Revenge is a dish best served explosively.

I had received two comments from our support artiste at our last gig that I really appreciated and helped make my evening.
The first was that I “didn’t have enough wrinkle to be old enough to be Aaron’s father” always good for the fragile ego that one.

The second was that we were a really friendly band and fun to perform with.

I have always prided myself as being easy to work with and I have tried my hardest, as have my band mates, not to be too precious and to make friends rather than bad reputations.

It remind me of all the bands over the years that I have been involved in supporting and even those who then in turn ended up supporting us (beware the old adage, be careful how you treat people on the way up as you never know who you are going to meet on the way back down again).

On the whole we have had a great time meeting loads of new bands and artistes and only a few stick in my mind as being a right royal bunch of jerks.

Sadly our last gig at a well known Bristol venue a few years back did end up with both Support bands giving us withering looks, that they were indeed way too special to be supporting a bunch of losers like us.

One of the bands even decided that they were soooooooo special that they went well over their allotted time and ate royally into our time slot. Believe me that hurt, especially as we had worked so hard to get an audience there in the first place.

Subsequently as the venue allowed them do this we shook the dust from our sandals and have not returned there since.

Unsurprisingly it was the same venue where we were booked to support a well known signed folk rock act that decided that they would continue to sound check until the very moment that the doors were opened. The venue then chewed our backsides off for not being ready on time.

I am also reminded of the time we were booked to support a local band in Bristol only to be told on arrival that the band had no equipment at all, and I mean nothing; the guitarist had to borrow a plectrum (pick) from Aaron.
The drummer then set about resetting CJ’s drum kit for a left handed drummer only to break it in the process. Of course we didn’t realise this until about a third of the way through our set when the whole lot began to part company with CJ and itself and literally fell apart.
The band that had inflicted the damage on our equipment and kit then held court in the next room drawing the crowd away from our set.
I have said it before and I shall say it again…why do we do this to ourselves?

What we really need is a personality like our former guitarist Matt. He was once incensed that the support band having played to our audience began to pack up and were preparing to drive home. Matt stormed outside the venue and frog marched them back into the building and having removed their van keys told them that they were going no-where until we had played. We had been good enough to support them and they were going to return the favour by boosting our audience in support. I would never have had the nerve to do that.
Mind you our tales are nothing as compared to those who have had the pleasure of being ‘Road Crew’.

I once knew a guy who went from being a sound man onto becoming a road manager for acts such as George Michael. During recording sessions he would regale us with his tales of the road.

The funniest were of his memories of being on the road with a Spanish Heavy Metal band in Europe. The funniest account gave me hope that there is indeed such a concept as ‘justice’.

This particular band did not treat their crew with much respect at all to the point that they didn’t really budget the tour with such frivolities as ‘food’.

Now they do say that an army marches on its stomach and this is even more so for a road crew.
After a couple of weeks of this the crew had lost all its good humour and patience and were hungry, tired and fed up.

Part of the band’s show consisted of large pyrotechnics which had to be constructed by the only member of the crew who held an explosive licence, Bluey.

One night, fed up to the back teeth and extremely hungry Bluey got completely wasted before the gig and decided to take his revenge on his inconsiderate task masters.

Now bear in mind that each flash bomb only needed a tea spoon of this industrial strength gun powder for spectacular results, Bluey walked up each flash pot and poured a whole tub into each one, yes a WHOLE tub.

Then Bluey, satisfied with his act of vengeance curled up behind the mixing desk and fell last asleep and was totally unarousable.

My friend and his crew were then faced with a huge dilemma. Bluey was the only one who held a licence to handle this stuff. If anyone of them had as much as looked at the gun powder let alone touch it they could have found themselves being prosecuted under health & safety.
So they decided to leave it as it was and go and warn the band.

“Listen lads, it’s the last gig of the tour so we have decided to make it a spectacular one so what ever you do stay well away from the front of the stage at the point in the show where the flash pots always go off”.

The band gave an off hand reaction to this. They were leather clad rockers, nothing would distract them from doing what they did best….rocking.

However; despite their bravado they all began to look a tad nervous as the song in the show arrived that was normally accentuated by a controlled explosion of flame.

As the drummer leaned into a roll of the drums that announced the arrival of the explosion the band’s demeanour was now one of naked fear. With that my mate hit the detonation button.
Apparently what resulted was a solid wall of sheer flame 50 ft high and about 50 ft wide.

The band literally fell backwards into their amps and speakers completely blinded and sun tanned and the drummer fell of the riser into the orchestra pit behind.

My friend said that it was the first time that he had ever seen an audience turn as one and flee.

The explosion was so fierce that one of the venues officials called the bomb squad as they though the Basque separatists had been at it again.

At the end of the show my friend went to retrieve the pots and found that they had been blown clean through the stage itself and were now firmly buried in the concrete floor below and were going nowhere.

And the band who had suffered such retribution?
Well, they were all grins and thumbs up asking if they could do that again the next time they toured.
I suppose that once a Pratt, always a Pratt.

But it was a valuable lesson to me “Be careful how you treat people on the way up as they may have a bellyful of Jack Daniels and a dynamite licence”.