23/03/02
Vicenza to Weinheim, Germany.
“Only another 12-hour
drive to the next gig”
I am up at 06:55 am and make sure that everyone is also awake as we have another very long drive
today and need to be on the road as early as possible. I am not Mr Popular but it has to be done and don’t leave off
knocking until everyone has responded coherently!
Breakfast is very good indeed and sets us up for the arduous journey ahead. We load up our bags
and depart by 08:10am, for longest leg of the tour. Our destination is a place called Weinheim in Germany, which is only about
half an hours drive from my flat in Heidelberg, Valerie is also going to meet us there which is cool and we settle down into
the by now normal routine of sleeping, eating, cracking jokes etc! Three hours later and we are still in Italy! The mountains
are however much nearer and gradually we begin our climb.
Ade is driving and Nick gets me to map read for him so that he can crash out in the back, first
moving all the bags into a semblance of a bed and then going to sleep on top of bastard, sundry amps and various kit bags!
As we head deeper into the mountains our little friend the red light says hello once more! Ade
looks at me, I look at him and Ade sums it up by saying,
“Oh well, what could possibly go wrong now!” We chuckle ruefully, pretend to ignore
the light in the hope it will go away and carry on into Switzerland, but both of us I am sure surreptitiously gave it innumerable
glances all the way through Switzerland and up into south west Germany.
Nick takes over in Germany and Ade climbs into the far back and claims Nick’s homemade bed,
almost instantly Ades stentorian snores can be clearly heard, this journey is a bugger and a real drain on Nick and Ade in
particular!
While we drive through Germany Nick asks me all about the Internet community that I talked to him
about all those pages ago on the overnight ferry to Oslo! He talks about his music, describing his recording process, his
favourite tracks of recent times, the true meaning behind “Stain on the sun” and a myriad of other subjects, he
invites me to come over to his house when I am next in the UK in order to discuss the proposed “demo” CD that
Nick will release as an exclusive to the community. He is quite serious about doing this and I am really pleased, as I wasn’t
sure if he would agree or not.
We hit the main Autobahn which will take us past Heidelberg and up towards Weinheim. We cannot
get hold of the venue and we are running behind time despite the early start, so I phone Valerie, tell her exactly where we
are on the autobahn and she in turn contacts the venue to inform them roughly how long we reckon until we reach the venue.
The venue are cool about it and say it will not be a problem about sound-checking which is a relief
and takes some of the pressure off.
It eventually takes us almost 12 hours to reach Weinheim and we quickly locate the venue, Nick
backs the van to the bottom of the stairs and everyone chips in, including the venue staff in carrying all the equipment up
four flights of stairs! After such a long journey, the stairs threaten to finish people off, but we are made of sterner stuff
and soon everything is in. Valerie arrives and helps me with the stall, Once more the stall is in another room and that unfortunately
always less takings, we did okay that night, but the stall needs to be where the band are not in another room where I can’t
help people who want to know what this or that track is, at almost every gig when I was near the stage I did well and in the
ones where I was some distance away takings were low.
Mick Donovan has joined us for the rest of the tour; Mick is an old mate of Nick’s and a
total Frond fanatic! Whenever he is at a Frond gig he is totally lost in the music, there is a film clip of the gig in Köln
where you can see Mick pogo-ing around like a maniac!
The rider is nowhere to be seen, there are a few odd sandwiches lying around and some crisps but it looks
to me like the support band have eaten it! However this time, I have eaten well in the van, making sure I have no repeat of
the incident in Italy!
Broken beds
I did manage to film a couple of clips of the band, both from the back of the stage and the side
door to the stage, but as I said that was mainly because the stall was very quiet.
After the gig we all drive back to the hotel in the centre of old Weinheim and it is a really beautiful
hotel. Mick gets my single room and Valerie and I book a double.
We wearily climb the stairs to find our room. Sure enough it is a double room, but consisting of
two single beds, one at each end of the room, as far away from each other as is possible without being in separate rooms!
Not exactly conducive to a planned night of passion is it? I mean for Gods sake, don’t Germans have sex? A double room
implies s a double bed is in it doesn’t it? (At least it always is in my book). We shake our heads and laugh at the
situation, no prude is going to stop us now! So while Valerie disappears into the bathroom, I dump our bags onto the floor
and sit down on one of the beds, I swear to God that is all I did! Valerie comes flying out of the bathroom when she hears
an almighty crash! She sees my legs sticking up out of the middle of the bed. I promise I did nothing more than sit on the
damn thing, but the very second I do sit down I hear this awful cracking sound, the bed collapses under me and I fall through
the middle of it! Now I freely admit I am no lightweight, but this was ridiculous!
I am now wedged in the frame of the single bed, my legs poking upwards above my shoulders and my arms pinned under my arse!
Valerie collapses in fits of laughter because I can’t move let alone get out, her shrieks of laughter only make things
worse for me and my all my struggles are in vain and only serve to make her laugh even more. Eventually she takes pity on
me and helps me out of my predicament, we look at the bed and discover it was not fixed together, only balanced, just waiting
for someone like me to sit on it….bastards! We repair the bed as best we can, decide not to tell anyone in the morning
and check the second bed very, very carefully! It is fine and at last we can go to bed…
24/03/02
Weinheim to Köln.
In the morning everyone has that spaced out look about them, We are all sitting down at the breakfast table
and I think only Mick and Valerie are at all with it; Ade is searching the breakfast table for the milk, he stares and stares
but simply cannot see it until someone directs his gaze to the jug right in front of his hand. He is clearly very tired. Nick
on the other hand, has adopted this sort of lopsided grin on a completely vacant face; he simply is not in there at the moment!
Paul is talking gibberish and staring wildly into space, it is quite unnerving and Jules is missing again, but no one has
the energy or can be arsed to move, let alone go look for him again. Jules eventually turns up for breakfast and we all mumble
some form of greeting, though for the life of me I couldn’t tell you what language it was in! Jules stares at us as
if he knows us from somewhere but can’t quite work it out. Quite what Valerie thought of it all I am not sure but it
must have been very amusing! That or very, very disturbing!
We go for a walk to wake ourselves up, Nick and Ade decide to go left, Paul and Jules go right
and Valerie and I head straight across the road to a café and sit down in the garden and have a wonderful hot chocolate! The
others almost immediately joined us; I think they must have smelt the chocolate or something because despite Weinheim being
very pretty indeed, it was like,
“Fuck the town, give me a hot chocolate instead!!” to all of us it was a moment of
heaven. We dropped Valerie off at the station and then headed back onto the Autobahn for our final gig of the tour in Köln
(or as it is more commonly known in England, Cologne) Nick and Ade are enthusiastic about Köln and reckon it will be the best
gig of the whole tour; plenty of people they know will be turning up and it will be nice to end on a high! We drive for three
and a half hours and no one can recall the journey when we eventually arrive. That infamous but well-known affliction “Gig
haze” has caught up with everyone. I recognise the cathedral from my train journeys through here, they are particularly
stunning inside, but we will not have time to wander around.
Trouser flapping and the
best gig of the tour
The “Underground” is where we are playing tonight and we unload our gear through the
backdoor and onto the stage. My stall is opposite the bar and not too far from the stage, which is good news indeed! I set
up my stall and then we all go to our sleeping quarters, which is part of the club compound.
We entered a dormitory (if you can call it that) and once again Ade put it perfectly;
“Well, I would call it Spartan, but Spartan implies cleanliness!” We all selected our bunks for
the night and I looked at my pillows, they had a distinctive fragrance to them that reminded me of something; something extremely
unpleasant! They also had a nasty brownish colour to them; I wrapped mine up in a jumper I no longer needed to wear until
I could wash it
The band return to the club and sound-check with no problems. After they have finished Ade calls
me up onto the stage and lets me have a go with his bass,
“Try the trouser flapper,“ he says, so I press the pedal he is pointing to and play,
“Fucking hell!” I exclaim as my trousers do indeed flap!
“Great isn’t it!” Ade replies and leaves me to noodle away on his prized bass! Again I am
no good at playing but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
We then go to grab a bite to eat in the restaurant at the front of the club and the inevitable
occurs, they open the fucking doors early again and I have to shoot off back to the stall as the fans are out in force tonight
and I work my little socks off! There is a crowd around my stall virtually the
whole evening. Even when the band were onstage playing I was surrounded by eager fans wanting to buy as much as they could
and as fast as I could replace a CD sold from the table another would be picked up. I face a whole barrage of questions such
as: -
“What do I recommend?”……..(everything of course!)
“Who plays on what CD?”…….(That really tested me!)
“Do I have “New River Head?”…(No, but I know Nick is thinking about re-releasing
it!)
“Is Andy dead?”………………..(NO!)
“Who is in the current line-up”…(Nick, Ade, Paul and Jules)
“Which are the latest CD’s from Woronzow?”……(“What Did for
the Dinosaurs” and “Look Out”) And so on, it keeps me rather busy and thankfully Paul hands me a couple
of bottles of coke, which in this Smokey atmosphere are going to be a godsend. I was in my element, loving every second and
willing to talk to anyone at length if they wanted to know something specific. I found the people who chatted to me were really
friendly, several buying me a drink for my trouble which was nice and much appreciated as it was extremely thirsty work given
the smoky atmosphere.
I have a stiff target to beat tonight, Berlin took the largest amount of money of the whole tour
so far, but this place I felt sure was even busier and the vibe coming from the crowd was wonderful, they were here to enjoy
themselves and they set about it with a vengeance! I sell about 30 CD’s before the band have even taken the stage, one
man was so desperate to buy a T-shirt (something we sadly lacked) that he all but stripped the one I was wearing while I was
working!
The anticipation is great and there is a great cheer as the band slowly walk through the crowd and climb up
on stage to begin their set, the opening instrumental slides into “Hole Song” and then into a storming “Oh
Gideon” The only problem is Paul’s guitar string decides to break at this moment and he scrambles around on the
floor desperately for another one, this after all, is the moment in the song when Paul solos and all we have is Nick playing
the melody! Nick carries on for a few bars more until it becomes obvious that Paul is not going to make it in time and so
he launches into the main riff. Nick proceeds to sing the song and, from my vantage position I can see Paul’s arse as
he is still desperately trying to restring his guitar, halfway through “Oh Gideon” Paul stands up and it looks
like he is about to rejoin the band, but no! He is still restringing the guitar, Nick is into the final part of the song now
and still Paul is on the floor with his guitar. At last Paul stands up and is ready, just in time to play the last note of
the song!! Despite that slight set back, this show is a guaranteed winner from start to finish!
Nick grins at Ade and Ade grins back, they clearly both know that this is a “good ‘un”,
then comes my personal favourite of the tour, “Superseeder” which is played to perfection and clocks in at nearly
16 minutes long!
The
next song is one of Nicks many, many classics, “Maybe”, Before they start Nick comments, “Just in case you
thought we’d forgotten the old ones…” and then straight into the screaming guitar riff.
The crowd are so good and the band responds by giving in my view, the best gig of the whole tour.
A tremendous cheer for the finale and then the band are out meeting and greeting, the CDs are flying
out of the door and I easily break Berlins takings record! This was without any shadow of a doubt, the best of them all, a
fantastic last show and fitting end to a wonderful tour!!!
The band loved playing the show and the audience were incredible! The video I shot shows the audience packed
in tightly, all singing along with the band. It also shows Nicks mate Mick and his amazing dancing hands! Watch the video
and you will know what I mean, it is cool to see people so into Nicks music getting so much pleasure from it, great stuff!
The crowd eventually leave deliriously happy and we retire to our swanky sleeping quarters for
a much needed and anticipated end of tour party.
Ice cubes, confusing fridges
and shower assault
Several people join us and copious amounts of beer are downed by all, joints are rolled and people
really relax and let their hair down. The room is bloody freezing and there is a distinct howling coming from some of the
windows, it is going to be a tad difficult to sleep tonight, but then it doesn’t look like we will get much sleep anyway!
Nick and Paul decide to regale me with every possible bad joke they can think of and they steadily
get worse and worse, the Michael Jackson joke makes a second appearance along with several unprintable ones. It is very, very
funny! Conversations ensue with the subject matter veering wildly around the room; at one point Nick spies a mattress lying
propped up against a wall, he notes that it has a very suspicious looking stain on it and even more mysterious, it is square
shaped! This causes much hilarity and in depth hypothesising as to how this mathematically perfect square stain could have
occurred, several theories are proffered but once again, it is Nick who comes up with the most original solution, he reckons
it was so cold in here that there was a couple shagging on the mattress and when the bloke came he came in ice cubes! We all
roar with laughter and those who are by now stoned fall about in hysterics.
Later in the evening Paul staggers off to the loo clearly finding it all rather difficult as he
struggles to find the door that doesn’t exist! When he comes back he thinks that the door is in fact merely masquerading
as a full-sized fridge and attempts to close the aforementioned in order to keep out the draft! Thus he drags the full-sized
fridge right across the entrance where no door has existed in years; we all look on, incredulous! Eventually the party begins
to wind down, I seem to recall gazing uncomprehendingly out of the frozen window and seeing dawn or something, I shake my
head not believing it and finally crash out.
Amazingly I am not the first up for once, Ade wakes up and pads off across the icy floor to the
toilet, a few minutes later we hear “BANG!! CRASH!!” followed by “FUCK!!!!” Curious to see what has
happened I wait for Ade to return to the room, when he finally does return he insists that the shower had just attacked him
completely unprovoked! Nick on the other hand will not wake up and so is mercilessly tickled awake, his laughter is infectious
but then he suddenly trumpets extremely loudly!
“Oh fucking hell!” we all exclaim and bury our heads under the covers for a few minutes
preferring the rank, stale smell of the pillows to the air currently on offer in the room!
Later in the morning we load up the van for the final journey home to England. I get the whole band to sign
a few posters for the community as well as a memento for me and we take a few photos in the car park.
I am not returning to England with the band as I now live in Germany, so, after some discussion
a cab is arranged by Nick to take me to the railway station so that I can catch the train back down to Heidelberg.
I say my goodbyes to Jules and Paul in the van, there are handshakes all round, then to Ade who
thanks me profusely and finally to Nick who looks at me, shakes my hand and then gives me a bear hug. I am very sad to finally
see them go and also not to be going on with them to the second leg of the tour which begins in a week’s time and will
cover Spain and for the first time France, a gig that has been arranged specifically by fans.
I would dearly love to be a part of this second leg, but it is simply not possible for me at this
time.
And suddenly it is all over, the band drive off down the road waving as they depart and after about
5 minutes, my taxi arrives, I climb in and head to Köln Hauptbahnhof. There I buy my ticket and head back down to Heidelberg
and home. It is a matter of a three-hour journey for me, for the band it is more like 7-8 hours!
As for me, all my life I have wanted to be involved in the music business in some way, shape or
form and at last I have done it. I had a whale of a time and wouldn’t swap the experience for anything you could possibly
think of!
The band is a tight unit, professional and really hard working, they are also tremendous fun, generous
to a fault and great mates!
I did my best to help and worked as hard as I could to try and make a difference to them in any
way I could. As I’ve said before, I am no guitarist, singer, drummer or anything else but music has played a major role
in my life and it was a wonderful to be able to give something of myself in some small way!
16/07/03
All I have now to remember that fantastic time are the memories, the videos, the live recordings
the photos and now my tour diary that I have finally written up properly from the notes I made whilst out on the road!
Nicks “Valedictory Demos” came out in about August 2002, it was a signed, numbered,
limited edition with one never before released track called “the Chiltern hundreds”, It is a fascinating insight
into the work that eventually became “Valedictory Songs”
In April of this year, Nick gave “the Long Stuff” to the community, which contained
some wonderful tracks on it such as “Calamity Jane” etc. At present, Nick is working on the next Bevis Frond release.
Ade also released his first tape “Aerial Dance” complete with a CD reflecting his musical career, with outtakes
and live tracks.
Nick also celebrated his 50th birthday, so congratulations to him!
I hope you have enjoyed reading this, my pitiful attempt to put into words what happened during
those two, amazing, busy, and tremendous fun weeks. I have had a lot of fun writing it, editing it and having it checked by
Valerie who drew hundreds of funny little cartoons and witty comments all over the first draft as well as thousands of corrections!
So now all that is now left for me to say is…
“Thank you Nick, Ade, Paul and Jules; you are the
best!”
