disturbed a little earlier by two or three guys hanging out in the room having a loud chat, one of them had actually been cunty enough to park their arse on Kev’s bed.  So much for the signs telling people to respect those wishing to sleep!
Kev is in a rough old way, he looks like he’s been dragged through a hedge backwards.  Pablo and Raquel are up and about and inform us that breakfast is ready.  Jamie and I do our best to get Kev out of bed but he’s a mess.  He tells us he’s been up in the night vomming.  We finally get him up and he spends the next ten minutes walking about in just his t-shirt and pants, looking confused.

I’m not that hungry and in all honesty feeling a little shit myself, it’s only the state of Kev that makes me feel any good at all.  We sip on a bit of breakfast coffee and chew some sarnies before heading into town for a bit of air.  The shower seems to be broken so we all head out stinking.  We find a decent little café on Norrebrogade opposite the site of the old Youth House.  The cappuccino I order hits the fucking bullseye and I immediately feel a lot better.  I’m recharged and ready to go for a further walk now but Kev has just realised he’s got sick on his t-shirt and wants to go back to change.  “Even for me that’s pretty fucking rubbish” he mumbles to himself, a little depressed.

We head into town, via Assistens Cemetery where Hans Cristian Andersen is buried, and make our way to Cristiania for some lunch.  They have a great vegetarian café there and Kev, Pablo, Raquel and myself tuck into some of the best potato salad I’ve ever eaten.  The spuds are marinated in sesame seed oil and are simply divine.  Before long Jamie, Misa, Viv and Hannah arrive and after eating themselves we go for a wander before stopping at another café.  Last time I was here I watched Roddy go to space on some hash coffee, which was quite an amazing event, but there’s none of that today.  We simply enjoy a latte in the sun.
Kev and I eventually head back towards Norrebro and after stopping at Anders’ place so Kev can finally change his t-shirt we head to Mikkeller Bar to meet up with Vik and Bea for a couple of drinks.  Kev hates the place, labelling it hipster and overpriced, but at forty kronors a pint I find it more than reasonable.  And the beer is of course superb.  I couldn’t imagine Vik coming to Copenhagen without visiting this place.  I have to laugh when Kev goes to the bar to order a pint, any fucking pint will do of course, and the poor bartender starts to give him the background story on the particular ale he’s ordered.  Apparently he’d originally brewed it for his wedding.  It’s excruciating watching this poor sap tell his tale as Kev ignores him, obviously finding the whole thing about as interesting as watching paint dry.

After a while Lucas and our friend Cristiano, who is from the same city as Luk and used to sing in his old band Avalanche, turn up.  Cristiano and his wife Cristiane live here now and it’s with them I’ll be staying tonight.  We head up to the venue around seven, a few hours before we’re due to play.  By the time we arrive back at the Youth House I’m really starting to feel how bad the hangover is that I’ve been carrying around all day.  The thing is, I got a bit of a hit from the two beers at Mikkeller Bar and for a short while felt pretty good again but the hit wore off on the five minute bus journey here and all of a sudden I’m feeling worse than I have done all day.  The thought of playing a show in a couple of hours time is not all that appealing right now.

The London lot are in the house and seem more willing than I in any case.  Misa is walking around with her customary smile and two bottles of beer.  I figure I may as well give it a go and get one for myself but it doesn’t sit right, one of those that takes about an hour to go down and by the end of the bottle you’re left battling through a warm, sloshy dribble, but battle on you do, for some reason.

It’s really cold tonight, both inside and outside the house.  I can’t seem to get warm.  The beer isn’t helping.
A gang of mates have now arrived, a large contingent made up of people Lucas studied with.  Of the people actually in the venue right now we I’d say about sixty percent of them are with us.  I can’t help wishing the show was in the small bar.  The size of the crowd gradually rises as the night progresses though, if only a little.  There are probably about eighty people in the place by the time we take to the stage.
To be fair I’m pretty pleased with the amount of people hanging out to watch us but something doesn’t really feel right as we stand about waiting to play.  For a start, both me and Kev are hungover to piss, Kev had just moments before asked the time honoured question, “How the fuck are we gonna do this?” as we stood around waiting for the grind band before us to finish their set.  But it wasn’t the hangover, I’d been there before and as shite as I might feel I know that I’ll get through it and more than likely feel a whole lot better afterwards.  The nagging feeling inside me was due to the fact that we felt completely unprepared.  It can be a bit hard since Kev doesn’t live in the same country as us and that being so we don’t always get the chance to practice as a full band before a gig, but when that’s the case we have to make sure we have our shit together before we play.  And tonight didn’t really feel like we’d managed to do that.  We didn’t know if we were doing an intro or not, there had been murmured discussions both for and against, Vik didn’t have a set list and only a short while ago he didn’t have drumsticks, I didn’t have a tuning pedal that was working properly and Kev didn’t know what song was what.  All in all it was a little stressed.  And it showed, at least to my ears, when we played the intro twice and left Kev standing around on stage like a plum and then when we did get started for real, we played everything at about twice the speed it should be.  Thankfully these things are usually only noticed by the band members on stage, at least when you’re an unknown band like ours.

Those who were in the crowd seemed to have a good time all the same, and by the end of the short set they were starting to throw themselves about.  I ended up playing the show on completely borrowed gear, except for my guitar.  This big guy with a military haircut and bulging biceps who had played in the grind band preceding us had come up to me before we played and said I could just plug my guitar into his pedals and amp and go for it.  Really nice of him.  He came back up to me as soon as we were finished with a huge smile on his face, full of praise.  “You guys were awesome!”  I thank him although I’m not overly convinced myself..

“No seriously, that was the like the best show I’ve seen this year!”  Ok, you’re actually serious.. He then tells me he’s going to buy a Telecaster, inspired as he was by the sound I had from mine.  Funny how differently you can experience a show on stage and off it.  Even Lucas’ designer friend, Katrine, was in to it, kind of,  “You guys were nowhere near as horrible as I thought you would be!”  And with that she bought a shirt.  Even Jamie said to me afterwards, "I'd like to see you guys play when you're straight since every time I see you you're complaining about feeling fucked and yet you still go nuts!"

Even so, I couldn’t help feeling nagged by the gig and the other guys were the same.  We dropped the ball a couple of times and even if no one else noticed it, we did, and that’s enough.  I know this is punk rock and it shouldn’t really matter, but I’ve been hanging out with Johan Victims long enough to know that punk rock or not, you should still play fucking tight and take pride in what you do.  That said, we’re a young band, not in age obviously, except Luk, but in historical terms and we’re still finding our way.  There’s another gig tomorrow and we’ll kick the shit out of that one.

Last night was a very fucking wet occasion and tonight, at least for myself, was never going to be the same. I tried drinking a few beers but I could as well have been drinking cat piss such was my enthusiasm for them. The London lot were having a good time it seemed though.  Viv tried to convince me to take a drink with her from the Langos stall, but I couldn’t bring myself to it.  I eventually caved into to her considerable pressure and took a shot of the filthy booze that was the core ingredient of said drink and regretted it immediately. Much to my annoyance I noticed that they actually were selling Langos, as in the deep fried bread, tonight too.  Bastard.

Luk and I spend the rest of the night taking turns at the merch stall, the pair of us a little worn out from the night before.  Him and Vik had been out with Solomon from Night Fever and that always ends in carnage. Cristiane was still in bed apparently, suffering the hangover of all hangovers.  There are a couple of other bands playing that we take little notice of and then ending the night is Agathocles. Seriously, how long have these guys been around?  They’re entertaining only in the most novelty of ways and they play for far too long, of course.  The bassist/singer ends the set by doing the last few songs without his guitar and without his t-shirt in the crowd, prancing about like a tit.  I don’t have anything against them really, just don’t really get "fun" grind.

When they’re finished we pack up and commence the ritual of saying goodbye to everyone which takes a while.  There is a metal disco starting up as we leave but I’m not all that tempted to stay.  As it seems now the party is pretty flat and even Kev is sober and talking about going to bed..  With it being already past midnight it feels too late to start kicking things off now and the thought of sleeping on Cristiano’s sofa is far more appealing.  Even so, Vik seems to have gotten himself a little sauced is talking after party.  We all nod in feigned enthusiasm and make to leave the Youth House, saying bye to Kev and the guys, but as soon as we walk out on to the street I confirm with Luk and Cristiano that we’re going back to his place to sleep, right?  They both nod, to my relief.

Vik and Bea are staying at another friend of theirs, Sander, who lives a short distance away.  Sanders is drunk and when he’s drunk he is brutal in his piss taking.  He let’s Vik have the full brunt of it, much to our amusement. Vik is asking him when the next bus is coming, a simple enough question but Sander berates him, “What the fuck am I?  Your babysitter?  Read the timetable!”  as he sways back and forth on his bike.

Sander is determined he’s going to another bar, calling us pussies and shouting “Yolo” a lot.  Vik and Bea end up taking a taxi back to his place on their own.  After a lot of farting around at the bus stop we finally head off back to Cristiano’s place, picking up some pizza for supper.  On the walk back to the flat we pass a drunk guy coming the other way.  Without breaking stride he asks us, “Have you guys seen some nigger kids?”  Before we have time to process the question the guy has gone, we look at each other a little stunned and then burst out laughing.  Random.

We end the night sat around the table in Cristiano’s flat, talking in hushed tones so not to disturb his hungover wife.  The pizza is great, the sofa even better.  I fall into a most welcome sleep shortly after curling up on it.
We spend half of the next day lazing around watching CNN and other tripe on tv.  At one point Cristiano puts on the song Land Down Under by Men at Work on the turntable, something that pricks my ears up. Nice one Cris, perfect for a Sunday morning.  I’m a little taken aback when the next song comes on and I realise he’s actually playing the whole lp, that he actually owns the lp in fact.  There I was thinking he was just putting on a novelty song for effect but no, he’s into it for real.

Cristiane arises and makes breakfast, excusing her absence yesterday and telling us how bad her hangover was.  One of those evil bastards that has you confined to your bed all day.  I sympathise.  Breakfast and coffee is most welcome and after a shower and yet more sitting around the four of us head into town for some lunch.  We end up at a cool café called Laundromat where you can indeed do your washing whilst eating, or vice versa maybe.  It’s a nice place though, right in the heart of Vesterbro, and their Portobello burger is simply superb.

Vik and Bea meet up with us afterwards, although Bea has to head back home pretty much straight away.  I feel for them, seeing them saying goodbye to each other.  I remember those days when me and Jen first got together.  Horrible and wonderful at the same time.  If you last the distance then those days apart pay dividends in the long run though.

Vik, Luk and I head to the station to take the train to Valby, where tonight’s show is being held.  It’s out in the south western suburbs and accessible only by this overground train.  I get the feeling it’s going to be a lowly attended show, given the location and the fact it’s Sunday night.  I’d spoken to Anders yesterday about when we should meet up today and he’d suggested we head out here at eleven am.  That struck me as utter madness.  Why the fuck would we want to hang out at the venue all day?  It was around six when we got there, Kev, Jamie and the rest had been here since around one.  It takes us a while to find the place, we ask a few people in the area, including the girl at the 7 Eleven but nobody has even heard of the street it’s on. We eventually find it though, not five minutes walk from the station, and there we see Viv, Clara and Wayne walking across the road a little further up.  “Oh my God it’s Diagnosis? Bastard!” Viv screams at us waving as we hurry on past.

The venue is a really cool place.  A three story community centre with a venue in the basement.  The gig room is really small and sixty or seventy people here would look good.  Jamie is taking care of the sound tonight since whoever was supposed to be doing so hasn’t turned up.  Maybe it’s just as well.  They serve up some great looking pizza but I’m not really in the mood for anything except sitting in a warm, cosy bar somewhere and having a pint of draft malt beer.  There doesn’t seem to be much on offer around here though and as it happens they have a little bar downstairs.  Anders has brought a couple of crates of Tuborg with him and as appreciated as that is I need a pint, and at twenty kronors a pop I’m more than happy to pay for it.  Kev is hungover again, turns out he persevered with the metal disco last night and ended up dancing with the Agathocles guys before going to bed in a haze sometime around five...

The first band on tonight is a local grind/metal band with a posh English guy on guitar/vocals.  There are about ten people watching them, not including our lot, that seem to be friends of theirs.  I watch on slightly intrigued as they seem to be having "technical difficulties" and whilst whatever the problem is is being solved Posh English starts telling jokes.  Not very good ones.  When no one laughs he changes tack and asks if anyone has any weed. It's a bit painful.  Also quite eye catching is the very serious looking drummer they have, a finely chiseled, Aryan looking specimen of a bloke playing with his top off, obviously chuffed with his muscles.  He looks very, very serious.  The bass player looks friendly enough.  I remember little else of their show.

We're still waiting for friends of ours to turn up, the need for their presence all the more vital when the ten or so mates of the first band fuck off after they've played.  Well, they head outside to smoke weed with Posh English for the rest of the night anyway.  Cristiano, Cristiane, Sander and crew eventually turn up, just as well since Sander has a bag of our merch that we need to have to sell to nobody.  There was talk of Solomon coming over tonight but I was sceptical considering they had the big party in Malmö last night.  He never turns up.  By the time BUGS play, there are just our lot, Anders, a couple of people from the venue and a couple of the first bands friends watching.  And the serious drummer is playing fussball with someone else. That's it.  Fuck it, it's still fun watching them play, and they sound good!  Between songs at one point I hear Viv, who has now taken over control of the lighting, "Would you like another colour?  Maybe a bit of blue?". Brilliant.

BUGS finish up and except for Kev, we swap places with them and start or short set.  It sounds better tonight than it did yesterday, and the tempo is a bit more controlled, but it's still not quite right.  I do feel that I have a lot more energy though and it's nice being back on the floor where we belong.  There is a bit of a fuck up when Vik starts the wrong song at one point, leading me to scream, "For fuck sakes!" but it's born more out of adrenalin than actually being that pissed off about it.  I always get a bit of a rush going when it feels like we're up against it.   After the show Anders gives me a hug and says, "Hey Mr. Crazy Guitarist" with a big smile on his face.  I guess it was a bit more of a spectacle tonight.

Following us, Slow Plague play the best set I've seen by them since that first time in Sheffield.  Fucking brilliant, they're perfect for these small, dark venues.  And the beer is tasting a little better tonight, giving me a bit of a kick to enjoy their torturous music with.  Tonight is also Pablo's birthday, which adds to the spirit of togetherness I feel with my friends here in the arse end of Copenhagen.  This might be a poorly attended show on a wet Sunday night in Copenhagen, but I'd rather be here than stood at work on a dead Sunday night in the bar.  Whether I'd rather be here than at home with my family, cosying up on the sofa in front of the tv is another matter...

After Slow Plague are done we pack up the gear as quick as we can.  As we're going about our business Kev walks over to the stage area where Pablo is packing up his pedals and stuff, "Nice one, good work this weekend mate!"

"Ah thanks, you too" replies Pablo, looking up with an expression of gratitude on his coupon.  "Not you, I was talking to Street Bass!" Kev snorts as he walks past Pablo and gives his bass a stroke.
Luk and I take care of the merch, although there isn't much to take care of.  One girl, I think she belongs to the first band's crowd, wants a shirt and inquires about the cost of them.  Luk tells her eighty kronors, she fishes around in her pocket and comes back with two, Luk bends down to the bag to retrieve a shirt.  I have to stop him.  "Mate, we can't fucking sell a shirt for two kronors when we're asking for eighty!  That's taking the piss!"

"Yeah I guess so."  He's just so eager for people to wear our shirts, it's an automatic reaction to just grab one from the bag.  I mean, we're trying our best to be a DIY punk band and keep our merchandise at good prices, but there has to be a limit.  They cost four quid to make, we can't sell them for twenty fucking pence! We end up selling the shirt to the girl for something like fifty kronors, once she's gone off and scrounged together some smash from her mates.

We don't hang around for all that much longer.  Most of our crew have already left and the London lot are staying with Anders I guess.  Vik, Luk and I catch the last train back to Vesterport and head to yet another pizza place.  We go back to Cristiano's place and eat it quietly as our hosts sleep.  Vik gets a cab back to Sander's place around one thirty and Luk and I hit the hay.  It's been a good weekend but I'm fucking knackered now and ready to go home.

We're up early in the morning for our flight to Stockholm.  As usual, I can't sleep.

Stavanger

Battle of Santiago doesn’t play that many shows.  In fact, three of us, Paddan, Olle and I meet to walk our dogs on a more regular basis that we do to practice.  But the odd show we do manage to perform every year usually turns out to be something a little away from the ordinary.  This weekend was to follow the usual theme.  We were flying to Stavanger, the “oil capital of Norway” to play a poetry festival. We’d be performing with Stig Larsson, not the dead guy but the other one, the old poet who made a name for himself in Swedish culture circles back in the seventies and eighties as somewhat of an outlandish, outspoken, heavy drinking rogue.  It was bound to be an interesting weekend…

We made a record with Stig a couple of years ago.  At the time I was pretty confused by the whole concept. Erik had said to me about the idea of recording with Stig.  “Stig?  Which Stig?” I asked.

The conversation bounced back and forth awhile, “E: From Rosa Drömmar. G: The old piss head guy? E: Yeah, he’s gonna do some reading and we’ll play music to it. G: What do you mean read? What’s he gonna read? E: Some of his poetry. G: Aha, I had no idea. E: He’s pretty well known. G: Aha, I thought he was just an old boy from the bar who likes the sauce. E: Well, he is. But he’s a pretty well known poet too.”

The record was recorded live with Stig reading and the guys playing some instrumental pieces written specifically for the record.  The only person who was missing was myself since I was on tour with Victims at the time and the whole idea had been conceived, written and recorded within the space of a week.  I went into the studio when I got home and put some guitar bits down on it.  The record came out about eighteen months later on our friend’s label, Svedjebruk…

We’d performed the thing with Stig a couple of times at Rönnels antique book store in Stockholm since. The first time went well, the second had a lot of people in attendance but Stig was pretty pissed and gave a somewhat shaky performance.  I wasn’t really expecting any other offers to come in but Stig is somewhat of a “cult figure” in this part of the world and sure enough, a few months after the second Rönnels gig we received an offer from this poetry festival in Stavanger. Flights, hotel for two nights and five grand Norwegian. Why the fuck not?

And then about a week before the trip someone from the festival’s production office rang Erik and asked if we’d be interested in playing some music with four other foreign poets that would be reading before our thing with Stig.  At first Erik tried to explain that we really didn’t play together that much and that we’d have a hard time getting things together in time.  They said that was too bad, and that just so we knew they’d double the pay.  Erik immediately changes tune, tells them he’ll ring them back in five.  All of a sudden we’ve got four songs to write.

Erik had some rough ideas anyway and it didn’t take too long to get it together.  The hardest thing as usual was getting everyone to the rehearsal space at the same time.  Olle, the bassist runs his own restaurant and works an ungodly amount of hours, I play in three bands, run a bar and have a baby at home, Erik plays in another band that rehearses an insane amount, Tompa has a quite astonishing social life and Paddan plays with a bunch of other people and has a dog.  It’s not easy.  I managed to make it to three practices, the final one being with Stig the night before we left.  Everything was sounding good.  I liked the four new songs. Amazing how Erik just seems to pluck them from thin air.

So we set off for Stavanger late afternoon on the Friday. We’d met up at the practice room, which is the same place where we used to practice with Victims, coincidentally.  As I walked up the hill from Rådmansgatan station I’d found Stig sitting on the wooden bench outside, under the statue  of Stringberg looking out over Tegnerlunden park, looking a little lost.  He told me he’d been sat there awhile, waiting for the other guys.  I noted the fact that the gate was unlocked and the door downstairs was open suggested to me the guys were already here.  Stig tells me he’s heading down to the Queen’s Head for a drink and he’d meet us back here in a half hour in time for the taxi that was booked.

He came back with a fair whiff of booze about him.  We got in the cab and headed to Arlanda where Stig battered us with stories of travels, booze and drugs co-starring an assortment of famous people.  I sat and listened to the most of what he had to say but I seemed to be the only one to do so.  I guess the other guys see the fucker a lot more often and have probably heard it all before.  I wonder if they view me in the same light?  I’m always banging on about stories from the past after all…

When we get to the airport Erik suddenly seems to be having a hard time of things, freaking out a little.  He tells us he’s shit scared of airports and gets really claustrophobic on flights.  This is news to me.  I think it’s just an excuse for him to drink Jagermeister, which is what he seems to drink exclusively these days.  Whilst we’re waiting for the flight, all bar Tompa are stupid enough to take a snack and a beer at the poshest restaurant in the airport.  Tompa goes for Max which is a way wiser move.  The beers at this place cost a hundred fucking kronor and the sarnie comes in at just under one sixty.  And we’re supposed to be heading to Norway’s most expensive city?  It can’t be as bad as this place that’s for fucking sure!  To top things off, the cheeky cunt stood behind the bar then puts a guilt trip on us, pleading for a fucking tip.  He stands there and gives us the exact instructions on how we leave said tip whilst paying by card, guiding us all individually as we take turns to pay.  “If you would like to leave a tip, then you type in the amount you want to leave, followed by the total amount and your pin code.”  For Olle and myself this is shocking behaviour.  We both work in the branch and asking for tips is just something you don’t do, not saying of course that tips aren’t appreciated but you don’t fucking beg for them. This isn’t the USA.  First Olle leaves a minimal amount and then after receiving the exact same spiel I follow suit.  Erik is having none of it though.  “If you would like to leave a,” Erik presses cancel and moves straight to pin code, “No. Okay”.  Erik takes his card and walks away.  Wish I’d done the same.

We fly west to Stavanger on one of those little Indiana Jones propeller planes that cruise at something like five hundred feet.  I’d never been on one before and the sight of the thing had made me a little nervous to be honest, fuck knows what Erik and Paddan must have been going through since they’re both terrified as it is, but in actual fact the whole experience was a pleasant one.  The flight was smooth and the scenery in to Stavanger as we descended, seemingly skimming the mountain tops, was breathtaking.  In the midst of this mild elation I broke my gaze away to the seat across the aisle that Stig had previously been occupying and noticed he was gone, this long after the fasten seatbelt signs had been lit.  I gave an inquisitive glance to Olle and Paddan but they were as scoobied as me.  “What the fuck?  We can’t lose him now!” decried Paddan. It turns out the old sod had wandered off down the aisle looking for his bag and had been sat in another seat by one of the stewardesses.

We arrive at the small airport and are met by a big friendly looking guy who will take us to the venue we’re playing tonight.  We’ll soundcheck first and then leave our bags at the boat hostel where the Santiago boys will be staying, Stig has another, presumably costlier hotel, and then we’ll be taken to get some food.  All this is explained in Norwegian and I’m inwardly pleased with myself that I can understand about eighty percent of it.

It’s a short trip into town and I’m very pleasantly surprised to find that the venue is a cool little bar with the floor for a stage and a small balcony facing it.  I’d had no idea what to expect but I’m glad we’re here and not in some stiff theatre or wooden hall.  The first thing that strikes me about this place is that it would be a great venue for Victims or Diagnosis to play.  It certainly feels more punk than poetry.  The soundcheck goes by without a hitch and as far as I’m concerned, the sound is perfect.  Not over-the-top-loud, but enough, and you can hear everyone clearly, something not always easily achieved with a band that has three guitarists playing different things.

Stig has already disappeared to his hotel and we won’t see him again until later on in the evening.

If the venue looked more like the place for a punk gig than poetry reading then we were left in no doubt where we were having walked into the dining room to grab some dinner.  Erik points out immediately that the other people in this place are not of the same ilk as we.  This puts him on edge.  Not that he’s intimidated by the upper echelons of the Scandinavian arts scene, more that he’s annoyed by them.  The food is pretty fucking exquisite though and we wolf it down with a glass of wine, although we enjoy it sat on a sofa in adjoining room, “Fucked if I’m sitting in there with those snobby wankers!” Erik protests.

This isn’t your average gig, not by any means.  The town festival is run out of the Kulturhuset and is obviously state funded.  They’re probably not used to dealing with bands, and certainly not bands like us. Everyone is friendly enough though and upon realising that we’re around all day tomorrow too, the Production Manager is kind enough to give us food vouchers for both lunch and dinner to see us through our whole trip.  It’s a most welcome gesture being that we’re in Stavanger and a day’s worth of eating tomorrow would either be extremely expensive or extremely minimal.  This must be how Kev feels when he’s in Stockholm…

Before we’d eaten dinner we’d dropped our bags off at the boat hostel.  The bedrooms are absolutely tiny, no cat swinging there, even so, they’re pretty cosy.  The boat itself though is really beautiful, all wooden floors and gold trimmings.  It looks like a mini version of the Titanic.  There is a large dining room as well as several smaller salons with signs like “Ladies Lounge” and “Smoking Room” on the doors.  The place actually looks more like a museum than a hostel.

Everything sorted we head back to the venue which has a cosy front bar that is full of Stavanger’s trendiest. We find a table large enough for the five of us and enjoy a beer that has been traded in for one of the coupons we were given earlier.  Stig has rejoined us by this point although he’s supping on a glass of wine. There is a buzz about the place and we’re feeling good.  There is sufficient confusion about how the night will play out, what with these four other poets we’re supposed to be playing with, and of course, each of us has a different interpretation of the Production Manager’s instructions.  Just as we seem to have collectively figured it out, the PM approaches our table and asks us if one of us can perform an improv piece of music with one of the four poets, a chap from Zimbabwe.  This isn’t in the script.  What do you mean improv?  We all kind of turn our gaze to the window and shuffle slightly away leaving Erik who is sat closest to her to deal with the question.  What can he say?  He reluctantly agrees.  “Why is it always me?”

He goes off to meet the guy and returns a few minutes later looking a nervous wreck.  “This dude wants me to play guitar along with him as he speaks and he’s gonna steer how intense or calm I’m supposed to play by motioning to me with his hand.  Fuck sakes!”  I crack up laughing.  It’s a coward’s laugh.  I would be absolutely shit in this situation and the result would be pitiful at best.  But Erik I know will be able to pull this off.  My confidence in his talent is of no comfort to him though.

We start the evening off with the first of the four new songs we’ve written especially for this night.  The first one I’ve christened Earth, as it reminds me a little of that’s band’s later records.  It is by far the kindest piece we will play tonight and when we perform it we do so to around twenty people.  When we bring it to a close there is but a smattering of applause.  Some guy who is obviously tonight’s host then takes to the stage/floor and in English introduces the band, Battle of Santiago who will be performing songs that will accompany the readings we have for you this evening.  It hits me then what a strange gig this really is.

The floor space we have to perform in is pretty tight and it’s a bit of job finding a space to lean out of the way in, avoiding pedals and cables and Paddan behind me.  The first reader is a guy from Israel who reads the first chapter from his new book, which is some sort of violent comedic drama taken from the perspective of an immigrant.  He reads for a good twenty minutes.  I manage to catch most of it between tuning my guitar and looking about the audience and profiling them.  It seemed like a pretty good book anyway.  When he’s done we go into our second song which is a more driving up-tempo piece, very much in the vain of later Sonic Youth.  A few more people have filtered into the room by now but the response is equally refrained.

Up next is a woman from Iraq who reads a series of very short poems in her native language, that are translated on a projection screen behind Tompa’s kit.  We then go into the third piece which starts with a racketing, stabbing riff that then breaks into a mellower driven section with mildly chaotic guitars and bass. For the first time tonight I feel myself starting to play a little more aggressively and I sense that by now the audience must really be wondering what the fuck is going on.  I’m surprised then that the response to this piece is a little more enthusiastic.

Up next is a woman from South Africa also reading a chapter from a book of hers.   I don’t really take much of it in.  When she’s done she looks to me and Paddan stood to the left of her and says quietly, “Take away the noise.”  And we do.  The fourth piece is by far my favourite of the new songs.  It starts with Paddan playing a driving riff at the bottom end of his baritone guitar and then we all blast in.  It’s just the one riff the whole way through, which just escalates to the point we’re all going off on different tangents until it breaks down into a myre of drums and Paddan making feedbacked noise from his delay pedal.  It’s a fucking whirlwind of sound and I’m loving every second of this.  Then like AD/DC’s Problem Child  we start the whole thing over again, albeit just a few bars until it suddenly stops.  I’m really happy we pulled this one off, although again it seems we’re way more chuffed with it than the confused audience seems to be.

It’s now time for the fourth and final reader before we begin the whole thing with Stig.  It’s time for Erik and the Zimbabwean to do their stuff.  We shuffle off to the side where the bar is and leave them to it.  First off he reads a charming poem about his uncle Thomas, called Uncle Thomas.  I really like it.  Really simple and without a trace of pretension.  When he’s finished this poem he starts into another and it’s time for Erik to perform.  And perform he does.  He just jams around on some other stuff I’ve heard him playing before, lifting and descending when ushered by the poet.  I’m overwhelmed by a huge feeling of pride at how well he does in such circumstances.  I’m also just the slightest bit tipsy from the two beers I’ve drunk.  Erik does brilliantly and the whole thing goes by smoothly until right at the end when the power from his guitar goes out, must be a dodgy cable, but it’s right at the end and no one cares.

The plan was we’d have a break before Stig starts but as time is getting on we fuck that idea off.  We’re stood at the bar beside the stage space and Stig tells us he wants to say a few things before starting his reading.  As if it’s expected of him, he starts to talk about sex.  He stays relatively mild with it, I’ve heard him say far worse things in the pub, but all the same, the feeling I get is that he’s talking about this shit because it’s what the audience expect to hear from the controversial Stig Larsson.  When he’s done he then reads his poem Nyponsoppa, which is quite a lengthy poem.  During the reading Erik, stood beside me, lowers himself to the floor and starts fiddling about with something.  I assume he’s checking his dodgy cable.  When he returns he has a bottle of Jager in his hand and he pours himself a whole highball glasses worth, right in front of the bartender.  The only sound to be heard in the room, besides Stig’s Nyponsoppa, is my hysterical laughing just about smothered in the palm of my hand.  I don’t know why I find it so funny but I have a fit of laughter that lasts for the rest of the poem.  I feel like a kid sat at the back of the class trying his best to avoid the teacher’s glare.

It’s finally time for the performance of our collaboration.  This must be the longest gig I’ve ever had. The room is now packed.  Stig really does pull a crowd in these circles it seems.  I have to say, Stig is fully on his game and the whole thing goes off seamlessly.  We finish off with three of our own “real” songs to which Stig maintains his position on the stage and dances along to whilst Erik stands beside him and screams into the mic.  I decide I can’t stand being hemmed in any more and make my way out on to the space in front of the stage and really go for it.  As we bang out the last chords of In the Presence of Colossus which stops with a sudden, violent end, the audience lets out a thunderous applause.  Wasn’t expecting that.  I was in fact expecting the vast majority of them to leave upon the realisation that Stig’s reading was over.

We’re all pretty chuffed with how the gig turned out and it’s now the drinking begins in earnest.  We won’t stop, bar for a few hours of sleep,  until late into the following night…

Since Polly came along there hasn’t been a whole lot of drinking, or there hasn’t been any piss up at least, and it’s probably a good thing that Santiago play so seldomly because when I’m with these boys the booze just seems to flow.  We’re all in good spirits as we hang out by the merch table that Erik has set up, containing the sole item of the record we made with Stig.  Erik is more concerned with passing around the Jagermeister than selling the album though and soon packs the records away.  It’s not really a record buying public I guess.   We have drink tickets and the beer is slipping down my neck like liquid silk.  We’re all around except Olle who has fastened somewhere else with Stig.  Just as I’m wondering what he’s up to he returns looking a little flustered, “Ah fuck sakes, I need to lose Stig!  I got stuck in a fucking useless conversation with him about AIDS.”  I guess it was Stig doing most of the talking.  Olle zips off to the bar and is soon back in better spirits.  Stig joins us briefly, looking slightly sozzled, wearing a schoolboy grin, before disappearing into the night.

After an hour or so of hanging and drinking, chatting with some of the elder Stavanger poetry crowd, a few of which seem very interested in our music, or at least very eager to try and understand it,  Erik doing his best to get me drunk on Jager, lambasting me over the shameful quantity I intake when he shoves the bottle in my coupon (fuck that, I’ve had more than my share of Jager over the years since Speedhorn used to be fucking sponsored by the clatty shite), Paddan performs his usual disappearing act.  This is something he is well known for.  He’ll shuffle out the door with his phone to his ear, or with an unlit fag in his mouth, and then without so much as a glance continue all the way home, or wherever the evening’s bed is, in this case the boat across the road.  The fucker does it all the time.

Olle soon clocks that he’s gone and sends him a text demanding to know of his whereabouts.  “WANKER” is the simple reply.  The rest of us stand about cursing the cunt for about five minutes, although really we all think it’s hilarious, and then Tompa drops the bomb on us.  He tells us Karin is pregnant and he’s going to be a dad.  Cue arms aloft and a mighty group cheer.  It’s weird being in the situation where it’s me handing out advice and philosophies, all gained from the last seven months… I text Paddan and tell him that he has to come back, no arguing, and celebrate Tompa’s news.  He replies immediately, “Fucking hell!  That news is of course worth going from naked to dressed again for.  Be back in five!”  And he was.  And as if he’d never been gone the booze is flowing freely once again.

It’s gone three by the time we leave the place and stoat over the road back to the boat, although none of us have sleep on our minds.  We head to the lounge at the back of the boat that had the sign Smoke Room on the door.  As we stumble down the corridor, past our huts and many others, a large pissed off looking lady appears in her nightgown and shouts, “People sleeping!” at us.  She is ignored.  We are on a mission.

We crack open some more beers, drink some more Jager and listen to some music through the tiny speakers on Paddan’s phone.  And being the Smoke Room, the smokers in the band light up.  We’re not being that rowdy in all honesty, the music is quiet and tinny and the voices are kept to conversation level.  It’s only when Olle attempts to open a bottle of red wine by the method of banging a knife down on the cork with his shoe that we cause any alarm.  The guy who I assume is the night porter, actually it’s the same guy who handed us our keys upon check- in, a mustachioed sap with a perm who looks Mediterranean in origin, appears, just his head poking around the door, with a wide eyed, gaping mouthed look of horror on his face. He doesn’t say anything, and either do we, we just stare at each other for about five seconds until he fucks off again.  We all crack up laughing.  One by one, we drop off into the night.  Erik  passes out on the bench seat behind the table before crawling off to bed, Tompa and then Olle give it up eventually too, leaving just Paddan and I and a final beer and a couple of punk records playing through the crackly speakers.  It’s around four by the time I collapse into bed.

I’m awoke around eight with the usual dying for a piss, can’t be arsed getting out of bed routine, and lie there suffering until Olle texts about an hour later, asking if anyone is up and about yet and in the mood for breakfast.  I respond immediately and jump into the shower and then meet Olle on the street, feeling pretty okay, considering.  There isn’t a peep from anyone else so the two of us head off into town to explore and look for coffee.  It’s a grey, drizzly morning in this beautiful harbour town with a nip in the air that I’m grateful to receive.  We walk around for a while before settling on a cool little, book shop cafe with two friendly women working behind the counter.  We take espressos and croissants.  This place is also a venue for the festival.  It seems like most places here are hosting something over the weekend.

We head back to the boat and meet up with the rest of the guys who have now arisen.  Tompa is laughing, telling us he’d seen Mustache/Perm angrily taping a sign written in English to the door of the Smoke Room, warning that any smoking on board will result in prosecution and IMMEDIATE EVICTION from the boat. I guess he’s referring to us.

After a bit of farting around, I’m concerned with finding a bar to watch the Liverpool game in later on, and some lunch at a cosy little Italian place we have a coupon for, we decide to embark on a boat trip to the fjords.  We’re all hungover and the weather is miserable but we all agree it would be a crime to come to this part of the world and not see one of it’s greatest wonders.  Paddan brings a bottle of Ballentine’s to accompany the trip.  The boat ride takes around three hours…

I’ve seen some sights in my lifetime, some truly amazing things, but these glacial cliffs, these grey, jagged rock faces disappearing upwards into the low hanging mist and downwards into the black, icy water take some fucking beating.  The five of us spent the majority of the three hours gasping in awe and bewilderment between sips of whiskey.  If ever there was a cure for a hangover it was the combination of blended scotch and nature at it’s very spine tingling best.

Of course we weren’t the only tourists on board and one of them, somewhere, was smoking weed. Paddan’s nose was up in the air like a dog’s tail on heat.  He casually walks up to a woman he for some reason believes is the source and asks her if she has any to share, albeit in a bumbled attempt at being subtle. He comes back empty handed muttering something about miscommunication.

When we get back to town we head straight for a pub with Liverpool flags hanging all over it and watch the game.  They’re at home to Southampton, a game that considering the fine start to the season they’ve had should be expected to win.  They lose one-nil and the game is absolute shite.  The beer costs about seven quid a pint too, making the whole experience utterly miserable.  If it wasn’t for the company of my four friends I would have been in no mood to continue with the day’s festivities.

We head back to Kulturhuset for some more of the fine grub on offer for dinner.  The food isn’t quite as good as yesterday and the vegetarian options are slimmer but it’s still free scran and there is enough of it to fill myself with.  Paddan seems to have gotten himself pretty drunk, although none of the rest of us can quite work out how this has happened.  We surmise that he most likely had drank quite a bit more of the Ballantine's than the rest of us.  He’s on to his second glass of red now and is in the main eating room talking loudly with strangers.  Whilst this is going on we get talking to a friendly chap who runs the music library here.  He offers show us about the place and we gratefully accept.  After some effort, we manage to drag Paddan with us and we spend a half hour or so looking about this museum of recorded music.  It’s quite something.  The guy guides us about the place and we engage in a great conversation with him.  A real bonus.

Before we leave we head back down to the production centre in search of our pay.  We are introduced to a smug looking bastard called Espen.  When he realises we want cash he almost chokes in disbelief.  “This is a properly run organization and we don’t just hand out cash to the artists performing, we do all that via bank payment.”  You can tell he’s thinking that we’re a bunch of jumped up punks.  We agree to mail him our bank details.  He then changes tack and asks, “You guys have fun last night?” whilst giving us two thumbs up.  We stand there like a bunch of fucking chumps, despondent.

We hit the town, cashless.  Paddan walks straight out of the building still holding a full glass of red in his hand.  Something that would be very frowned upon and probably illegal, but he’s past caring.  I insist on seeing a bit more of the town before we hit a bar, something met with a sigh from Erik who is by now dying for a drink himself, and I’m given five minutes to go look at a park with a small lake in the middle of it.  We take pictures of Paddan stuffing his head into a concrete alligator’s mouth.

We head back to the boat to regroup for the night.  Paddan goes to sleep.  He tells us he’s taking a power nap.  It’s six pm.

We discover that the deck up top is open to guests and not only that, they have tables and chairs up there. Why the fuck didn’t we think of checking this out yesterday?  It would have been a lot cosier and we wouldn’t have disturbed anyone on board.. The four of us minus Paddan park ourselves and tuck into another bottle of Ballantine’s, this time Tompa the provider.  Erik’s phone provides the soundtrack which happens to be the first Obits record.

We sit up there and make our way through the bottle as we divulge into various topics of conversation. Tompa’s baby, Olle’s upcoming wedding, tour stories (such as the time Erik was on tour with Stomping Souls in Germany and two girls Indian girls bought him a drink because they thought it was really cool that a muslim was playing in a rock band, they’d made the mistake due to the fact that Erik had a silly scarf wrapped around his head, the fucker has always got some sort of accessory up there), and various nightmare experiences with drugs.  As the bottle of Ballantine’s emptied, the conversation grew louder.  By the time it was finished we decided it was time to wake Paddan and head to a bar.  Erik suggests we just leave the bottle and plastic glasses on the table but Olle objects, “Nah come on don’t do that!  We shouldn’t mess the place up, everyone has been really friendly and good to us on this trip.”  I agree with him and suggest that after last night’s shenanigans we should tread a little lighter on this boat.  We then joke again about the Mustache/Perm’s shocked face when he looked in on us the night before and his angry sign this morning. “The thing is, we always seem to piss people off, though never intentionally” we laugh.  In good spirits we bound down the steel staircase that leads from the top deck to the main.  At the bottom of the staircase I turn to look through an open door and find a room full of people staring with silent anger in our direction whilst some poet is giving a reading.  We’d had no idea the boat was also a venue and we certainly had no idea there were a hundred or so people unwillingly listening to our drunken ramblings.  Typical.

After some struggle we manage to entice Paddan from his bed, although not before we’ve taken a suitable amount of pictures of the fucker.  We head to a punk gig we’ve been tipped off about at a club just near the venue we played yesterday.  The band is called The Good, The Bad and The Sugly, a shite name if ever I’ve heard one.  Erik knows all about them though since the singer in the band used to play bass in Mensen with Marianne, whose band Mary’s Kids Erik now plays with.  Erik dislikes the guy.  He tells us that apparently he’s this scientist dude who lives in the Bahamas or somewhere and earns loads of money, that he’s only a punk when it suits him.  Fuck knows.  We go to the club, we’d arranged a guestlist, and sit down to a few drinks.  Pretty cool club, although a little on the large side.  The band start and there are quite a few watching them although not as many as I would have thought considering Erik insisted they were really hyped.  They sound kind of like Kvellertak with a greater emphasis on the Turbonegro bits and without the black metal parts altogether.  The guitarist is wearing a Victims t-shirt funnily enough and is of course by far the coolest guy in the band.  The bass player looks like Uncle Fester and keeps pulling ridiculous lurching faces when he plays.  I find this amusing but it seems to annoy the rest.  The singer does indeed look like a bit of a poser and I find him crowd surfing on top of about five people a bit much.  When he shouts into the mic the opening lyrics of one of their songs, “You can call the police, I couldn’t give a fuck!” I can’t help myself but wonder if he really does live in the Bahamas and if he does what a cock that would make him for singing such lyrics.  In fact, they’re pretty cock lyrics either way.

We decide to leave and head back to Cementen, the club we played last night, deciding we’d rather hang with our new crowd the poetry society than the punks.  They weren’t really punks to be fair, more your average rock club fare.  Paddan has disappeared and we figure we won’t see him for the rest of the night whilst Olle is by now pretty steaming.  I only really realise this when some local youth stops Olle in the street and asks for a light for his fag, “Are you German?” inquires Olle with a tone of genuine curiosity.  The youth, confused, “Er...no” still waiting on a light.  “What are you?” Olle asks, even more confused than the youth.

“I’m Norwegian!”  Olle then hugs him with a big “Ohhh, I’m sorry, I thought you were German!”  We all piss ourselves laughing at the scene.  Olle lights the guy’s cig and we continue.  When we get to Cementen the place is packed, well the bar area anyway.  We head to the room with the stage we tread yesterday and find a Sami woman reading a poem in her native tongue with some soft, electro music beating in the background.  Olle, Tompa and I head up to the balcony, Erik has fastened somewhere down on the floor. Olle is amazed by the performance, going on about how it’s like something from Twin Peaks and that it’s “So fucking strong to hear someone talking in a foreign language you don’t understand!  You hear the rhythm instead of getting caught up in the words..”  He will later tell the Sami woman this.

After the Sami woman has finished, a large Welsh guy in a tight fitting paisley shirt and geeky glasses steps up and starts to recite in his own, beautiful, fucked up tongue.  Of course, I can’t understand a word of the language of my heritage.. I spot Erik stood downstairs, obviously not wanting to be there but feeling it would be rude to leave in the middle of the guys performance.  Olle, thinking this Welsh guy is also brilliant, texts Erik, “Trainspotting?”  I don’t really know what he means by that but I guess he’s maybe referring to the fact that the whole thing is a bit surreal.  Erik replies immediately, “This guy is so gay.  But he doesn’t know it himself.  I need a Jager.”

The performances come to a close and after some shots at the bar forced upon us by Olle, we head back into the bar.  Olle is now boats.  Tompa and Erik are looking pretty sauced too and soon head back to the hostel.  Considering I’ve put a few away I don’t feel too bad, but that’s most likely because now I only have Olle as a reference point.  We’re stood there in the packed bar area when Olle starts up with some middle aged guy shuffling past, “Hey!  How are you?”  The guy looks completely bemused, “Do I know you?” he asks.

“Yeah sure, we spoke last night!  You’re from Stavanger, right?” Olle forges ahead.

“No, China,” the guy’s responds with more than a hint of distaste.  I piss myself laughing although Olle is not to be stopped.  I get pulled away from them a little by the current of people passing by but when I clamber my way back to them a couple of minutes later, Olle is still ear bashing the guy with far too much enthusiasm. When I pick up the conversation again the first thing I hear is the Chinese guy saying, “Dude, you’re being kind of aggressive now.”  Olle, the mildest, sweetest guy you could ever meet, does tend to go wild when he gets a proper drink in him, which due to the enormous amount of hours he works is about once a year.  I pull Olle away and we head back into the theatre room, which by now is a full on club and the area where we played yesterday and where just a half hour before Sami and Wales had been reading, is now a throbbing dancefloor.  It’s gone from poetry festival to Bips Nightclub in Corby.

Olle is on the fucking rampage.  First he introduces me to this older woman and her middle aged, suit wearing son.  I’m not sure what the connection is but Olle keeps telling me she’s awesome.  They seem nice enough and I chat to the son for a while.  Then Olle starts talking to some other girl, in English, he’s talking English to everyone now, but this girl takes him up on it.  Turns out she’s from Malmö and she tells Olle that it’s really weird he’s talking English to people, here in neighbouring Norway.  Olle plods on, trying to explain himself whilst I look the other way, not bearing to watch.

Olle keeps going back and forth to the bar, buying beer after beer for us, and each time he does this he precedes with “One last one?  Come on, one last beer!”

We’re back on the dancefloor, well, Olle is, I’m stood to the side with a bottle watching Olle boogie aggressively, fretting slightly about the fact that it’s three am and our cab is coming in five hours but convincing myself it’s worth sacrificing sleep for the Olle Show.  He approaches after a while, exalted.  He’s spotted the singer from the punk band, the scientist.  He tells me that he’s been hassling him, telling him that although he doesn’t know it, he’s a gay icon, whilst rubbing his back.  When Olle is drunk he will always tell you that in his opinion the gays are the last of the true punks.  Always.  Olle used to work in the kitchen at a gay bar whence he formed this opinion.  His eyes are starting to glaze over, a heady mixture of booze and mischief.  He runs back into the crowd of the dancefloor and makes his way back to the singer guy, who is dancing with some girl whilst doing his best to ignore Olle’s advances.  I’m stood texting Erik and Tompa frantically, imploring them to return to witness Olle in action.  I happen to look up just in time to see Olle running at me full fucking force.  He grabs me and plants a huge kiss on my cheek before dry humping my leg like a rabid hound, “Pretend we’re together!  Pretend we’re together!”  Jesus Christ man, get off me! Olle insists it will be hilarious but I manage to scrape him off my leg.

With that we finish the drinks and head out of there.  It’s three thirty now and I realise that I must get some sleep before the cab comes to take us to the airport.  I know I’m going to be wreck when I get home tomorrow afternoon and that Polly is going to want to play.  I feel like a bad dad.  But I couldn’t pass up seeing Olle in this form.  As we head across the street to the boat Olle starts talking to some passing skinhead, “Why do you look so angry?” Olle asks.  Fuck this, I’m out of here.  Enough.  Turns out the guy is a bit of a football hooligan.  As I’m leaving I hear Olle shouting, referring to me, “This guy!  This guy is from Corby!  Fucking Division 6 in England.  That’s fucking real football!  His dad, his dad goes to every home and away match!  I fucking respect that.  I hate modern football!  I fucking hate the Premier League. Liverpool are okay, but otherwise I fucking hate it!”  The football hooligan could not have had the slightest idea what he was in for.  I sneak off to bed, dreading the feeling that will be waiting for me in four hours time.

Erik knocks on my cabin door.  I feel like fucking death warmed up.  I stumble into the shower across the hall.  Fuck.  The shower does nothing for me.  The only thing that helps is the sight of Olle, although it’s only minimal since he’s not hungover, he’s still drunk.  He says he only went to bed at five.  After the football hooligan he got talking to a couple, the girl being Norwegian, the guy from Italy, and he married them on the street, performed the whole fucking ceremony.  The Italian was a bit freaked, the Norwegian moved to tears apparently.

It’s a quarter past eight and there is no cab.  Our flight is at nine twenty.  My hangover is suddenly pushed to the back of my thoughts.  Where’s the fucking cab?  Erik calls a very sleepy production manager who insists the cab is on its way.  After another ten minutes Erik calls again, only to be told that the cab is waiting outside Stig’s hotel but there is no sign of the cunt.  Fuck that old bastard, Erik tells them, if he’s slept in that’s his fucking problem.  Tompa phones for another cab and Erik explains to the production team that they’ll be paying for it.

The cab arrives and we climb in.  We sit there very nervously, watching the clock as the cab pounds along, hoping to fuck we’ll make our flight.  To our amazement and disgust we find Stig at the fucking airport, hair all over the place, looking like he’s just woke up in a hedge and stinking of booze, “What are you guys doing here?” he asks jovially.  Fucking unreal.  Erik tells anyone who’ll listen that he’s going to kill the old bastard. It seems he’d stumbled out of his hotel, into the cab and instructed it direct to the airport, leaving us stranded.  Fuck knows what the cab driver was playing at though, listening to him…

It’s stressful, but we manage to check in all the luggage and make it to the gate in time.  It’s a small airport. Or course, Stig, who was supposed to check in one of our instruments has instead checked in his cabin bag, leaving us with a bill of five hundred kronors for extra baggage.  He’s half way up the escalators when we realise this.  We shout at him across the check-in hall to come back and witness him walking backwards down the escalators, all over the fucking place, which is a scene almost worth paying five hundred for to be fair.

Relieved to be on the flight, hangover kicking back in, I close my eyes and try to gain another hours sleep before we land in Stockholm.  As if that will help.. Turns out I can’t catch even one wink.  I rarely can on airplanes.  It’s probably a good thing Santiago don’t do tours...

The Crew: Big Doug

I've written many times on this blog that the bands Hard To Swallow and Iron Monkey were a huge inspiration to us when we were kids.  That first Monkey album was and still is one of the most brutal records ever made.  Six songs of slow, relentless, crushing torture.  The attitude on the album just stinks of dissatisfaction.  It is one the most pissed off thirty minutes of music I've ever heard and it changed my life forever.

It all started when I saw them for the first time at an all-day show in London we were playing with Soul Cellar, which was myself, Frank and Darren from Speedhorn, before we found hardcore.  It was some Terrorizer magazine Christmas bash at the old George Robey Club on the Seven Sisters Road, and apart from Orange Goblin, most of the bands were pretty naff, including Soul Cellar.  During the latter part of the day I'd noticed this gang of lads who had turned up who stood out in the crowd as they walked around looking completely bored, as if they had absolutely no interest in being there.  These guys weren't gumbo metalhead types, they were wading through the crowd in trucker caps, skate shoes and rucksacks attached to their backs seemingly signalling they were ready to get the fuck out of there at any second.  There was just something about them.  This was 1997 and I'd never seen anyone else dressed this way at a metal gig before.  I didn't then know who they were..

And then around six or seven in the evening, about three or four bands from the top of the bill, there they were on stage.  Of course, there was none of the strutting and posturing about stage that most of the other bands were pulling off whilst waiting to start their gig, the Monkey guys were stood there, tuning their guitars at an almost nonchalant pace, looking like they'd rather be anywhere else than their present location.  Most eyes were on Johnny, their singer, who was ambling around the stage with shaved head and black rimmed NHS glasses, arms covered in tattoos, looking pretty fucking cool it has to be said.  But there, right in the middle, in front of the drum kit was what had to be the meanest looking bastard I'd ever seen.  Doug, the bass player, looked like Zangief the Russian wrestler from Street Fighter.  Simply a mammoth of a man.  What the fuck was this band?

For about a half hour they simply kicked the fuck out of the place.  And they just didn't seem to care.  It was one of the heaviest bands I'd ever seen and to this day one of the best gigs I've ever witnessed.  It was the first time I'd seen a singer that simply screamed in a high pitched, indecipherable scowl for the entirety of the set.  They were so good it was scary. 

When we started Speedhorn about six months later, our one and only goal was to get a gig with Iron Monkey.  It didn't take us long.  Our second show was the following year's Terrorizer all dayer, which Monkey headlined, which was cool enough, but our third show we were the main support to them at the Bass Clef in Northampton.  We'd achieved our aim pretty early, you might say we underestimated ourselves...

Two years later Doug would be our tour manager, as well as a close friend...

We played with Monkey a few more times before they split up.  I don't really understand why but we started to get more and more popular whilst Monkey never really took the next step.  I guess they weren't the easiest band to manage, as our friend and own manager Dave, who also attempted managing Monkey would testify.  I think in fact that the Monkey boys would admit as much too. The thing is as soon as Monkey split up they became this legendary band, which of course they always were in our eyes, but their cult status ballooned after they called it a day.  Isn't it always the way?  To my horror though, certain elements of the London and Nottingham scenes were seemingly trying to start a war of words between us, asserting that we were the reason Monkey split up and other nonsense.  It was bollocks of course and the whole thing probably had more to do with the fact we shared the same manager for a while, but it hurt me in the beginning.  That subsided though when Doug became our tour manager, something I assumed would put an end to the mythical nonsense that the two bands didn't get on, only to hear from one faceless dickhead that Doug was a traitor.  It was then I realised the whole thing wasn't worth giving a fuck about, however disappointing it was...

I remember the first day we took Doug on tour.  We picked him up from Kettering train station, he was still living in Nottingham at the time, in our yellow British Telecom Sherpa van.  He strode out of the station wearing a thick leather jacket over a Misfits hoodie, WCW cap, Doc Martins that looked like they would crush a man's skull in the blink of an eye and a large, green army camping bag slung over his shoulder and a roll up on the go.  It was a blazingly hot day... He stomped over to us with this mean look on his face and hopped into the passenger seat up front, next to me and Roddy at the wheel, “Alright boys?” he said with a friendly, if not mischievous Edinburgh accent and a huge grin on his face.  We hit it off immediately.

At this point we were still on the UK toilet circuit, playing anywhere that would have us.  I spent a lot of time up front in the van with Doug, talking about punk and hardcore, listening to his countless tales of gigging with Monkey and Ironside before them, generally having a great time.  Our first show on that tour, the very first show with Doug tour managing was in Brighton, at the classic venue, the Free Butt.  I don't know if Doug deliberately intended to set out his marker, to impress upon us his authority as tour manager or indeed just impress us full stop, either way that is exactly what he achieved.  He had our respect from that very first day and from there on in it would be unwavering.

We arrived in Brighton in the early afternoon without a fucking clue where we were headed, this being long before the digital age of mobile phones with GPS or even Google Maps printouts.  Of course we all pissed ourselves laughing when Roddy pulled the van up beside some random guy on the street and asked him where the Free Butt was.  Brighton being the supposed “gay capital” of England this was hilarious to our collective immature minds.

The Free Butt turned out to be this great little pub with a very small back room that had a tiny stage, raised no more than a couple of inches from the ground.  Brighton had a very healthy metal and hardcore scene at this time and there were already people hanging out at the pub in anticipation of the gig.  We were of course buzzing.  We were used to playing to ten to fifteen people a night and this place was already busy.  By the time we played later on the place was absolutely rammed.  It would be by far the best gig we'd played up to that point.

This was our first show in Brighton and so obviously we had no history with the place, either good nor bad.  Not so for Doug though.  This was the town, indeed this was the very venue where Johnny, the singer from Iron Monkey, threw a monitor at some guys head during their set.  I don't remember the exact story but I'm sure Johnny had his reasons, even if the action was a little harsh.. but that was Monkey for you.  Anyway, you could sense Doug and Brighton weren't best friends...

When the time came for load in and sound check, Doug enquired with the landlord about where we should set up merch.  He was told that they usually put a cover board over the pool table in the bar and use that as a merch stand.  No problem then.  Except there was.  The pub was busy and the pool table area was especially heaving.  There were two chavs, seriously entrenched in a game, posing and posturing as if they were at the Crucible, as well as a row of Fifties lined up along the wooden edge set as markers for future matches.  Doug strides up to them without breaking pace and simply tells them he needs the table, or actually, he tells them he's taking the table, “Alright lads, game's over, I'm using this for our merch.”  Simple as that.  These two chavs, a little shorter and a lot narrower than this bear of a man at first look taken aback, but after a slight pause to gather their courage in front of their congregation sat around the table who are no doubt waiting for their games, tell Doug he'll have to wait until all of the games are played.  Doug doesn't answer, he just simply starts picking up the balls and throwing them down the pockets, ending it there and then.

Chav One looks at him for a brief second and obviously has a decision to make.  Does he save himself an inevitable beating or does he save face in front of his mates?  Stupidly, he chooses the latter.  Before I know what's happened Doug has lifted the guy up by the throat and thrown him down on to the table, the guy landing crushingly on his spine.  Doug looks at me with a huge smile on his face, Chav One's throat still in his claw, “First rule of touring Gaz.  Take no shit from Brighton!”. 

The bouncer from the venue is quickly on the scene, although he's not the kind of rapist you get at nightclubs in Corby, he's just some older biker guy who obviously can't be arsed.  He breaks up the ruck and then amazingly, he tells the two pool chavs to get their stuff and leave.  Obviously this astounds the pair of them, “Are you fucking joking?!  I didn't do fuck all!  It was him!” pointing at Doug.  The bouncer replies, “If you fucking think I'm throwing him out you're fucking mental!” pointing at Doug...

Speedhorn and Doug...Love at first sight.

As much as Doug was a huge, hard as nails Jock bastard, he was also funny as fuck.  Good knowing you've got someone like that watching your back, especially when you are as stupid as we were.  Sometimes he ended up right there in the shit with us though.

The time we ended up in jail in Spain, back in 2000, whilst on tour supporting Amen, is another long story for another day, and sometime I'll get around to committing it to history on these pages.  But the upshot of it all is this.  The whole band, Doug, Roddy and our manager Dave, ended up behind bars in the local cop shop in Lorette Del Mar, northern Spain.  A wretched English tourist resort if ever there was one.  And we were just the wretched Englishmen (and Scotsman) you love to hate on that occasion.

What saved me from literally shitting myself with fear that night was the fact that I, like the rest of us, was steamboats.  That and the banter Doug was dishing out relentlessly from his cell at the end of the corridor.  He was obviously no stranger to this situation and was certainly not about to let the Spanish pigs intimidate him, in fact, he seemed to find the whole episode hilarious.  There were these two stern faced cops that were marching up and down the corridor looking at us like the caged animals in the zoo we were.  Doug kept calling them to his cell.. I don't know how many times I heard “Oi, come 'ere!” that night.  At first he wanted to get into a conversation with them about Biohazard, who'd we'd just been on tour with, and Doug must have thought they looked like Biohazard fans.  This was obviously an initial approach to befriend them.  That soon developed into him demanding a phone call to his sister followed by, “You'd like my sister.  She looks just like me but with a wig.”  Then he wanted to know where he could order a cup of Bovril.  Then he simply wanted to be let out, “Alright lads, you've had your fun but I'm bored now.  Let us out and we'll hear no more about it”... This quickly developed into the lot of us, led by Doug, shaking the bars of our cell doors and chanting, “Free the Corby Nine!  Free the Corby Nine”.  As much as I was genuinely worried about the situation we'd stupidly gotten ourselves into, Doug had me pissing myself laughing all night.  And the piece de resistance was still to come..

When all had died down Doug once again summoned the by now very bored cops over to his cell.  “Oi mate, come here.  Seriously,” he reasons, “Come here, I've got an offer for you”:  The cop eventually shuffles over to him, defeated.  “Ok, you know where our bus is?  Where you arrested us right?  Well, if you drive over there and go up to the top floor, the door's unlocked so it's no problem, if you go up to the top floor and then into the bunk area, the last bunk on the right, top bunk, is mine.  I've got three Pot Noodles in there, the chicken and mushroom is mine but you can have your pick of the other two.”  I almost pissed myself in the throes of hysterical laughter at that.  We were all in separate cells along the corridor and every cell was brimming with laughter.  Those cops fucking hated us.

Like I say, the full version of that night in Lorette Del Mar is for another time but I'll tell you this, Doug kept my spirits soaring that night when everything else seemed to be crumbling to shit.  It wasn't the only time Doug ended up in the cells whilst out travelling with us either.  At the very start of the aforementioned Biohazard tour, during yet another decadent night, this time aboard a ferry between Stockholm and Helsinki, in the midst of what was a wild piss up Doug had simply disappeared.  Dave our manager was with us and as we sat on the tour bus in the car park having left the boat he was fretting that our tour manager was still nowhere to be seen.  Dave and Doug were old mates since the Monkey and although no doubt deep down he was highly amused he had to at least portray a façade of professionalism.  “Where the fuck is Doug?  This isn't ok, he's supposed to be the tour manager!”  We were all hungover beyond belief, Dave too, and as I sat there looking at the blank expressions on the various members of our crew, wondering at the same time what had happened to American George's clothes, he was sat there in just his kecks holding a half empty bottle of whiskey at seven thirty am, Doug as if from out of nowhere appears in the top lounge of the bus looking as fresh as a fucking daisy!  “Alright boys!” the familiar grin on his face. 

“Where the fuck have you been?” Dave demands to know. 

“Boat jail.”  It turns out at some point during the evening's festivities Doug had gotten into a scuffle with the Norwegian car rally team...

Speedhorn was Doug's first job in tour management, so like us, he was finding his way and learning as he went along, although he was old enough and had been around enough to know what the job entailed.  When the time came to get serious there was no fucking with him, although on first sight of him most promoters were only too happy to help him and give him and us what we needed.  There was rarely a problem with payment.  But if Doug could be very serious when needed he was for the most part a great joker, possessing a sharp wit and a master at tending to sagging spirits within the camp, either with a stupid joke or a “Give yourself a fucking shake!”, depending on what the situation called for..

One of my favourite memories of his famous wit came very fittingly at a time when the camp's morale was at one of it's lowest ebbs.  The journey from the jail cells in Spain to the next show in Milan was a long and solemn voyage.  We were all pretty down and knackered.  If the first night in the cells had been a laugh due to us all being boats then the following day was anything but.  Nothing quite as sobering as waking up in a cell in a foreign land.. To say we were relieved to be out of there and on the bus heading towards Milan would be an understatement of the highest order.  We got to Milan very late, obviously, and when we arrived we had to load straight in and line check.  Once that was completed we had about half an hour to kill.  I followed Doug to the bar looking for a glass of water, Doug looking for a fag machine.  There was a young girl setting the bar up that Doug approached for information, “Hiya, just wondering if you have a cigarette machine here anywhere?”  The girl barely registered Doug, she simply pulled out a packet of fags from her back pocket and handed one to Doug.  Doug, impressed with the service, continues, “...Er, do you have a beef and horseradish sandwich machine?”  It goes completely over the girls head but I piss myself laughing!  It was the first time I'd smiled since leaving that fucking cell fourteen hours earlier.

In all the time we toured together I only ever saw Doug really out of control drunk once, and that was on a day off.  We were parked up at a place near the beach in St. Tropez.  We didn't do much sightseeing, it was already pretty late, so we headed straight for a supermarket to get some booze to drink by the sea.  Thinking St. Tropez would be the most expensive place on earth for some reason we were delighted when we found a brand of red wine that only cost a few Francs, I think it worked out about two quid.  The fact that it was sold in a Tetrapak carton should really have given the game away but we didn't consider that as we bought about twelve cartons of the stuff.  We bought a few slightly more expensive beers and a bottle of relatively cheap vodka to accompany it. 

We headed back to the bus with the booze and I opened up a pack of the wine to test it out.  It was of course completely undrinkable.  Even in full on tour mode this was beyond the limits of acceptability.  I almost spat the fucker out, shocked by the rancidness of it.  Of course, no one was truly satisfied with my judgement and they all took their own swig, only to reconcile with me afterwards.  We left the cartons of wine on the bus and headed down to the beach with the beer and vodka.

There we met some student types, can't remember where they were from but our friendly Welsh bus driver Chop had approached them directly and made acquaintance with them and before long we were all hanging out, drinking and listening to music around a camp fire someone had made on the beach.  Cosy as you like.  And it stayed that way for a while..

Until the beer and vodka were polished off and somebody went back to the bust to retrieve a couple of those cartons of wine..

Before long we're all encircled around the camp fire cheering people on as they take turns running through it, high jumping it as two of us held a rope above the flames etc. etc.. all of us pissed out of our minds.  I think it was Dave who started it.  These kinds of things were normally his idea.  Doug took it to another level though.  One of the last things I remember is Doug building himself a platform from some debris and doing flying elbow drops into the fire, full on WCW style, giving it the whole commentary thing and all.  He did that more than once. 

By the time we ended up back on the bus everything was a horrible, horrible blur.  I was fucked, as was everyone else.  But Doug, he was fucking gone.  He fell down the stairs at least twice, rolling down arse over tit movie like, somehow not breaking his back.  We were all a little shocked since we'd never seen the big man in this state before.  Unable to handle any more I crawled down the aisle to bed and prayed for forgiveness from all the Gods and fairies I could think of, hoping one of them would hear me and show me mercy when I next awoke.

I woke the next day earlyish, maybe around ten.  The bus was still moving but then it would be for most of the day as we were heading towards Milan and would arrive late.  I was wearing a ten ton hangover.  The Gods had not been kind.  I realised that if I had any chance of recovery I would have to get out of bed and eat something, since hangovers of this magnitude are not cured from lying in bed.  I head down to the toilet in nothing but my kecks, feeling absolutely revolting.  My stomach almost turns inside out when I see the twelve empty cartons of red wine slewn about the back of the bus.  Everyone else is still in bed and the place fucking stinks.  And we've got about another six hours to go until Milan.  This won't do.  I take my piss and then head back upstairs to get some clothes from my bag, which is in the spare bunk below Doug.  When I open my bag I find it filled with Doug's lumpy, burgundy tinged puke.  I'd never felt so low in all my life.  I headed back to bed and decided to stay there until Milan.

Doug to be fair, felt really bad when he arose, saying he would sort my laundry out for me whilst trying to come to terms with the fact he was sick, claiming he hadn't been sick when pissed since he was eighteen.  I ended up doing the laundry myself since I couldn't wait for him to sort it but he did at least give me the money to cover my expenses.  A couple of days later we were in Munich and the two of us went to this cool swimming baths that was inside a converted old church.  Really nice place.  Swimming was always a nice way of getting clean on tour.  I hadn't thought any more of it and didn't at first understand the gasp of shock from the German family getting changed in the same room as us.  And then I saw Doug's back.  It was blackened and burnt from the fire, bruised yellow and blue.  Quite a sight, this bald, tattooed giant with all these wounds on him.  Doug found it funny.

Like I said, this was the only time I saw Doug boats whilst on tour management duty.  Apart from Dublin, but that's a whole other story and he wasn't strictly on the clock then.  The fact is, whilst on the clock he didn't drink at all, he had a lot responsibilities with his job and he was faithful to them.  He commanded respect from everyone he met, though doing so always with a friendly manner. 

In one sense we must have been quite a luxurious band to tour manage because we were all friends and there was no place for rock star treatment, if anything like that crept up Doug would soon vanquish it without mercy.  He could put you in your place with one swift lash of his tongue.  Maybe it wasn't always like that later on for him but then I guess the more you get paid the more you have to put up with..  But with us there was never any of that.  If you were being a whinny little bastard and saying that you needed this or that, or rather demanding things beyond reason Doug would tell you to either get it yourself or indeed just tell you to go fuck yourself.  In all the time we spent on the road together there was only one occasion where we came close to arguing, although I doubt Doug remembers it... We were sat around backstage somewhere or other and moaning about something inane, as usual, and I got all arsey, which is quite rare I have to say, and aired complaint in a stroppy way, although not making eye contact with him as I did so.  He cut me down immediately, “If you've something to say Gaz, say it to me, not to that packet of crisps on the table!”  I felt like a right cunt and I shut up there and then.  He taught me a valuable lesson.  Since that day I've made sure that when I talk to someone, whether in disagreement or not, I fucking look them in the eye as I do so.

I've said it many times before but Speedhorn was a very dysfunctional little family.  We argued and fought between ourselves almost constantly and at the same time got pissed up together and had the time of our lives, over many different parts of the world.  And as much as we scrapped amongst ourselves we would unite in the blink of an eye if an outsider started shit with us.  A fine example of this happened one night in Glasgow after a gig at The Garage.  We'd played, had a good gig, got drunk and got into some sort of nonsense debate on the bus afterwards.  We were parked up for the night behind the venue.. In a split second, some junkie bastard has opened the back door to the bus which faced the bottom lounge where we all happened to be sat around arguing, and grabbed the nearest bag to him, which happened to be Dave's, and made a run for it.  Without a word John and Doug have flown out of the door and caught up with him before he even makes it out of the car park.  The two of them beat the living shit out of him.  When we stumbled our way out of the bus, pretty shocked at what had just happened, we found Doug and John kicking this guy around the car park like a rag doll.  I felt nauseous watching Doug's heavy Doc Martin boots thundering down on the guys chest.  The junkie had a gang of mates who had been waiting for him at the bottom of the car park, five or six of them, who were now shuffling themselves inch by inch to the help of their mate, trying to display confidence but failing miserably.  Doug looks at them and urges them to come closer, they refrain.  The junkie guy is now lying in a heap, the kicking has paused.  The gang turn and run off leaving him stranded.  I'm happy they haven't killed him.  Doug and John turn to leave but as they do so the junkie guy slowly pulls himself up into a sitting position.  Without a word, John turns back to him and boots him square in the face knocking the poor bastard out cold.  It was a fucked up scene to say the least. 

When we awoke in the morning the guy had gone.  I hope he was ok.  I guess you can say his grab and run attempt didn't go exactly to plan.. I am glad to say though that it was pretty rare that incidents of this brutal nature occurred, but when they did I'm thankful Doug was there with us.  With the likes of Doug and John around I rarely needed to get myself involved, which suited me just fine.  Compared to those two I wouldn't exactly have much to offer anyway...                 

Doug was a brilliant tour manager and I was sad when we lost him, but then we lost all our crew as the band's success waned.  Although I felt a little hard done by at the time, I understood that when Speedhorn took a six month break to battle our record label, the guys in the crew still had to work.  It was a harsh reality check when we came back and they'd all moved on to bigger and better things.  Of course, we couldn't have afforded them anyway.  We were gone too long and we'd been left behind a little.  It was essentially our own fault.  And deep down, I knew the wave we had been riding wouldn't roll forever.  I had no problem accepting that because I'd only ever wanted to be in a DIY band, it's just, I missed the guys in the crew, missed having them around.  And I'm sad to say that when Doug left we lost contact.  He was with Funeral For a Friend who were touring all year round so it's not that weird, but I never really made a lot of effort to stay in touch later on, which is a shame, but that's life.  It moves on.  And life on the road and life at home are two completely different things.

These days Doug is married to an old friend of ours from Corby, Jo, and they have two kids together.  Doug works mainly from his home in Kettering now as I understand, doing pre-production for tours.  I haven't seen him for a long time but then I live in Sweden and our lives have taken different paths these last ten years.  If there is something I feel really bad about it's the fact that we missed the party for Doug and Jo's wedding, this being long after Doug had moved on from Speedhorn.  We had played a pretty shit show in Birmingham on the same night but had planned to make it back for the end of the party as soon as we were done.  And then of course after the gig drinks started flowing and we started arguing about who was driving and bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.  We really were cunts at times.

I've only met Doug once since then, at Dave's office in London.  Although it was a little strange seeing him after such a long time, he was by then beardless and without a cap, it was great to talk to him.  He was just the same as he'd always been.  Same smirk, same sense of humour.  The only difference was that the beard and cap were gone.. and that we didn't really know each other anymore.  But that's life.  It moves on.