A Grand (National) Day Out

It seems there is no limits to your humble editor’s abilities as I began my career of roadie last Saturday and I must admit, it was thoroughly enjoyable

Last Saturday a mate of mine asked me to be his guitar technician for his band’s debut gig to which I quickly said yes. The cunt didn’t tell me it was going to be in the shit hole of Manchester (if there’s any other parts, of course) called Wythenshawe

On this most glorious of Spring days famous for it’s sporting calendar’s FA cup semi finals and The Grand National with the sun beating down like a bastard the day started off in the most appropriate of settings: the back of a transit van (with no windows!)

Apart from the occasional dodgy emission escaping from my backside, it wasn’t that bad a journey. As we pulled into the car park of the pub with a numb arse after spending half an hour in the back of a transit van with the two previously mentioned shady characters who shall remain nameless pretending to be extras from The Sweeney we began to wonder If doing this gig was a particularly good idea.

“Fucking Scousers, eh?” was the first (and not the last) comment we received from the pub owner and his mate eyeing us up as Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting by Elton John was suddenly entering my head. Feeling Oblivion by Turin Brakes was also a contender for most appropriate Song of the Moment

After settling into the venue and having a few complimentary drinks brought over by the rather humorous barman who came out with the classic line of “putting the funk back into function room” a bit later on seemed to settle everyone’s nerves about being in such far, hostile waters.

A bit later on, Mart, in his eternal wisdom, decided to take that rather perilous journey of nipping over the road to the shop for some ciggies. Innocent enough you might be thinking, that is until five meat wagons pulled up to nick (and leg) the local scallies who were no doubt selling their hard earned drugs to more local scallies

Now, every pub has its one particular lunatic. Everyone knows him, he’s the nutter who knows everyone, a bit like Ronnie from The Queens in Huyton. This pub had a rather amusing (some would call – backward) chap called Gaz. Gaz was under the impression that there was gonna be trouble this night as we were a bunch of Scousers playing a gig in a council estate in deepest darkest Manchester and he took it upon his shoulders to be ‘the muscle’ for the evening. To be honest, Gaz the Spazz (as I christened him) couldn’t fight his way out of a wet Echo (or a moist Manchester Evening News, if you like). Also, during the bands’ version of Jumping Jack Flash a bit later on, Ben did turn down my request to replace the song’s famous chorus with “Jumping Jack Gaz he’s a spazz, spazz, spazz” on the spot in case it sparked a mini-riot (similar to the one Mart had witnessed earlier)

The band in question, who might I add here were doing their first gig as a covers band, played exceptionally well for 2 reasons:

1. They are immensely experienced at playing live
2. Their guitars were expertly tuned by yours truly

All in all it was lads doing what they do best: getting on, rippin’ each other and generally having a laugh. Another thing also surprised me about this little grown-up version of Stand By Me and it was tha the relationship between the two rival cities separated by thirty odd miles of the M62 is not as frosty as some people make it out to be and that the one thing we do have in common is working class people who like nothing better to do on their Saturdays is to have a few beers, listen to live music and get legged by the police

Compare this to the weekend when so many (orange) glamour pusses parade around town see the Aintree Grand National as an opportunity to have some sort of ‘wag off’ where glamour well and truly takes centre stage

I’ll have a couple of hours in the back of a transit van and a Phoenix Nights style function room before that any day!!

Mol