"A whole lot of Rosie"

They do say that old rockers never die, they just smell like they do. They also say that it is better to burn out than fade away….I’m beginning to think that this might be my destiny.

We have had a fair few gigs crammed into a short space of time, and I am quite frankly ‘knackered’.

It’s been a good year so far, and good offers are arriving frequently. However, as with Friday night, every so often a gig crashes into your consciousness, just to remind the budding Rock God that they should never rise above their station and go and get too big for their boots.

As always, I will refrain from actually naming the venue in question and shall simply call it the ‘Queens Bottom’.

We have played at the venue several times before and have always been met with a warm and enthusiastic audience who invariably refused to let us leave (in the good sense).

Tonight was not going to be quite so enthusiastic and yet they still did not want to let us leave….however, this time the reason was not quite so positive.

The whole tone of the evening met us on arrival and it resulted in one heck of a load in and set up.

A young lady had sadly lost her life in a senseless car accident quite close to the pub a week earlier and friends, family and neighbours all descended on the pub in order to raise cash in her memory.

They were dressed in the loudest and most outrageous costumes they could find…either that or they were bedecked in pyjama’s and dressing gowns. And there were dozen’s and dozen’s and dozen’s of them. Mainly young girls or children and they were all milling around the entrance ways to the pub.

This made getting our 1 ½ tonnes of kit into the building a tad difficult.

Crushing a 7 year old poppet who is dressed as a dayglo Disney princes with the sharp end of 4 x 12 guitar speaker would do nothing to enhance our reputation in the area I can tell you.

It also felt rather churlish to tell this bunch of well meaning enthusiasts to “get the hell out of the way as we are on in half an hour”, and so another route was sought and we found ourselves running the gauntlet of boys on bicycles and outdoor smokers huddled around the entrance way of the kitchens at the other end of the building, who made random comments like “that looks heavy” before collapsing into a fit of smoke induced hacking coughing brought on by the strength of their own hilarity.

One of the oddities of this whole spectacle was observing super charged Renault Clios and such careering around the pub car park driven by teenage mourners sending packs of young dayglo wearing children flying in all directions. There was a very real possibility that this event that had been called to celebrate the life of a woman that had been knocked down by a speeding car was going to end up with somebody getting knocked down…..by a speeding car.

Anyway, against all the odds, nobody was killed or hurt and we got all of our equipment into the building before it was time to kick off.

With that the hoards of brightly coloured revellers, as one departed, presumably in order to get their children to bed. However this did leave the place in the domain of a bunch of already plastered teenagers and young people. It was going to be a long night.

According to my two colleagues we were well received. However, from my short sighted perception we went down like Gareth Gates on an oil rig.

Then, much to my amazement, into this den of alcohol fuelled apathy strolled our church pastor and his wife.

Now you might not think that this is so amazing as it would be only natural for a man of the cloth to want to support members of his flock in their earnest endeavours. And this of course would be very much what he was doing. However, what you need to know is that although our pastor is a good man his taste in music is so….shall we say…twee….that it makes John Denver look like a death metal artiste.

For Dave to come to one of our gigs is, you will have to trust me in this, a sign of his love and commitments for those that he is responsible for…i.e. me and Aaron.

The horror of what was happening though was not lost on me. Dave and Elaine walked in just as we hammering through “Turning Japanese” by the ‘Vapours’, and as they took their seats just in front of the speakers, I was singing the immortal lines “No sex, no drugs, no wine, no women, no fun, no sin, no you know wonder it’s dark”……..oh joy.

Of course that particular song runs straight into “A whole lot of Rosie” by ‘AC/DC’, which without putting too fine a point on it is about a bloke having wild rampant sex with his 19 stone girlfriend.

Now, I am not one who advocates unsuitable lyrics in songs…I am now a parent after all. However, I maintain that at the volume we play you can’t hear the words anyway, and most people like these songs because of the music.

I had a bright idea to maintain my dignity. As the offending words came to their place in the song, I stood back from the microphone.

My son and heir sadly saw what I was doing and was not prepared to let me get away with this particular hypocrisy and stood up to his mic and bellowed out the offending lyrics in his loudest, clearest voice.

Thankfully, Dave’s ears had been so firmly pinned back behind his head by the volume that he didn’t pick any of that up at all.

Bless him, he made it to the end of the first half before retreating to the safety of his own home and some ‘good old ‘US of A’ gospel music from the deep south’.

It has to be said that my own parents haven’t heard me perform in a band since I was 19 years old so this was a point of honour indeed that was not lost on me.

Any roads we made it to the end of the evening, with dignity but very little enthusiasm left intact.

This was when the problem of getting back out of the building reared its drunken head.

The crowd of sozzled youths that crowded around the entrances had got to the point where they firmly believed that they were a) hard, b) funny and c) in the right to do anything they liked, including preventing the poor gits who had been from performing that night leaving.

Aaron however in a stroke of comedic genius draw himself up to his full 6 foot 3 inch height and whilst clutching his enormous flight cased guitar amp, looked straight into the face of the leading tattooed, baseball cap wearing Chav and quoted Douglas Adams at him (that would be from the Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy for those not in the know).

“Do you know how much damage I would do to this amp if I simply dropped it on your head”

“Na”

“None what so ever”.

Whether said drunken Chav understood the subtlety of the quote, indeed if he even knew of it’s origins (I sincerely doubt it), either way bowing to a superior intellect or because he truly believed that Aaron would drop a hundred weight of Marshall cap on him he took the better part of valour and got he and his mates out of the way.

We still took out a few back legs and shins with the rest of the gear, but that was their own stupid fault.

You do have to ask yourself why we do this sometimes.

For balance though. Aaron and I under our acoustic duo moniker ‘The Loaders’ performed to an audience so civilised and appreciative on Sunday that we sang the old hymn “When I survey the wondrous cross” in honour of Easter Sunday.

That was just in case you think I have really ditched the entire ‘God Bothering’ and gone instead for a preference for singing about carnal relations with women of a fuller figure.

Of course, the pastor wasn’t there to hear that one was he…typical!

The last temptation of The Mudheads

We really are getting into the groove with this concert lark!

We arrived at the ‘Fight Club’ fully prepped and bang on time.
We set our gear up in record time and we were within the blink of an eye…..’Ready to Rock’.

We then eyed the enormous audience suspiciously. They eyed us back with equal suspicion and with just a hint of aggression.

Now on the face of it, this should be the ideal gig for us. Four hundred or so twenty somethings, all in town to ‘have a good time’. Herds of young women in remarkably high heels and ridiculously short skirts wandered around in packs and kept eyeing us discreetly with that look that suggested that we were not on their list of ‘things they really wanted anything to do with tonight thank you very much’.

This look of distaste was not subdued when we launched into our sound check…..we were loud, VERY loud (more of that later), leaving everybody in a half mile radius in no doubt that we were anything but a fully fledged, paid up, cranked up, heads up…rock band!

With that one of the herd broke pack and tottered up to Aaron and tugged on his shirt sleeve.

What! I hear you cry..had the boy pulled so early. Were offers of drinks and moonlit walks on the cards (his girlfriend might be reading this). Had his heady good looks, inherited from his father I might add, captivated this bright young thing as soon as she had clapped eyes upon him.

No!

She had been assigned by the pack as being the only one that could speak ‘bloke’ and sent on a mission to utter these immortal words;

“Do you play any disco?.....we want to dance”.

Despite the many posters and flyers that littered the venue and the especially large banner that adorned the main entrance way informing all that passed this way that tonight was truly a ‘rock & indie’ night, a large group of office workers had descended upon the place firm in their belief that they would be discoing the night away.

Our first set though left none of them in any doubt that we were about as far removed from said disco as it is possible to get.

That being said, at least two other delegates from the herd were dispatched and were to yell in my ear for requests for songs that are currently in the top of the charts….I can only assume that they must have been referring to songs from the latest hip hop, techno sensation. Either way it got to the point that I had to announce over the PA that “I’m sorry boys and girls, but we don’t do requests”.
At this the herd decided that they must try and make the best of a bad job and set about flinging sorties of about two or three girls at a time bang into the middle of the dance floor in front of the stage, where they would wriggle provocatively, sending their chesticles flying in all directions and waving their backsides at each other in some sort of primitive tribal mating ritual. Then they would fly back off into the relative safety of the herd only to be replaced by another sortie of wrigglers.

It has to be said, that if I had not been there with my son I would have enjoyed myself a whole lot more. Especially as I was trying out contact lenses for the first time and I could clearly see what was going on.

However, in case anybody feels that this resident God botherer has been succumbing to the temptations of the flesh, be assured that having been given a damn good thrashing with the ugly stick at birth, the whiley ways of the groupie have never been a problem for me. I can honestly say that throughout my 35 years of performing live I have only once ever had an adoring fan throw themselves upon me. However, I was already engaged to Aaron’s mother and so I dutifully fought her off, and respectfully declined the offer of a good ‘snog’.

At the ripe old age of……..well lets just say that I am not 21 anymore, I am not about to be so stupid as to throw everything away for the attentions of a cider fuelled Doris in an outfit that would have probably given her father a heart attack should he have clapped eyes upon it.

By the second half of the gig though things were getting a little tiring.

The sound was unbelievably loud as the sound man wanted the music to travel the length of the club to hit the back wall and the entrance way.

That level of noise can become very debilitating after a while and I eventually couldn’t make any notes out from amongst the wall of sound that was crashing into my head. This isn’t a great place to be when you are the singer and you are endeavouring to pitch your voice with the instruments.

I think I presented my self with honour…. However I will never know as all those that were actually listening to us (and there were several hundred taking an active interest) looked as shell shocked as I felt.

As soon as the last note was finished, the herd regrouped and swiftly vacated the building in search of a more ‘disco’ related club in which they could temp the metal of other men who to be honest….had a pulse!!

They want us back….Lord help us!

"Another Caviar nibble Mr Loader?"

My apologies for the sporadic nature of my shambolic postings of late.

As a fledgling Rock God I dreamt of lengthy lie ins having performed at one of my many stadium type gigs the night before. This would of course be followed by a sumptuous brunch in my five star hotel room, with perhaps a manicure or some other suitably relaxing and decedent non activity to follow.

By the time I was in a fit state of mind to face my adoring world, my driver would have arrived to deliver me in style to one of the many radio interviews, album signings, or all factory star personal appearances that I would have to reluctantly fit in before being driven to the BBC for my exclusive interview with Michael Parkinson or Terry Wogan (if you are under 30 years old read that as Jonathan Ross or rather surprisingly, Paul O’Grady or Jay Leno if you are Stateside).

You would then find me consuming slap up cuisine in some 5 star pile in the centre of London being regally entertained by a Hollywood A list celebrity, and then back to my 5 star four poster bed for a good nights kip giving me the strength to do it all over again the next day.

The reality of the matter is (of course) somewhat different.

As young fledgling Rock God, I nearly starved to death in the backside end of some European kingdom, such as Holland (well, not perhaps starved to death, but certainly hungry enough to eat the horse meat we got served on one occasion….and no it doesn’t taste like chicken).

The dream of those 5 star hotels and interviews with the best chat show hosts in the land, died pretty much in the Netherlands really.

Now, like most mid life Rock stars…I have to work for a living to maintain my visions of fame and glory. Believe you me; bass guitar strings do not come cheap.

For my sins I work for the NHS….with children to be exact…..and it can be VERY hard work indeed.

Having somehow lost my way in life I now find myself as the administrator for the service in which I earn a crust.

Most days are spent bashing away at my criminally slow computer and wondering if I should have gone from Holland to Germany as opposed back to Blighty and the welcoming bosom of WH Smith & Sons (that’s a national chain of book and stationary retailers for you outside of the UK), where my desperate slide into ‘ordinary’ began to take it’s deathly grip.

I didn’t stay there incidentally, but that’s a story for another blog in another place.

All that being said, I was apologising for my tardiness in posting blogs, and the reason for that is of late….I’ve been too flippin busy!!

However, I am sorry and I will undertake to fill you in on just exactly what did (or didn’t) happen at the Fight Club as soon as I can find the bottom of my desk.

Please keep the faith and don’t wander off just yet!!

The Fight Club

The Mudheads are busily preparing themselves for the “How many gigs can we cram into one year Tour 2009”, and judging my how difficult it has been to get the band together since Christmas simply to rehearse, I would say not many.

Actually, that’s not strictly true as we have already got 11 dates in the diary with plenty more chomping up behind.

Now one of these concerts in itself could be extremely interesting indeed. Officially it has an exciting rock & roll name, a little bit like ‘The Hard Rock Café’ but not (if you see what I mean).

I am reluctant to reveal its proper name as I am in no position financially to get sued for liable.

You see if might officially have a rather vogue name, locally however it is commonly known as ‘The Fight Club’.

We have been asked to perform at said venue by the promoters as part of a charity evening which is launching a Trust that is being set up by the mother of a teenager that was stabbed to death…out side said night club!

I have asked that all our biggest (and ugliest) mates attend this gig in order to protect our backsides.

CJ in light of getting this particular booking then went on to excel himself….he’s gone and got us booked to play in the largest Irish themed night club in Bristol.

The patrons of this establishment warm themselves of an evening by thumping lumps out of the more deranged element of ‘The Fight Club’.

We…are….going….to …….die!

But hey…whoever said that Rock & Roll was supposed to be safe….why do you think that I wear a bass guitar that is made of a particular thick piece of wood……..I’m armed me!

Anyway, first gig of the season sees us performing away from Bristol down in Yeovil…..I believe they eat their dead down there…..so we may not make it to the ‘Fight Club’ anyway.

I’ll let you know how we get on.

The Rock God MUST rehearse

I have mentioned this before, but it would appear that too many years of TV programmes like ‘Fame’ and ‘High School Musical’ give the average person the unfaltering belief, especially when mixed with four pints of something dangerous, that songs can be plucked on a whim from the air and played like a digital recording even if the poor unfortunates performing that evening have never even heard of said tune.

I cannot count the times that some clown with alcohol breath that could fell a horse, swilling their beer (or gin & tonic, for such an affliction is not solely the pass time of men) and being unswayed by our protests that we do not know how to perform the theme song from ‘Titanic’ and probably never will, has insisted that we should just “go for it”.

We got to a point where we almost stuck up a backdrop that was not emblazoned with the Bands moniker, nor our website details, but with the statement “We do not do requests…..and we do not play the following”….which of course would have included such favourites as ‘Smoke on the water’, ‘Sweet Child of Mine’ and absolutely anything by ‘Robbie Williams’.

There may also have been some reference to abstaining from attempting anything that might have been recorded by an ‘X Factor’ contestant.

However, common sense eventually prevailed in that we only have ourselves to blame for putting ourselves in this kind of line of fire and that for the most part these Simon Cowell wannabies are mostly harmless.

You see, what these idiots (my apologies, I mean ‘music enthusiasts) do not realise, is that weeks of hard work goes into each and every song that we play…..well, that was until we jammed ‘Teenage kicks’ got it right first time, thought that it would be a scream for a bloke in his 40’s to sing it, and it was in. The whole process took under two minutes. However, on the whole the process takes a lot of time and hard work.

Now as a band we are not, for want of a better expression, ‘anal’ about rehearsing songs. We do not unpick each riff, expression, nuance and word. We do however, work hard at getting the ‘feel’ right.

We are also very proud of the reputation that we have been honoured with in that we as a band are extremely ‘tight’.

Now that does not mean that we get on well together (although it has to be said that we are a family…..in two thirds of our case, quite literally).

It also does not mean that we are permanently ‘plastered’ (the generous consumption of the falling down juice is discouraged at our gigs as we are being paid to do a job that quite frankly is hard enough stone cold sober let alone when you have trouble remembering where your feet are let alone what the opening line of the next song is).

What being ‘tight’ means is that we perform together well. The bass and drums become as one, and we sound as if we are as ‘on the same road’ as opposed to being all over the place.

This is extremely important to me as when I played bass in my very first serious band, the drummer and I had a hard time playing together in time. He being considerably more aggressive then I laid the blame firmly and squarely at my feet. The other members of the band went along with this.

Of course you get told something often enough you begin to believe it.

However, when a gig goes well, and it gets to a point where you couldn’t insert a piece of rice paper between CJ’s bass drum and my bass guitar I get a moment of immense pride.

It wasn’t me after all….yah boo suck to ya all!!

I put this totally down to lots and lots of practice.

As a band The Mudheads are extremely fortunate in that we own our own practice space (well CJ does).

Most bands have to load their kit into cars and vans, transport their equipment to a rehearsal studio, set it up, get the sound right…..play for a couple of hours…take it back down, drive home and unload…..oh, and pay about fifty quid for the privilege.

Our own little ADHD candidate got bored between bands and built himself a double garage into which he constructed a rehearsal room….totally sound proof and as we have since discovered totally air tight!

When we began rehearsing as a band we had two small practice amps, the drum kit and a vocal PA. We had plenty of room to move. We have since grown about 300 percent equipment wise and we now struggle to get in there let alone practice.

However, spurred on by the knowledge that most other bands have a really hard time with this particular process we gladly sit back, open a cold one from CJ’s beer fridge (for which he insists loudly and on a regular basis gives him an extra and thus deciding vote) and count our blessings.

It does mean however that it can make us rather lazy from time to time, and not all of our rehearsals are as productive as perhaps they ought to be, especially if CJ and Aaron have been in receipt of a good crop of jokes over the previous week. However on the whole we make good use of the time.

We also have the luxury of trying out news songs that perhaps don’t work, as we are not spending a small fortune week after week playing with things that are just not right for us as a band.

And most importantly it does mean that for us as a band, it is for the most part still a lot of fun.

In these desperate times when many bands are knocking it on the head due to poor audience attendance, we continue to look forward to Thursday nights as these are the ‘boys night in’.

And yes, occasionally…between beers, we do learn a new song or two.

The Joys of Twitter

.
Quicksketch has introduced me a new world wide phenomena called 'Twitter'....I have added a link to the left hand side of this blog, which will allow you updates of what I am doing throughout the day.

So, if you want to know what a Rock God has for lunch.....or how often he goes to the bathroom...check it out.

You can even get updates sent to your phone or e-mail.

Does this have a rather 'sad' element to this do you think??

Anyway, Stephen Fry is a big fan of Twitter so who am I to argue and I want to remain cutting edge............until I finally give up and buy myself a pipe and some slippers and the overwhelming urge to own a garden shed becomes to much to bear.

Guitar Mountain!

This weekend saw a momentous occasion….well for The Loader household anyway……Rock God Junior (that’s The Mudheads guitarist and my son, Aaron) left home.

This wasn’t a tantrum based; let’s throw the guitar out of the pram “I hate all of you” kind of a moment. This was a planned “Oh good Lord how am I ever going to pay this mortgage off” type of occasion.

Aaron is now a home owner…..well ‘part’ owner. He shares it with his partner Sue and of course it’s actually owned by the Nat West bank….at least for the next 35 years……..Rock God senior (that’ll be me) will either be dead, dying or just VERY old by the time they can actually claim that pile as their very own.

With the big day upon us, The Mudheads tour bus (a very large black trailer lovingly rescued from farm yard oblivion by CJ) was emptied of all surplus musical equipment and conscripted into being a removal van.

The first thing we can say about a guitarist is that they own one heck of a lot of cack!........that’s total and utter rubbish to you and me.

I don’t think that my son and heir has had a good clear out (of the tidying up variety) since he was 3 years old. So there was 20 years of tat that had to be retrieved, checked and boxed (the thought of packing before hand had never really occurred to him).

CJ and I had a great afternoon discovering guitar plectrums in every nook and cranny around the room (I now have a pocket full of them).

Old comics, CD’s DVD’s even his first teddy bear (he hadn’t noticed that I had stuffed that in his suitcase to be discovered later), all covered in a thick layer of ‘man’ sized dust was rummaged through in order to pack.

Eventually, in order to get us all home before the end of the age, CJ chose to just wipe everything off of desks, cupboards and shelves on to the floor and we concentrated on the big stuff.

It was the look of sheer horror on Sue’s face that said it all as we unloaded the trailer into what had previously been her pristine new home.

What she hasn’t seen yet is the reason for Mrs Rock God’s joy……Aaron’s half of the 18 or so guitars that we own between us……all flight cased….all used. And Sue thinks she is going to have a spare room……hah!

I’m sure I saw just a glint of evil pleasure on my wife’s face when Sue made her statements of where everything was going to go.

You see what she hasn’t appreciated yet is that she is setting up home with a musician. Just one mind you, poor Mrs Rock God has had to tolerate the injustice of three (my daughter also plays……guitar, piano, clarinet……there’s even a keyboard in there somewhere).

As Sue surveyed her neatly tidied living room she appeared blissfully unaware that it would soon be knee deep in guitars, plectrums, broken strings, cases, music, guitar pedals, and amps…..and everything else that is required to inspire rock stardom to your average guitar hero.

Mrs Rock God hasn’t been able to use our front room for years. Mrs CJ would risk life and limb to get into their garage…..let alone our little studio.

Still……..as I sit here smuggling typing…..it’s no longer my problem it’s Sue’s.

Right…let’s see if the little so in so has left me any of my CD’s.