» Rock and Roll Stories

Sorry for the length
I play in a band from Nottingham most accurately described in a review as "Sludge Metal Dickheads" and we've had our moments in the 5 years or so we've been together... apologies for the length as this has been amusing reminiscing!

My own crowning glory was whilst playing with Canadian metal band 3 Inches of Blood at Rock City in Nottingham, coming back into the dressing room to find their lead singer disgustedly saying "Dude, I was taking a shit and some guy was banging this chick in the shower". We hadn't realised the two adjoining rooms were connected at the top and he had heard everything!

At the Morrowfest tribute show several years ago I was being violently sick in a toilet cubicle as Mike from Eyehategod was telling me from the next cubicle "I know how you feel, man", he was so skint he was selling CDs to buy cider in the pub beforehand. It was so warm (and we'd all got so horribly drunk the night before) I felt like I'd had a stroke.

Whilst drunk after a xmas party gig I power-bombed one of our guitarists into the floor without realising it was covered in broken glass, he had to invent a story to tell his wife otherwise she would have either killed me or stopped him from playing with us again. We stole all the other bands riders that evening as well, teaching them a valuable lesson.

Drummer stories, aha... our previous drummer was a walking stereotype, turning up for a four day tour with a plastic bag containing four cans of lager, a copy of the Sun and a spare pair of pants. We had to explain what "Touche" meant to him after we'd got sick of him drinking cooking sherry on stage and falling off his drumstool all the time, the rest of the band got as drunk as was humanly possible for one gig, I had to hold a tuner pedal up to our guitarists face as he was too pissed to focus. He complained about it later and didn't understand what we were talking about when we said "Touche!" to him.

One particularly "refreshed" evening we were playing an all day gig in Nottingham, highlights included our guitarist playing one of Defenestration's guitars whilst they were on stage with his balls and I (apparently) demolished a chair when I blacked out and fell over. A member of Birmingham nutters Mistress got completely naked and crowd surfed, the staff at the pub said they found a pair of trousers the next day, he went home in the van in nothing but his leather jacket and boots that evening.

We broke Newark as well one Halloween, three Nottingham bands had travelled up to play a gig in a venue called Gustos in fancy dress. One band (whose members were Irish) were dressed in white shirts, black trousers and balaclavas as the I.R.A. which caused enough trouble, we were in bloody lab coats and black metal makeup which had been so badly applied we looked like black metal zebras. Several bottles of spirits later we had collectively broken the PA, covered the place in stickers, one of our vocalists had cracked two ribs falling into the amps and the venue from that point onwards had a strict policy of no heavy bands.

There is nothing left to put in the liner notes of our 30th anniversary reunion triple-gatefold release now, but there you go.
(Mon 3rd Jul 2006, 18:32, More)

» Heckles

Musical Heckles
Probably the best heckle ever was an audience participation one, someone shouted out "Drum Solo!" and a bright spark in the audience shouted out "Han Solo!".

It's along the lines of someone shouting out "I would do anything for love" for another member of the audience to complete the phrase with "But I won't do that!".

"Turn the keyboards up" for a band without any keyboards is another Nottingham favourite.

Thankyou, drive through.
(Fri 7th Apr 2006, 17:09, More)