James Tetley

Pre tour Jitters

The date is 4th of April 2010 and were preparing for the first day of tour. We were heading to Plymouth to play the first show with rogue focus, Company L, and Guy Folk. The days leading up to the tour involved working over time, for the members of the bands with non 9-5s to get the time off, washing pants, gathering supplies for the 6 days we would be on the road.

A few things before we start this magical Mash Attack Journey through space and time, space being fast food and time being pints. Recently we lost 2 Brass/Woodwind players, Jess on Alto Sax, and Eva, second trumpet. Luckily enough our good Friend Dave from Kids Cant Fly stands in on Tenor sax, that is when his band isn’t destroying girls Harts and generally sweating around the UK.

DAY 1 – Plymouth – The Junction

The Tour bus was packed to the top with our equipment, bedding, bags, food and Booze and not to forget 6 Blokes each with a bag full of crap. We felt a little bit like Hamsters in A cage, but we are used to it, as we gig around 6 times a month having to spend most of our weekends and day times in this van. Each time we turned a corner everything would just pile into the middle of the bus creating the same amount of leg room as you would get using business class flights with Ryan Air, I think the term is Flamingo class, flamingos with no legs that is.

We were finally on the road and heading For Plymouth, not much went on in the 3ish hour trip apart from Acoustic singsongs, and bongo jams in the back of the bus. We arrived at the Junction in Plymouth around 9pm, there were people outside and the inside was rammed. This made the 3ish hour trip worth it. The stage was a bit shanty though, the pa provided was loud out the front of the stage but had no onstage monitoring, so when your up there you have no idea where you are in a song, so you have to rely on remembering the songs and tempo. Waiting for us to the left of the stage was a Gigantic Bag, full of veggie and vegan pasta, so happy to see this.

We hit the stage around 11pm after Rogue Focus and Company L. We made our first blunder, half way through the set, people were dancing and enjoying them selves, but we mentioned how the last time we were in Plymouth, and the pub that we played had more prostitutes in it then people there to see the bands, it was worded in the wrong way to make out that Plymouth was full of prostitutes, this forward statement produced an almighty boo, but it also provided us with some good stage Banta. Note to self, don’t insult the crowd, and don’t in anyway call them prostitutes.

Oh well, the show was awesome and I think we went down well; we sold a bunch of cd’s and gave away lots of badges and stickers. After we played we noticed some old Uni friends in the Crowd and went and said hello. They offered us a place to stay.

We didn’t manage to catch the first two bands, we spent this time in the van, going over sax lines with Dave, he originally wrote most of the lines it was just a matter of jogging his memory. Not going to lie, he only had about one hour practice with us in the van and managed not to mess up once, something very right about Dave J.

Guy Folk, were tonight’s headliners, they are Plymouth Folk Punk Legends. We loved their set; only problem was they, love to drink too much, they were wasted on stage. At one point their mandolin player left or fell from the stage, knocked over the pa and lay on the floor, looking like he was about to cardiac arrest. As the tour progressed these guys slowly, drank them selves to a point where they could hardly speak or function, but their set got tighter and tighter, by the end of the tour we found our selves obsessing over how good these guys were.

After their set we hung about the pub having a few drinks then we head to our friends house. Before this we had a Jam in the back of the van and some metal tramp turned up, he started asking the girls we were with if they enjoyed sex, this was in-between sips of Special Brew, so we started singing a song about him, think the lyrics were “This guy is really pissing me off, he smells of Piss, lets go to coop they sell 24 hour drugs”.

We got back to our friends house after visiting coop for a quick pasty pick me up, where we drank tea and had a jam till 6 in the morning with keyboards, shakers, bongos and random sing-along’s, ahh before we forget we also cock blocked one of the girls who had a man she wanted to sexy time. That’s the way we roll, we play hard, we drink “tea” hard, we jam hard and we cock block even harder.

Day 2 – Yeovil – Quicksilver Mail

After a refreshing nights sleep, blagin showers, several tea rounds, and Bacon sandwiches at the Girls house, we said our good byes and got back into the van for a 2 hour trip to Yeovil. Today we would be adding another band to the Tour, King Tut’s Revenge, Local Yeovil Hero’s, playing a mixture of Ska Covers as well as their own stuff. We have played with these guys before, in Southampton when we supporting Spunge at Talking heads. The Singer from KTR, had been in a fight a few days before with some hefty marines and had his Jaw Broken, so he didn’t sing that night. We were looking forward to seeing KTR on form today, singers Jaw intact hopefully. We did have an image of this band being a bunch of crazed fighting punk’s, but actually they’re the loveliest people we met.

We hung out in the back of the venue, in a proper old man’s / Farmer pub, filled with old boys on lunch pints, nestling gigantic dogs by their legs. We ordered Coffee and received some local raised eyebrows, don’t think they knew you could order none alcoholic drinks in a pub or maybe they sensed there farm was on fire or prize pig being rogerd by next doors lamer. The venue was starting to slowly fill with KTR Fans. We hit the stage at around 10. We went a bit mental at this show and jumped around quite a bit. This was probably our favourite show on the tour.

KTR were tonight’s headline, they played an awesome set, and we danced throughout well between drinking our own beer in the venue. After the show we were fairly drunk, there was an abandoned house opposite the venue, we decided this would be a great idea to try and get in and sleep there. We failed in entering the building as it was boarded up. Although a few people received a few cuts trying to scale a wall only to find out there was an open door to the house.

We stayed at Adams from KTR that night instead, involved a lot of drinking of tea, as well as watching strange Japanese game shows. There was a point where Simon our bass player Drank so much that he passed out, we had to carry him up 2 flights of stairs and put him to a bed.

Day 3 Bournemouth – The Winchester

The next day we were well rested and looking forward to the next show. At some point in the day we had a hilarious conversation with Guy Folk that involved 2 stories. The first story was where they stayed in Yeovil that night and the second regarding a friend that hoofed his poo into a girl’s garden.

Story 1

Their designated driver was wasted so they decided to stay in the van at the venue. They awoke, to find they had parked opposite a funeral ground with a grieving family in the middle of a service. Ali the singer didn’t realise this, due to just waking up. He walked towards the ongoing funeral, then took a piss in direct view of the grieving family, mind, it was the morning and had a stonk on. You can tell what happened next. Grieving family, hung over man with erection pissing in direct view.

Story 2

A friend of theirs had been trying to get with a girl for around 2 or 3 years, he was invited to a bbq with her + friends and family etc. He was on form and chatting away, then all of a sudden his guts turned and he needed the biggest shit ever. He asked the girl (he wanted to get on) where the loo was. She said down stairs do not use the upstairs toilet. As he had a few drinks by now this info went directly over his head and he stumbled to the up stairs toilet and took the biggest dump ever into it. Only to find there was no water in the bowl or a flush. He freaked out, came to the conclusion the only way to amend this error was to get some bog roll and hoof the shit out of the window. After hoofing his terd out of the window he returned to the bbq only to find everyone in the garden staring at him. The window was directly above the bbq and he had hoofed shit all over the people their. He just turned and ran and never spoken to those people again.

Anyways back to the tour…

Bournemouth was probably the worse show we did on the tour, everything went wrong. We had about 6 people through the door and our bass player decided he would rather go to work then play. We managed to train up Guy from KTR to Learn 6 songs, and String Bean from Guy folk to learn 1 song. TBH we had fun at the show, there were strippers in the dressing room practicing, we didn’t watch J but this did fill the void of depression creeping on due to awol bass player. The band we loved tonight were Company L they rocked out on stage, and their sound was awesome, also to add the high roof made Mike look human sized on stage instead of a giant.

We left feeling fucking low, just had two amazing shows, and this one put a proper downer on us, not because of the lack of people at the show, but our bass player ditching us. We stayed at our house that night.

Day 4 – Southampton – Soul Cellar

staying at home was the best, we go to have some proper food, showers and to chill out in the garden in the sun before we had to get to Soul Cellar. We were playing for DJ Hammy, as well as being headline. Soul Cellar back stage was awesome it came with a shower/bath and comfy chairs. All the bands spent most of the time in there playing on various instruments as well as abusing each other, involving throwing String Beans clothes out of the window leaving him naked for a while.

We were headlining tonight, our body’s were starting to fail though, my voice was braking, Sel’s arms were falling off, Simons Bass was braking down, Chris Lips were starting to swell and Dave’s sax was sweating. We played an awesome show even though we were all in dire need of good food and a days rest.

After the show Hammy did his DJ thing and we all got funky on the dance floor till 3am. A trip to a local Kebab shop on the way home for some greasy energy get us ready for the day a head.

Day 5 – Croydon – Scream Lounge

Not going to lie we were all hanging out our asses, and communally decided never to drink again. On the way to Croydon, Chris and I sat in the back of the bus, I was teaching Chris all the lyrics to the songs as he couldn’t even speak properly, we also didn’t have Dave he was at home for his sisters 21st. We arrived in Croydon really early, met the sound guy who was Sound and set up for the last show.

This wasn’t particle a busy night, Croydon is predominately a Metal town, people were still well into New Metal and Rap Metal there, so we didn’t get that many people through door, just people’s family’s and close friends and this is all really need right.

This was the last show of the tour, everyone was getting merry on cider, as well as. We all said our good byes and planned some reunion shows in the near future.

Tour after party

We all ended up in the Black sheep bar for an after show party, the place was rammed with people, a few of us couldn’t get in because of the ID system they have at the Club, you have to have id so they can register a finger print that you use to enter the club. As croydon is probably one of the best towns for social stabbing and bricking we found this to be a good means of deterrent from well cunts.

We left Sheep at around 3 and pilled 2 bands into taxies and sent them off to my parents house just up the road, we arrived at his parents house at 4, where the KTR decided to piss all over the neighbours flowers, and make a lot of noise. The following day, the neighbours had all woken up and complained. But everything was cool.

Think this image sums up the sheep. We love it

The tour was awesome, we met some awesome people, sold a lot of cd’s and merch, got some good contacts, and played with some awesome bands. Like to thank everyone that had come to the shows, the bands that played and Rob for sorting it all out. We would love to do some more show’s with Rob soon, next time I think we need to plan things better, get out there and promote more. We lacked in promotion on the tour, we only used Facebook, should have spent a few weekends flyering the towns etc.

The End..