ON THE ROAD WITH RUARRI JOSEPH JULY 07 part 1 July 9th to July 14th 2007 / UK clubs shows and festivals by mark von sound DAY ONE ... SHOOTING AT US WITH HUGE LASER CANNONS Early Monday afternoon I jump on a afternoon train from Nottingham to London ... on arrive at Saint Pancras station my next job is to get the yellow Circle line tube over to Paddington to drop my bags in my hotel room before running straight out to get to the venue the Camden Barfly to work with a singer song writer called Ruarri Joseph (think pronunciation of Brewery without the B) ... in two days his debut album is released on Atlantic Records ... so I anticipate it's going to be an interesting few months of work ahead of me ... I got the job a couple of months ago but today was my first show ... I get to the venue at 5pm ... but the only people there were a the headline band from Canada called the Annuals ... rather than sitting in a dark smelly venue watching a very uneventful sound check I popped round the corner to get a drink from a cafÈ ... my plan was to sit outside with my fresh fruit smoothie and read my London Evening Standard newspaper ... and hopefully catch Ruarri as he walks from the nearest tube which was Chalk Farm on the black Northern line ... whilst sat here the heavens literally opened ... Thankfully I was sat under a canopy on the only dry seat ... the sky went black ... I thought we were either experiencing an eclipse or the end of the world ... it was neither ... then the thunder started booming all around .... I watched lightening strike a building opposite me ... I thought we were being invaded by aIiens much like War of the Worlds or Independence Day ... they were SHOOTING AT US WITH HUGE LASER CANNONS ... alas nothing so exciting it's just a storm ... the rain came down by the bath full ... sitting outside but dry I found it strangely voyeuristic and entertaining seeing people freaking out and running away from the crazy buckets from above as they were all getting so soaked ... After the storm I return to the venue to discover Ruarri has been and gone ... he'd come from the other direction ... Bugger !! ... We eventually rendezvoused in time for a quick sound check before doors ... tonight's show was a solo performance ... he does 50/50 shows as a solo artist and with his band ... This is the first time I've seen him play ... halfway through the first song I realised just how good this guy is ... last week I turned down a world tour for a year with a Swedish metal band ... I would've loved to have done it but I was already booked for work later this year with Ruarri ... I hoped I wouldn't regret my loyalty ... Sometimes you just know when you are working with an act that is so good that before your very eyes you will see their career grow and grow ... so it's exciting times to be involved with ... and a big step for me to move away from the metal scene which I've worked in for the last decade ... Once he finished playing we split and missed the headliners ... I got my tube back ... I felt so relieved ... what if he was terrible? ... sensing a victory I crashed out in my shoebox sized room ... it is so small I could reach out and touch both walls at the same time ... more of a cupboard than a room ... That was my day 9th July 2007 DAY TWO ... HALF A CIGARETTE FLOATING AROUND IN HIS SKULL Yesterday I was hardly in my hotel room long enough to notice it's quirks ... I say quirks ... I really mean ... things that suck ... in the bathroom ... the hot tap is cold and the cold tap is hot ... the shower has two settings scalding hot or not quite scalding hot ... it wakes you up fully in seconds ... but not in a good way ... not like ... yay it's a brand new day ... what cool adventure am I going to have ... but more like ... shit my skin is now burnt and I am now begrudgingly not asleep ... unfortunately this was the best the water from above performed for my entire stay ... After my napalm sprinkle I watched the Sky news on the hotel telly ... A volcano in Indonesia is going ape shit ... towns are being evacuated and people running like whirling Dervish's ... also today is the first day for over 100 years it's snowed in the Argentine capital Buenos Aires ... hooray for global warming ... Argentine kids can make snowmen and have snowball fights ... best ever !! ... Popping out for lunch I have the pleasure of a child deliberately dropping a cheese and tomato sandwich over my shoes ... the little bastard shit !! ... Today our adventure will take us up to Birmingham to play the Bar Academy in the city centre ... I meet Raurri at Paddington station at 2pm ... opposite the Hilton ... we wait to be met by our driver Gary in a hired silver Renault Scenic ... Whilst waiting and chatting we got approached on two separate occasions by people wishing to purchase cannabis dope weed from us ... we sent them to the street corners of Camden where I believe selling drugs is a cottage industry ... made me laugh getting asked ... I guess we look dodgy ... but I'm fine with that ... The most eventful part of the journey was seeing a truck that had driven straight off the road into some treetops next to the motorway ... twas more of a tree house than an articulated container truck ... Before the show we escape to the nearby pub Scruffy Murphy's ... where we meet up with old friend of the journals ... Dean of Wednesbury ... I have one pint of cider to Dean's eighteen Jack Daniels and Redbull ... something's never change ... and Dean the drinking machine is one of them ... Again tonight Ruarri played another blinding show ... I was blown away how someone could be so confident and yet so humble ... Before heading back to London we return to Scruffy Murphy's with Dean of Wednesbury and I insist on him demonstrating to Ruarri and Gary his trademark jaw dislocating and cigarette up the nose trick ... they are suitably both impressed and disgusted by the act ... Dean of Wednesbury told me of a recent unsuccessful cigarette up nostril presentation ... to do this correctly the filter end must go up first ... when pushed far enough it breaks the membrane at the top and continues into the skull ... Well ... the other day Dean of Wednesbury accidentally inserted the non filter end first ... once through the membrane the blood soaked cigarette disintegrated ... he will forever have HALF A CIGARETTE FLOATING AROUND IN HIS SKULL ... for most people this would probably poison them ... but Dean of Wednesbury is made of much stronger stuff ... anyway with the amount of alcohol in his blood stream half a cigarette doesn't stand a chance ... Once vacating Scruffy Murphy's and Birmingham our return journey takes back down the same road and we witness the truck in the trees being pulled out with a huge crane ... exciting stuff ... The drive back was improved hugely by listening to Radio 2's Stuart Maconie Northern Soul special ... if you don't know what Northern Soul music sounds like then search the net and educate yourself ... if you do know about it then sprinkle the talc and swallow dive ... We arrive back in London at Iron Maiden O'clock ... 2 Minutes to Midnight ... on arrival my tiny hotel room is like an oven ... there is an air conditioning unit the entire width of the room ... and when on full the sound and draft I can only liken to a whole fleet of Apache Gunship helicopters being scrambled for all out war ... when facing it straight on ... the skin on my face stretched back as if I were in a wind tunnel ... also in the corner of the room was a mobile six foot cylindrical fan ... with both on full a tornado consumed the whole room ... which thankfully made the temperature just about bearable ... that was my day on 10th July 2007 DAY THREE ... WEDNESDAY ... DELETED ... DAY FOUR ... CAKE AT THE MILLENNIUM DOME When I wake up I listen to a message from Ruarri's manager Matt on my phone ... tonight's show was being upgraded from a solo show to one with bass and drums ... and this meant getting the bass equipment and the drum kit down to the venue ... we were supporting the band CAKE AT THE MILLENNIUM DOME ... not the 27,000 capacity room where Prince is about to play a full week but the 2000 capacity room called The Indigo ... My first task was to get in a tube train down the brown Bakerloo line from Paddington to Elephant and Castle which is south of the river and to where many North Londoner's consider enemy territory ... I had to pick up the house keys from bass player Pete Cherry ... he was be filmed playing his four string instrument on a video for an Australian soap opera actress ... from Neighbours I think ... seems to be in the soap-star job description ... attempting to have a pop music career ... I guess everyone wants to be Kylie ... well who doesn't !! ... Right ... keys picked up and back on up the brown Bakerloo line back to Paddington ... I pick my bag up ... straight back to the tube and this time down the Hammersmith and City line to Shepherds Bush ... so at 3pm I met up with drummer Guillaume Jambel ... he is an European ... how cosmopolitan he are ... On time a jet black Volkswagen people carrier arrived to take us at un-breakneck low speeds across North London to Pete's house to pick up his bass amplifier ... he lived on the 99th floor of his tower block home ... the slowest lift took forever to ascend and descend ... back on the road a pile up the other side of the Blackwall Tunnel brought our day to a complete standstill ... eventually we approached the huge Millennium Dome ... The largest single-roofed structure in the world ... Externally it appears as a large white marquee with 100 metere high yellow support towers ... one for each month of the year or each hour of the clock face ... which represents the role played by Greenwich Mean Time ... the circular diameter totals 365 metres ... one metre for each day of the year ... It's f*cking huge ... The whole inside of the Dome has had a big revamp so is brand spanking new ... the venue had only been open a couple of weeks and was strangely over shiny and over chromed ... more so the venue for Sports Personality of the year than a gig ... We hadn't been in long until I got a phone call from manager Matt telling me someone in Cake's camp had kicked off about having drums and bass and demanded it had to be a solo acoustic show ... I'm still now sure why ... but that's not my concern ... I'm paid to get the job done ... pissed me off a bit as I spent my day chasing keys around London and picking up drum kits ... but hey ... It's all part of the adventure ... The show went great ... sold out ... when Raurri hit the stage from the very first second had the room in the palm of his hand ... it's tough on your own on stage ... but he made a hell of a lot new friends tonight ... a complete result ... following the show we return back across London to Shepherds Bush to drop off the equipment that never got used ... again back to my sauna of a hotel room ... but a sneaky pipe of weed out the window helped me get to sleep real good ... that was my day 12th July 2007 DAY FIVE ... JAMES BOND PURSUIT VEHICLE 7.00am I awake after a short sleep in my uncomfortable bed ... what I needed was a refreshing shower ... but what I got was a steam cleaning ... much like the engine of a car before an servicing ... no matter the how the shower controls were set all that came out of the showerhead was scalding jets of kettle hot water ... thankfully towards the back of the cubical there was a small ledge to stand on ... this enabled the bather to jump in and out of the burning torrent ... enough to completely not achieve the necessary start to the day ... I check out of the Fawlty Towersesque hotel ... I shan't be back ... with my big red rolling holdall in tow I need to battle the crowds of men and women who are off to work ... all grumpy still with sleep in there eyes ... up and down stairs eventually finding the Hammersmith and City line platform on the far side of Paddington ... We meet up at their rehearsal studios back in Shepherds Bush just round the corner from the tube train ... with a couple of minutes to spare before we leave I dash round to Greggs The Bakers for a spot of breakfast ... a cheese and onion pasty is indeed the nectar of the gods at such an early hour of the day ... however the black water that masquerades as coffee is a different matter ... my friend Chris who I came with me to Estonia in my last journal swears blind it's good ... well mate you are wrong ... you are a tea drinker and when it comes to tea I take your word as gospel ... but coffee ... errr nope ... a roadside drain consumed more of it than I did ... where's a Starbuck's when you need one ... probably on every other corner of every other street except my current location ... bugger ! A bit bleary eyed we drive to Latitude Festival in East Anglia near the town of Lowestoft ... if you don't know where it is then Google it ... after a succession of country lanes the festival appears and thankfully so did the sun ... unfortunately we weren't here for long to properly enjoy it ... First task we head for catering ... and egg and chips was the chosen culinary extravaganza for my lunch ... post food we unload the band gear and carry it down a woodland track to load upon a speed boat ... yes a speed boat ... between the van parking and the stage is a lake ... and to cross the lake our mode of transport is a speed boat ... I have to admit I found it exciting to have a go in a speed boat ... however it was so full we were only just above the water level ... this slightly worried me as I'm not a strong swimmer ... I would thrashed the water to foam in attempting to survive ... but you can't live your life thinking ... what if ... so I didn't brood about death by drowning ... I ended up going back and forth a few times on the boat and have to say I loved it ... it's not everyday you have a ride in a JAMES BOND PURSUIT VEHICLE ... So work is a little different for me at the moment as I'm not working in the metal scene ... but thankfully I did keep bumping into people I know ... Old friends like Alan and Michelle ... Darren working on the stage and Steve from Northampton reminded me what a wonderfully social job I have ... Show done ... then back across the river of Styx ... making sure I tipped the ferryman ... everyone in the van and off up North driving most the way to Glasgow ... big long drives today for our hard working driver Gary ... he's a trooper ... The worst bit of getting from over by Lowestoft to Northwest England is the roads are not designed well for such a trip ... the motor system goes up and down the country with major roads ... but from side to side isn't so easy ... so we had to explore dirt tracks pursuing farm machinery at low speeds ... eventually we hit the big roads and the beast of our van's power was unleashed ...from leaving the festival before 5pm we eventually got to our hotel near Carlisle at Iron Maiden O'clock ... 2 Minutes to Midnight ... that was my Friday 13th July 2007 DAY SIX ... GIANT SIZED BOUNTY BARS TO USE LIKE NUN CHAKAS I awake bright eyed and bushy tailed in our Premier Travel Inn ... and to be honest it's not bad ... it's cheap basic and clean ... good shower and comfortable beds so I'm happy and refreshed ... and with the added bonus of all you can eat breakfast for £7.50 this morning has achieved the status of being a 'winner' ... and contained amongst many breakfast ingredients ... was both toast and marmite ... I was in my element ... if someone could've written a script for my perfect start to the day it wouldn't be far off this ... however as smashing a person driver Gary is I'd have chosen a more feline person to be the first I saw of the day ... We hit the road and arrive in a very grey Glasgow in the early afternoon ... I hope the lack of sunshine doesn't scare away the people ... especially as the festival is called Indian Summer ... Victoria Park looks a great location ... the site is circled on all four sides by trees ... we played the BBC Radio 6 stage ... Ruarri followed this with a live solo recording for the radio station ... once completed we had in front of us a marathon Southerly drive down to Nottingham to drop me off then onto London for the band ... at 5:30pm we hit the road for the 400 miles ... one of UK touring's longest drives ... Ruarri and manager Matt stayed in Glasgow so we have more much appreciated space in the van ... The second we left Glasgow guitarist Chris needed the toilet ... we had to stop at nearly every services until we got to Nottingham ... he is well known across Milton Keynes and Cornwall for his sparrow bladder ... the mere thought of a waterfall or even a dripping tap will make him urinate like a dog on heat ... Our van DVD player plays only the first half of movies then freezes ... for the entire weekend we didn't manage to watch a whole movie in nearly a thousand mile round trip ... it didn't take long for us to realise this would happen with every DVD attempted ... but the prospect of nothing was much worse than only watching half movies ... thankfully what we did see I either had seen before ... like Hot Fuzz or really didn't care how they ended ... Superman Returns is the prime example ... On the M62 near Leeds we stop for £65.25 worth of Shell diesel ... the fee from the Glasgow festival was paid with Scottish £50 notes ... I used two to pay for the fuel ... the guys behind the counter said they weren't authorized to accept them ... so one disappeared off to get the supervisor ... I waited and waited and waited ... twenty five minutes later this scruffy snotty acne ridden greasy teenager appeared with him ... he checked the notes out and had to call his manager ... I couldn't believe it ... I was losing the will to live ... at this point my mood changed when he told his superior on the phone that the counter staff wouldn't accept it because they didn't trust me ... this made me mad but they backed down and accepted it pretty quckly ... as they f*cking should !! They'd treated me like a criminal and that pissed me off hugely ... I work hard for my money and I demand more respect ... please excuse my self censored extreme language ... but ... c*nts ... absolute complete c*nts ... I grabbed my change and got out immediately ... I had a vision of picking up super GIANT SIZED BOUNTY BARS TO USE LIKE NUN CHAKAS to take out the evil fuel station workers ... Not long after that we joined the M1 near Leeds ... just 73 miles back to my home ... I eventually rolled into my home at Iron Maiden O'clock ... you guessed it ... 2 Minutes to Midnight ... that was my day 14th July 2007 I have a vivid imagination so please don't believe everything I say certain things are fiction ...