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Tulips from Amsterdam. (well, Rotterdam)
Paul From Mudheads |
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The band was called Amaziah. I was 18 years old
and it was my first (and last professional band). This was our first
big European tour, and we were as arrogant as hell. |
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We had met a band called Liquid Gold in a café
on the Dutch docks. They were currently at no.1 in the UK with a
song called “Dance Yourself Dizzy” and were sick of the whole thing.
We on the other hand were at the beginning of a two month tour and
we believed that we were going to be the biggest thing on the planet
(that’s what comes of listening to a manager who talked it rather
than putting it on his roses). The Liquid Gold crew wished us well,
but you could tell by the look on their faces that they suspected
that by the end of this tour we look even more hacked off than they
did at the point in time. |
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Hey, guess what! They were right. Talk about a
nightmare tour. And it would seem that the Dutch eat nothing but
cheese….our tour bus smelt like the inside of a packet of dried
roasted peanuts and the nightmares the cheese induced were
terrifying.
Anyway, after several weeks of weird gigs in
prisons, tents, army camps and Borstals we were booked to play a gig
in Rotterdam. |
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Now bear in mind that as a band we had three
and a half tonnes of kit, with at least one tonne of that being
attributed to the keyboard player (that would be his keyboards and
not him in case you are wondering). You can imagine our unbridled
joy when we arrived at the venue to discover that we were playing on
a barge. Not just any barge mind you, no! we were playing on a barge
that was four barges deep out into the river that runs through the
centre of Rotterdam. |
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The first barge was owned by a congenial Dutch
alcoholic called Klaus who was eager to share his Dutch beer with
this scruffy bunch of youths…….at 6:30am in the morning. Now I have
sunk a few in my time, in fact I got alcohol poisoning on that
particular tour (something that I am neither proud of or endorse)
but there was no way that I was going to drink beer at that time of
the day. The trouble is, he was very persistent and every time we
slipped, fell, stumbled and crashed back over the four barges to get
yet another bit of kit from the bus, we were greeted with “You drink
beer now please”.
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Dave’s keyboards were the peist de la
résistance. A Mini Moog…..no problem….a Clavinet…..okay. A Fender
Rhodes…dangerous….a Leslie cab….flippin ridiculous and as for a full
on rock & roll Hammond organ….well for goodness sake.
Then, that manager I mentioned earlier, well he
doubled as our tour manager and sound man, he wanted the full PA.
Personally I would have turned the fold back around and let the
audience get the music from that. But no, our very own Harvey
Goldsmith wanted the full enchilada. Pratt!
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It took us the best part of a morning to get
everything into the barge without a single bit of kit ending
floating down the Nis River, although our manager got pretty close
to taking an early bath I can tell you.
Setting up that much equipment in a combined space it not easy, but
we did it….eventually… and we were just about ready by the time the
doors opened.
Now, the secret of a good gig, and I mean a REALLY good gig is that
you tell people that it’s actually happening. You can see where this
is going can’t you. |
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There we were, four young energetic band members, leading the new
wave of British heavy metal. Our small road crew including the
manager/sound engineer, our publicist and of course the event
organiser and NOBODY else. Nada. Zip, diddle squat. Not a single
person turned up! The argument that followed between our Harvey
Goldsmith and the organiser was not pretty, especially as the
organiser kept on swearing at our boy in Dutch. I don’t think either
had checked what the other had been doing, or not doing as it turned
out. I kind of think that the organiser had assumed that we would
get a crowd by osmosis. |
Do you know what really hurt though? In order to save money, we were
booked to sleep on the barge after the gig……and it leaked!
I completely ruined my day, if that were possible, when the drummer
and I slopped of to a late night showing of the Omen and helped by
all that cheese, I had nightmares that ensured I would never sleep
soundly again.
Mind you the keyboard player, for ever the optimist, did a deal with
Klaus and exchanged one of our albums for a Dutch Bicycle, which we
had to cart around with the gear for the rest of the tour. |
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The rest of the tour went as smoothly as this
fiasco and ended up in my making myself seriously ill when I emptied
somebody’s drinks cabinet and as well as the medical bill had to
foot the bill for all the booze we had drunk. That just about blew
any money I might have made from the tour. No wonder we musicians
suffer so much from depression.
As a foot note, our manager did a Reggie Perrin several years later
and staged his own disappearance/suicide. They found his clothes,
glasses, wallet etc by the Feeder river in Bristol. Made a Crime
Watch reproduction and everything. He’d only gone a done a runner,
left everybody financially totally in the lurch.
What a pratt!
Piece of cheese anyone??
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