Touring is very funny sometimes. Other times, it's not. In the moment, it's as serious as your life - a few years on, you look back and just laugh at how daft it all is.
Over the years, satan (and season) have played Bristol a few times. Not many mind, as it's quite a distance from Yorkshire. But weirdly, every time I've ventured down there, something's invariably gone wrong. Bristol, why do you hate me so much?!
If we take out the two times satan played Arctangent festival (which is more Cheddar way anyway), everytime I've set foot in the city to play, something's happened. I'm cursed, I swear.
In no particular order, here are all my Bristol war stories:
1) playing the top floor of a boat with the worst sound system I've ever played through, and being told all the DI's for our gear are being used in the bigger (better) gig downstairs, so we'll have to wait. We got there on time, but somehow ended up being late going on - not that it mattered, no-one really hung around for the gig anyway.
2) playing a cool arts venue as part of a tour with another band, and being told that the staff have no idea there was even a gig that night. the posters I'd sent at some expense weren't anywhere to be seen, and we ended up hastily soundchecking in the live room surrounded by people cleaning up. Think that crowd only just broke double figures. It got to the point where people were messaging me asking if the gig was still on, as the cool arts venue hadn't mentioned it anywhere.
3) hiring a sub from a guy who lived round the corner from the venue and having to listen to him take endless calls about what he was planning to do that night, rather than help us clean all the shit off said sub, let alone move it out of his house.
4) watching a support band I'd paid quite a bit of money to play struggle with some unknown technical issue just as I brought the background music down so they could start the set. Half an hour later, they were ready to roll, and is seemingly customary with satan gigs, they didn't cut any of their set and therefore we had about 35 minutes to actually headline.
5) grabbing some fast food after one of these nightmare shows, and not only do we get forgotten about on the drive through, but when the food does come, it makes Sophie ill the day after.
6) this one just in... heading down to ATG so Sophie could play with Maybeshewill, and even though I'd gone to pains to avoid having to deal with Bristol beforehand, the city has its revenge: the car breaks down on the way to the motorway, so we're towed home, have to run for an expensive, overcrowded, boiling hot train, 4.5 hours later, we're in Bristol Temple Meads. Then a taxi to the festival site which is 40 minutes and god knows how much, then after the show, another taxi (£50) to our hotel where we were staying, which we had to ring all day to explain what had happened and that we were planning on coming still, but it'd be late. In fairness, the guy who ended up working the check-in desk that night was a fucking legend and treated us really well. In the morning, we realised we'd aciddentally dropped a few things in the cab the night before, but no worries because the cab company don't know anything about it and want me to ring Bristol airport's lost and found (?) so we soldier on, walk to this remote train station, get back to Temple Meads, get on train and finally come home. Went straight to the pub, coincidentally.
Oh, and whilst I'm here, here's one for Cardiff which is sort of close by (must be something to do with that end of the island)
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the bermuda triangle of my sanity |
7) playing a cool little arty cafe thing in Cardiff, and the promoter is insistent on adding a 4th (!!) band to our bill, which is handily 3 acts that were all touring together. The band sound nothing like us and don't stick around, but also don't bring anyone either, so it's added stress for nothing. I'm not kidding when I say that there were literally 3 people in the audience when we played, and some of those were in the support bands. To knock it up a notch, the place is riddled with weird sound issues - crackling, cutting out, distorting, humming, buzzing, you name it, it was there. The sound guy didn't know what to do, the first act just stopped after bravely trying to make a go of it for 10 minutes, and we only managed about 25ish I think. The promoter never contacted us again, and also for some reason ran old CRT TVs in the venue all night, despite the fact it was causing loads of annoying static and looked shit. I kept turning them off as I was getting static shocks, but he kept putting them back on lol. Not to worry though, as he sat upstairs during all the music. Top stuff! Sat in a Premier Inn after that with the most depressing can of Red Stripe I've ever drunk.