Gig Rant. Slightly

I was playing a gig with one of my bands on Saturday evening. We've somehow got to do these pretty big rugby gigs at one of the largest professional clubs in the country, in which we play in the bar after the match and get a largish crowd, about 500 - 900 people depending on the match.

These things are raucous, loud and very full on. We've decided that we need to play one long set, as taking a break, even a quick one, means that the crowd start to go home and the place empties sooner. So it's two and a half hours of full on rock music (Oasis, Muse, Killers, that kind of thing), which gets knackering on the drums.

I sit there, playing my little brown arse off, intermittently checking my blood sugar to ensure I'm not on the verge of passing out and stuffing glucose tablets down my neck when needed, and listen with raised eyebrows when the singer or lead guitarist mutter between songs about how tired they are. I'm sure there is no role in a band that is more tiring but it's what we drummers do. Sympathy? No chance.

Anyhow, this gig was full of pissed people. The weather was stunning by London February standards, the home team had just won convincingly and all was good, including, dare I say it, the band.

So of course, some numpty decides he's going to get up on stage to impress his mates.

Up he gets, narrowly avoiding damaging valuable instruments and equipment in the process. The soundman is giving him those "Damage anything of mine and you'll fucking pay one way or the other" looks and the rest of us get on with things.

The bloke gets hold of a tambourine and is now topless, singing and tambourine playing (a term I use in the loosest possible way) and absolute best mates with every member of the band. At every possible moment he comes up to one of us and tells us how great we are, how he'll play anything we want. Which is quite bizarre as he clearly couldn't play, I don't know, even something as simple as a bass guitar.

We go along with this for a bit; his mates in the crowd are many and are jeering our hero along happily, but after a couple of songs he's still up there and has been joined by about four others.

I don't have the luxury of a monitor and I have to confess that I had a moment of doubt in myself. There were about four people playing four tambourines and I'm not sure any of them could have put "Tambourine playing - numerous years of experience" on their CV.

I started to think "fuck I've got to keep time here, despite these fuckers, it's my time and I don't care where any of you think you are, I'm in charge." It actually was quite a challenge. I dug in, concentrated hard and did my job, but it took a surprising amount of focus to defeat these random tambourines I could hear all over the show.

The thing is, this idiot stayed up on stage for a good half hour, until he got a bit bored, perhaps realising that it actually is a bit tiring. Another girl had decided to join him and she stayed up for the whole of the set, around forty five minutes at the end. She had the demeanour of one of those people who has a good idea but, once they kick it off, are just not going to back down whatever the circumstances.

She lasted right until the end, but at a certain point she adopted the body language of a passport control person who knows she's being secretly filmed but keeps forgetting it.

At the end of the gig she shook hands with each member of the band and thanked us. Weird, I know, but kind of sweet. I suspect she thought she was some type of guest star, without whom the crowd would have all gone home ages ago.

And I got to thinking. It's kind of okay when these fellows jump up with us, when they play a bit of tambourine, do a few dance moves and make their friends laugh and think they're the bee's knees.
But don't overstay your welcome.

We the band, work hard. We rehearse, we learn songs. We have big fights about the arrangements, about all sorts. We get there hours earlier to set up and leave hours after the crowd once we've taken everything down. We get paid next to nothing too. It really is a labour of love and we really do love it.

So do your thing, have some fun. Then please, get your arse off our stage and let us do our thing.

Rant over.