Pre Gig Thinking Aloud

You'll be reading this on Wednesday morning and everything I've written will be all in the past, but I think you're bright enough to figure things out.

Come, sit with me and I'll talk you through my mind. Here we are. It's a Tuesday morning, it's 9.56 and tonight's a gig night. I'm going through my usual schedule for a weeknight gig. It's one of bananas, deodorant, water and nerves, not necessarily in that order, and some banging under my desk.

The bananas and water are my new friends in the battle against drummer's cramp. It's a battle that me, the bananas and the water are winning though increasing age might be creeping up on the blindside for a surprise attack. I read somewhere recently that a top level drummer is as fit as a professional footballer and uses up as much energy in a gig as a player uses in a match.

Well I think it's safe to say that I'm nowhere up to David Beckham's level of fitness. For starters I've only got the one tattoo and then I'm not a professional drummer out on tour doing a gig a night. Nevertheless it's hard work to drum my way through about twenty five kicking songs with only a ten or fifteen minute break and a singer who thinks that drummers shouldn't be allowed to grab some water between songs.

In recent gigs I've found this awkward and was gettting a bit, well a lot of cramp in a multitude of RD limbs. The show must go on and the more keen drummer watchers would have witnessed my trying to play I Predict a Riot while fighting cramp in my right calf as well as my right hand and wrist. It wasn't the most confortable of situations and some googling has led me to the discovery that lots of water and bananas can help prevent the crampy stuff.

So these days my pre gig routine consists of eating King Louie sized helpings of bananas with simply lashings of mineral water. That's rock 'n' roll for you. It's rock 'n' roll when you're in a covers band that plays for fun and you've got work the next morning and the girls that evening.

It's also our last gig of the season. After a busy time in recent weeks this is our last one until we reconvene after the summer. It reminds me of something I read in a book, where the chap muses on how he never realised, whilst having sex for the very last time before sufferring from impotence, that it was actually going to be his last time.

For all I know it could be the band's very last gig. We have no more booked, though I'm sure we will have soon, and who knows what might happen. There could be musical differences, a nasty gardening accident, a banana overdose or any number of things that might split us up in the meantime. Or impotence.

My god, what if I never have sex again as well?

The deodorant is a bit of the pre gig routine also. Leaving straight from work means that a burst is essential. I've got myself these new Lynx bullet things, tiny cans of deodorant about three inches long that you can carry around for emergencies. Apparently I'm going to smell of rare leathers and be irresistible to women. I hope the rare leather isn't like the chamois in my Dad's garage.

Nerves are a bit alien to me. I get nervous and a bit apprehensive but have never been one of those puking up round the back of the stage sort of chaps. Once we've set up and soundchecked my nerves tend to be the impatient type. I hate the waiting, the standing around, the having a drink and a bite and chatting. I love the banter side of it, just wish that the clock could be fast forwarded and we could get on and play.

I'll often be found sitting quietly and practicing on a pad, doing paradiddles and single stroke rolls, the drummer's equivalent of keeping the oil in the engine. Under my desk I have two bass drum practice pedals and the girls in my office are used to the sound of bass drum patterns wafting out of my office. At least that's what they think.

My mind, in its drifting state, wanders over to the subject of all these trolls around the Lankanosphere. What do I think of them? Some of them are genuinely funny, some are merely vicious and some are cruel. One or two are funny, vicious and cruel in a hit or miss type of way. I suppose the fact that I get quite a lot of "attention" is a symptom of LLD being quite popular.

The truth is that sometimes these comments annoy me, a troll feeding line if ever I wrote one, but only in a slightly puzzled way. This was never meant to be a serious blog tackling serious issues. It's always been the pimped up diary chronicling the quite normal events of my day to day life. When I get criticism for writing boring stuff I genuinely get bewildered.

On one hand it can't be that boring as, let's face it, I get a reasonable amount of hits. On the other hand it's bound to be boring to some but I've never claimed that I'm trying to write the blog equivalent of an action packed H(B)ollywood film. Surely complaining about my blog being boring is like ordering beef at a restaurant and then complaining that it doesn't taste like fish?

I think I'll leave you on that note, for fear of putting too many people to sleep. It's almost two hours since I started writing this, though I've been doing plenty of other things as well, and the car has to be packed with drums and other things need to be done.

It's been a bit of a stream of consciousness thing, I wonder if I should make it a tag. Nope, it's a thought but probably not a good one.

Ooooh, I'm all excited about tonight now. And I've eaten two bananas.

Laters

RD