So there I am leaning on a wall in the sunshine looking at my cigarette burning slowly, feeling nervous as hell and wondering whether I can actually do the job I said I could do.
This was it, this was the real thing, a real tour, with a real band. Did I have what it took? I had impressed them with my ability to save the gig with a four channel mixing desk and they had asked me to become their engineer. I, being a desperate young thing, of course, said yes, and this dear reader is how I ended up in North London and preparing to go on a four date tour with them.
My day started at midday at my local train station and continued with an hour-long ride up to London Waterloo and then onto the Northern Line to Archway and the band's house. I had never been in a van before, let alone ridden in the back of one on a mattress with a drummer and a whole lot of musical equipment, all of which was balanced precariously close to me. Finding myself in that situation, therefore, was both exciting and a little worrying.
I mean what happens to a person when a whole band's gear impacts them into the driver's seat? At least maybe he had experienced the same thing when he popped his tour cherry and somehow immediately I felt better and managed to lie down across the back of the van and in fact get incredibly comfortable and eventually, after inserting ear plugs to soften the Doors album being played next to my head, managed to drop off to sleep.
There I stayed I until I awoke to find the bass cab of bass player Andy Duke who I discovered was bass player in Ex Carter USM member Fruitbat's band, Abdoujaporov, for 5 years slowly crushing its way through my thigh and a lot of other equally angry looking musical equipment heading the same way.
