Sunday 29 July 2007

Tired and emotional!

We were so hyped up over the success of the gig earlier in the evening that we celebrated big time when we got back to Simon’s and lost all track of time. When finally, fatigue got the better of me and Clare and we decided to go to bed it was 3.30am. We woke early at around 8.30 because there were children in the house and they were excited about beginning a new day.
I realised then that I had made a mistake about going to bed so late. I was exhausted and we had another gig to do, we are not used to having one gig after another these days, normally it’s a single gig on a single weekend so we over did it last night considering what we still had to do.

Don left early to go back to London, and after a morning of chatting and drinking coffee, Clare and I packed the car and headed for London. Chris, our sound engineer and Paul Howard made their way to London on the train and Simon drove up later.

Clare and I intended to get to my sisters house in Hackney and then have a nap for awhile but that never happened. We made the mistake of going through Central London on a Saturday when the roads were at their busiest (not a wise move, shows you we were not thinking straight) and then we got lost in the City. I think we passed every tourist attraction in Central London that day and by the time we found the right roads to get us to Hackney there was no time for a nap. We pulled the equipment out of the car, called a cab, loaded the equipment into the taxi and then made off for the Spitz.
I had spent the entire afternoon sitting in a car and had no chance to have a snooze.

I was now beginning to worry that the band would all be too tired to pull this gig off and then I would blame myself for not getting some decent sleep the night before.

As we approached the venue I started ringing the band to see if they had arrived yet. Don was five minutes away, I checked Simon, he had met up with Paul and Chris and they too were in a taxi and were also only five minutes away. Ok, I didn’t find out if the main band ‘The Men They Couldn’t Hang’ had finished their sound check and were waiting for us but I did find out that we were all close to arriving.

There was a wonderful moment were everything seem to come together like magic. A dream moment that had never happened to me in all the years I have been playing music.

The dream moment was when I finally got my equipment in to the venue and stopped to relax for a moment. All of a sudden Don arrived, Simon Chris and Paul walked in behind him and ‘The Men They Couldn’t Hang’ who were sound checking at the time said ‘yeah that sounds fine, we’re done’. Never had I played a gig where everyone turned up at the same time and just at the moment we were to start our sound check, immaculate timing meaning no hanging around patiently waiting of the headlining band to finish, no bored band members wandering off and then can’t be found when the time comes to set up on stage.

Little did we know that this moment was as fragile as a soap bubble on a breeze.
It hung for a moment as we savoured it and then just popped!

Then it turned into a nightmare.

1963

Now Billy was bigger than me in height and build with brown hair and eyes that was a radar for weaknesses. He was born to be a bully and when he grew up, he eventually joined the Army to train to be a better one. Where as the rest of the little girls and boys at Pear Tree Mead school were marvelling at what the world of Junior school had to offer them, Billy had learnt all he needed, the power that you can have over people by just being insensitive and threatening. Like all bullies, he was a coward but he understood that if he and a friend or two menaced the rest of us then he would be left alone to do exactly as he pleased.
I, however, took a different path.

Unable to sustain any level of premeditated nastiness, I had only one choice left, to try to befriend the bully in the hope that it would exclude me from the sort of attention people feared from him.
I was starting from a very low vantage point, I was close to ginger (I’m not ginger, I’m fair, I used to cry which is uncannily like what Cartman from ‘South Park’ used to say, “I’m not fat, I’m just big boned!”)

However my protests fell on deaf ears because I had a sort of disability.

I had freckles!

Adored by parents, sisters, teachers and female shoppers alike, they were cute on a girls face, but not on mine, they were despised by most of the boys in my school so I got called ‘freckle face’.
Again and again and again.

The crime was so heinous that I would often be sent to ‘Coventry’ because of it. The image of a large city full of freckled people horrified me so much that it was years into my adulthood that I could summons enough courage to set foot in that city of the damned.
When I heard that it was carpet bombed by the Nazis in the Second World War I drew the conclusion that Adolf Hilter hated people with freckles easily as much as the Jews. I wondered whether Jews suffered with freckles too because if they did that was really bad luck and not very fair on them at all.
I knew that freckles were nothing to do with being naughty, I had them long before I had a chance to sin. But to this day no-one has ever justified their presence,

There are explanations on the original use of spleens, tonsils, body hair and other vestigial parts of the body but not freckles. They were like spots for the fair of face. It would have felt so much better if I had an explanation for them and why they covered so much of me.

I imagined, they were left over from a time when cave men were so into art that they were for ever coming out of their caves with specks of paint on their faces. As they didn’t have mirrors in those days they didn’t notice these speck so they just stayed there and coloured the skin. Being very defensive, when ever one of them pointed out the paint spots with a sort of grunt and a pointy stabby finger, the other would think he was saying
“Watch out there’s a sabre toothed tiger about to jump you from behind” to which the paint speckled man would just duck. The other guy not having the language to say ”You misunderstand me, what I meant was…” just could not get the concept across. So in the end they would both give up in frustration. They weren’t very good at colour at this point either as they had had only just invented brown, but it had become very poplar at the time. My partner Clare likes brown, see that goes to show, it all goes round in cycles.

Anyway there was no good explanation I could feebly bleat on about and therefore I was the brunt of everyone’s jokes.

I was easy pickings for Billy and his faithful sidekick Graham. Could it really be true that they liked me hanging around with them because I made them feel big? How small were they if they if they used me to measure themselves? We all moved to a new town for the green green grass and the wide open spaces and yet our horizons were still shockingly low.

Avoiding the look of displeasure on my parents face by continually staring at my lap gave me vital moments to concentrate on my plight.

Then I had a sudden realisation.

3 comments:

jan said...

having grown up in harlow and seen the legendary town park gig it was a treat to see the boys in brighton as well as the beloved harlow faces i recognised. haven't moshed like that for ten years. as a writer for red pepper and various scurillous news rags here in brighton i wrote a review of the gig: all the best to neurotics fans and steve and the boys - jan.

Newtown Neurotics

The Neurotics are the poor man’s Clash – a punk band coming out of 80s Harlow Newtown with the unswerving message/social conscience of Orwell and a kick to match The Ramones. Original members Steve Drewett and Simon Lomond (Colin Dredd replaced by Don Adams) followed a blinding set from TV Smith, ex of The Adverts. Drewett, in trademark dark specs, belted out the faves - Mindless Violence, Suzi is a Heartbreaker and the prescient When the Oil Runs Out (1980) – until his voice gave out and Paul Howard was summoned for some cracking, heartfelt harmonies. Drewett rounded things up with Living with Unemployment which melded the Brighton-Harlow moshers, while coruscating encore Kick Out the Tories stamped the collective mindscape with one David Cameron circa 2009(?).
The Albert, Trafalgar Street
*****

Steve Drewett said...

Thank you Jan for your comments and feedback from the Brighton gig, we had a great time playing to you all.

I am a bit puzzled though by the Neurotics being 'the poor man's Clash'. Like you cannot believe in hell without believing in heaven. If we are a poor man's Clash them presumbably some band is a rich man's Clash. I wonder who that might be, if not the Clash themselves who sound strange being aligned with the concept of being rich I am puzzled as to what band would fit the bill. The Alarm perhaps, surely not!!!
I need to go and lie down!

jan said...

yeah i pondered over that but stuck with it as to me it's a compliment.

coming from harlow and having a bit more edge 'n all that-

i guess i just see the clash a bit more 'polished' and art school.

the history blog's a real eye-opener by the way. respect.

jan