The most memorable;
Offspring Visit to the TOTP studios with my (then 10-year old) son to see the mighty Offspring doing some live recording. Security refused entry because you have to be 15 to go into the studios. Sony A&R man pretended we were great mates of the band and somehow we ended up in the backstage area of TOTP ... unattended... Wandered into the bands changing rooms, posed for photos with the geeky looking bloke from the "pretty fly for a white guy" video and then wandered into a different studio and sat on the sofas with the Radio 1 people while they did an interview with the band and then promptly got lost in the warrens of the backstage area until we bumped into Shania Twain...

Grinspoon/Electric Eel Shock Got refused entry to the Australia Day bash at PoNaNa (London) a couple of years ago when I took two 14-year old lads to see Electric Eel Shock support Oz band Grinspoon. James, EES's manager ended up getting the owner of PoNaNa onto the street to argue with him in front of about 100 bouncers, at which point Grinspoon arrived and headed for the stage entrance. Owner says, "go and get their autographs", so we quickly ran after them, through the stage door and then got horribly lost. After about 20-minutes of wondering around in a truly Spinal Tap manner, security eventually found us and threw us out. The owner was laughing his head off and the kids thought it was the best night out they'd ever had.

Roskilde The stage crew of the Arena stage (2nd stage) invited us all back to their private backstage camp after an EES gig, ended up drinking until 7am and most bizarrely, even though they were all Danish, they found a Union Jack from somewhere, hoisted it up an improvised flagpole and stood around singing "God Save The Queen", very, very loudly until the stage manager woke up and threatened to throw them out. Made even more surreal by the fact that the band are Japanese and didn't really understand what was going on...

Beta Band Got exceedingly pissed in a 4-star Manchester hotel with the beautiful and lovely Beta Band, a monster session of White Russians ended at 4am with my mate skateboarding round the hotel lobby with a ganja pipe in his mouth and somebody in the band deciding to break about 200 glasses on the grounds that they "should fucking clean up sometime". For some reason, the hotel management thought this was perfectly normal and acceptable behaviour for guests.

Bloodhound Gang (One of James's many true stories); Aftershow in Hamburg in some titty bar, Jimmy Pop gets called to the stage and proceeds to jump from table to table knocking drinks,bottles and whole tables flying. Bouncers are unamused and decide to eject him, by which time he's got to the stage and to avoid a fight jumps up and graps the mirror ball over the stage, which promptly falls out of the ceiling bringing half the roof with it. Owner looks over at the tour manager who quickly holds his wallet up at which point the owner calls off the goons, safe in the knowledge that BG's tour support is going to a worthwhile cause. Now that's Rock 'n' Roll.


This space left clear for a length/girth joke
( Linbox has a serious dunk habit, Fri 30 Jun 2006, 10:04, Reply)