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We hire a big bus, we do. Over the course of the next few days we’ll hire three and make ourselves skint. But it’s always worth it, no? Because, we’re always skint any way, aren’t we?
The Forum is a good venue, nice stage, theater style setting. We play well, cos there’s nobody there to make us nervous. One of those gigs were we don’t need a mic to talk to the crowd, you know. And when Vinnie cracks a ‘joke’ you hear the blind man cough. After the gig there’s a club, and things start to look up when the first song they play is ’senses working overtime.’ We get some booze into us and go stay in the B and B which was once a brothel we’re informed. Class. We’re a class operation.
This is where it all began, six years hence. Here’s where das Madman did the very first show, Me and Vin and Simon and Young John D and Lisa and Rory. So slim, we were, so full of ideas. In this battle of the bands we lost because, well, we didn’t really have many songs, we just made some rather splendid noise. We weren’t exactly ’seminal’ either, (other than that we were young and horny) but some how we managed to get from there, to here.
This gig ain’t bad, really. The booze is there and we’re getting ready for a little tour of the south. We need to be getting tighter cos, well, it’s still just after Christmas, and traditionally we don’t rehearse for the first 12 months of the year.
[w/ Ann Scott]
We hire a bus. I leave my birthday present from Vinnie on it, which is annoying cos it was a good one too. We get to Dundalk, it’s no time away, and the Spirit store is a rapid place altogether. Our host pours us some welcome pints and recommends a good Indian. The venue is nice, quiet, the stage is intimate, we’re altogether again, so we play for ourselves as well. Then we have a few drinks, marvelous. Then we drive home, raucously. Except me. Old.
Vinnie wears a bubble perm wig and gets to pretend to be Paddy Casey singing tv adverts in the sean nos style in Whelans. Which would be fine, were Paddy casey not actually there at the time. These are the glory days, my friend, but nothing gold can last. You’ll see.
It was my birthday just there. We went on the march, had pints for peace, spent all night studiously not celebrating. Only me and Simon, and John Brown, cos it was his birthday too. My actual birthday was on the Tuesday. For my self I handed my notice in in work. It gave me a sense of relief, ah, to tell the man he could stick his job and his meagre wages and his business speak and the coffee machine that pisses out the weakest insult to the bean you are likely to come across. As uncle Tom would say, “coffee wasn’t strong enough to defend itself”. Not me though, I’m walking, head held high, into the certainty of unemployment and professional musicianship. Yay!
On Friday we did some gig mumble mumble and if you ask me to play some samba one more time I’m going to fucking stab you in the face.
