2002-05-13 - 6:20 a.m.
Ok lemme tell you about London. We woke up in Utrecht about 6am, with about three hours sleep under our belts. Drove to the airport. Paul and I returned the rentals. We all waited for our flight, got on the plane and sat on the tarmac for 45 minutes. Flew to London. Went through customs. Called two cabs for the band and the gear. Drove for an hour (most of which was just being stuck in traffic). Got dropped off in front of the club only to find out that it's not the club, it's the box office - which is closed. Asked around to find the club. Found out where it was. I ran down the street to see if the club was open, leaving all of the Spankers, luggage and gear standing on a London sidewalk. First thing I did was nearly get killed by a double-decker bus because I looked left first when crossing the street and that ain't the way they drive over there. I got to the club and of course, they weren't open. But some guys were doing construction at an adjoining club and I tracked someone down to let us in. Then I ran back, grabbed the Spankers and we paraded down the street with all of our stuff. We loaded into the club and found that we had a tiny green room and no one to take care of us till five. That meant a lot of tired Spankers with nowhere to go. I tried to reach my ex-girlfriend Marianne, who four of us would be staying with but no dice. So Christina pulled up her big ass flight case and curled up on top of it, using her fur coat as a pillow. Then the rest of the Spankers laid down on the stage and went to sleep. You should have seen us. Each Spanker sleeping on a hard surface with their baggage and instruments piled up around and underneath them. A couple of times, people who worked there would come in, look at us and giggle. Then we woke up, ate, played the show.
A bunch of our friends came. That was cool. The show went well but the band was still damn tired and some of the songs dragged a bit. What am I saying. Some of the songs, mainly my fast ones, were like wading through fucking molasses. Anyway, despite that, the show went well. Then we loaded up and found out that we didn't make a single shilling. That's right, no money. We didn't break the promotion expenses that were to be paid off first. So, all that for no dinero. Welcome to a first gig in a big city. Then we got a cab to take Christina, Brent and Stan to Marianne's, while Marianne, her boyfriend, his friend and I led the way in another car. When we got to Marianne's, we discovered that when she said that she could sleep four, that meant four people lying side by side in a room about ten by ten. Brent and Stan immediately went to sleep on the floor, Christina took the bed and I stood there in the hallway wondering what the fuck I was gonna do. I had plans to have a drink with Ed Hamell and Frenchy McGruder, his European tour manager, who were opening for Echo and the Bunnymen the same night. I was already pretty drunk and I knew that I couldn't come back drunker, step over (and possibly on) Stan and Brent, plop down next to Christina and start snoring. It took us a while to drop off the other two guys, grab Marianne's car and make Frenchy and Ed's hotel. I called Frenchy at some point during all of this and asked him if he had crash space and he said, "We'll see."
The Columbia Hotel is the rock and roll hotel of London. The bar stays open for guests. Most pubs in London close at 11pm, so if you wanna drink, you have to go to a disco. But the Columbia had a cool bar and the desk guy seconded as the bartender. It turned out that Frenchy was drinking with a woman, now I knew what "we'll see" meant. We drank into the wee hours of the morning with a couple of guys in the music biz. One was rather fay and the other was a plowed Irishman, who told me he was a millionaire. "Great, buy me a room," was my reply. He didn't get the joke. Frenchy had been telling us that he had learned the Masonic handshake before the other two guys had shown up and he asked the Irish millionaire, "Are you a Mason?" The guy wouldn't give a straight answer at first and we all gave him shit until he finally admitted that he was. Frenchy said "I know the handshake." He gave it to the guy, who said, "That's not it." And this huge argument insued.
"You're not a Mason."
"I am you twit, you just don't know the handshake."
"Maybe I know the handshake from a different region."
"There's only one handshake!"
And so on until Frenchy said "This guy's not a Mason," and the guy stood up red faced and screamed "I am so a Mason!" And in the pregnant pause after his scream I said, "Funny, you don't look Masonic."
Everybody laughed and we all drank some more.
Frenchy let me know that he was gonna have some company in his room, so I couldn't crash there. I told him "no sweat" as I conjured images of passing out in Marriane's hallway. A community hallway, mind you, shared by everyone who lived in the building. After Frenchy and the woman left, Marrianne and I drank with the other two guys until the sun came up. Just as we were about to leave, (they refused to serve us after about two more hours of loud drinking) the desk guy told me, "Mr. Wammo, you have a phone call." It was Frenchy, "You still need to crash?"
"Yeah"
"Ok, come on up."
So I crashed on the second bed in his room. Woke up. Saw Hamell and his wife, Linda, who had flown in that morn and then I went traipsing off into London. I bought a pair of bright purple Doc Martins at the Doc Martins store on sale for thirty quid (about forty-five bucks.) Now, these are extremely garish mid calf, faggy purple, romper-stomper looking Docs and I love them so. As a matter of fact I'm wearing them right now. The day turned out to be swell and I got a ton of footage with my handy camcorder. I ate a cornish pastie and drank pints of Guiness in pubs and had a big ol' time all by my lonesome. The only bummer was I forgot to call my friend Ron, who had flown in that day and was gonna take me out to dinner.
Brent went to Cornwall and Stan slinked off to spend the night at the airport (early flight the next day.) So, Christina and I had a fairly easy time crashing at Marianne's. The next day Christina, Marianne and I hung out with our friend Craig, a ukulele and saw player from England. We did some sight seeing and took in a museum. In the gift shop of the museum we ran into Vic Chesnutt and his wife Tina. For those of you who don't know, Vic Chesnutt is one of the world's greatest songwriters. He proposed to Tina years ago in Marianne and my house when we were living together. This was a chance meeting of glorious proportions. So, we all went out for some Italian food and had a big ol' time. After dinner, we hugged Vic and Tina goodbye and went back to Marianne's to smoke hash, drink wine and chill. Marianne's obnoxious neighbor caught wind of what we were doing and joined us. This guy had already bitched about Christina's flight case being stashed at the bottom of the stairs and as soon as he came into the room, I got a bad vibe from him. Anyway, he asked Christina to sing him a song and she grabbed Craig's uke and obliged with "Pakalolo Baby." He told her that her voice was too soft, which made me laugh bitterly and lie down. All I wanted to do was set myself on pause till this asshole left, so I closed my eyes and enjoyed my buzz, ignoring the dick. Marianne tried all sorts of subtle hints to make him leave, which of course didn't work. She finally said "Ok, these folks have an early flight tomorrow, so you gotta go." It took a good ten minutes for this jerkoff to get his ass out of the room and just as he was leaving, he caught Christina coming back from the bathroom. He spent another couple of minutes drunkenly fawning over her, kissing her cheek, hugging her, etc, when suddenly, she shoved him out of the room and slammed the door. "Oh my God! He just touched my hand to his dick!" she exclaimed as she turned back into the room. "What?!" I yelled, sitting up. "Yeah, he shook my hand one last time and touched it to his crotch!" Everyone in the room was stunned. My initial reaction was to leap up, run after him and beat his ass all the way down the stairs but I remembered that we had exposed gear in the hallway that wouldn't fit into the room. The idea of him throwing Christina's flight case into the street at four in the morning passed through my head and I waited to see what was gonna happen. It turned out that Christina wasn't that pissed and Marianne was horrified. Marianne said that she was gonna fix his wagon and I know from experience, her wrath is mighty and terrible. So we chilled, smoked, drank, listened to tunes, including the Spanker's new album (unreleased and new enough that I'm not burned out on it yet.) It turned into a fine evening and the next day at 5:45 am we hauled our asses to the airport. Free drinks on European flights kids. Always take advantage of that one, no matter how early it is.
