Groupies and ghosts

I wake up in my bed, in my room, no smelly boys and clean sheets feeling surprisingly excited to get back on the road.  As I said, London has not lived up to the hype. The phone starts ringing and I am quickly regaled with the many shenanigans form last nights continuing wrongness after I bailed.

Groupies.  Now don’t get me wrong, there is always room for groupies. They are as necessary to a tour as ryders and service station stops.  There is however etiquette to being a groupie, unwritten rules and ways one should behave in a proper manner.

Screaming like a banshee that you wish the whole band AIDS and to be run over by a bus simply because they have bought their long time friend, who also happens to have served you many a drink at London’s finest drinking hole but is, god forbid a girl and therefore in your eyes, competition, even though had you taken the time to do some research you would know she is in a long time relationship with the bands friend is really quite bad form. And embarrassing for everyone involved. And won’t get you any band cock.

Asking the band members for money so you can buy drugs is also frowned upon. You are not in the band, hell you are barely even with the band. Jeez, my London sisters really should know better!

Other than that and including that, there were the usual drunken rowdy happenings that left the night ending prematurely for most involved. BBB ended up not staying in Ealing with Tom from mutant however and this now, the next day proved to be a bit of a fuck up.

See at this point, Lukas the driver is waiting on new brakes and Marcin, his right hand man has driven to Ealing to pick up BBB, who of course aren’t there. No one has told the Polish contingent this though. Ooops. Tom’s mum informs him that the BBB are at Talita's and he goes AWOL for several hours. Eventually, at just gone 3 pm we leave for Leeds. I can’t get hold of anyone at tonight’s venue but needless to say we will be turning up just in time to set up and play. On a wing and a prayer we should get there by 7 pm. No stops just straight to Leeds.

On arrival at the venue, Josephs Well, I realise why no one has chased us up on where we are. The promoter is quite possibly ten years old. He is also the most adorable host we have had to date, so much so we all want to adopt him and take him with us within 10 minutes of meeting him. He has sorted out the usual ryder consisting of bad food and crap beer, but also there is fruit juice and real actual fruit! Everything is set up and sound check gets done quickly and without fanfare. 

The merch stall is spread over four pub tables and there are people waiting to get in. This in itself is shocking since the gig was only set up a week ago and then in to the dressing room comes the ten year old with a massive steaming bowl of pasta for us. Result.  Both bands play well and we sell some merch so all in all it was a good gig. The ten year old, who is in fact 20, checks in on us all regularly and after settling out the money pushes off home.

We, on the other hand are not going anywhere. Tonight we will sleep in the pub, on the sofas. Which is kind of creepy. Most of the guys head out to some dodgy all night bar run by Chinese local mafia with some locals who watched the show and so me, Jose and Ruben curl up in our sleeping bags in the corner of the pub and Ruben tells us a blinder of a ghost story fitting to such a moment. 

Several hours later I wake up in a spine twisted position on the sofa, which is like a window ledge to perch on and hop over to some floor space in my sleeping bag. Next time I wake up Jose has done the same. The floor was way better. I hear the guys come in at some point and at 7 am, Carlos, last man standing staggers in completely wasted but very happy with himself. He mumbles something about a pink games console and passes out.

3 hours later he’s not so happy  ‘cause it’s time to load up and push off to the last stop on the U.K leg of BBB’s European tour and the last stop for both Cauldron and myself, Nottingham, home to the Earache HQ. Should be an interesting one.