NINE

It was a fairly big gig and I was band leader so I took it even more seriously than the rest. It was a 3 month thing during the summer and mostly quite a good laugh. The other guys and girl in the band were a good laugh and we had fun and they were all decent musicians and singers too. That is apart from Figgs, the god-awful drummer they’d sent us. You know the type: slows down all the time, irrelevant what the count-in is;
“Okay Brown Eyed Girl, everybody: 1 2 3 4!” and then that riff: “Bah baah baaaaah baaaaah baaaaaah baaaaaaaah...”
Dragging like the clappers! So frustrating. And he’s one of those people who doesn’t seem to understand that it’s dragging or that it sounds like shit at that speed or that we’re all mad at him. He’s so unaware of the world around him, and infuriatingly he’s like, the nicest guy ever.

So it gets to the last gig of this season and this tension’s been building in me for three whole months and we’re playing Keep On Running by the Spencer Davis Group and it pretty much rides on it being that on-the-beat very ‘up’ tempo and if it drags it just sounds so crap and sure enough he starts to drag it. So I’m there at my keyboards trying to play with my right hand, keep the chords pumping while with my other hand I’m gesturing to him to speed up. Making circles with my hand, then with my fist and he’s not seeing at all and I turn round and start making faces at him, faces that say SPEED THE HELL UP, FIGGS! IT’S DRAGGING!! PICK IT UP but I can see that he’s doing that thing of blinking stupidly every time he hits the snare, and in this song the snare’s on every sodding beat so he’s just blinking away as if he’s shocked by his own playing the stupid bastard. So I’m getting madder and my gesticulations start to get bigger and wilder, and my face, and the words I’m mouthing are becoming more heated and severe. I’m making wanking signs at him with my fist, I’m waving two fingers in the thick sod’s direction, I’m shouting
“YOU STUPID FUCKING BASTARD, YOU SILLY NOBBING TWAT-HEAD DICK-BAG FREAK FACE DRAGGING PILE OF DOG SHITE!!! SPEED UP YOU WANKER-CRETIN! YOU FRIG BRAIN! YOU! THICK! C**T!!” All the while I’m doing the gestures that fit it all and all the while he’s blinking like a nobhead, smiling through it all, completely oblivious to everything.

We finish the gig and my blood’s boiling - you know how these things get out of proportion when you’ve built them up for so long, and THEN he goes to me
“Oh hey, Mark. Great gig!”
and I’m going
“Oh YEAH? GREAT GIG!??” and I’m about to lunge in at him when Rich puts a hand on my shoulder and pulls me away before the silly sod notices I was about to lamp him.
He’s looking at me, smiling; so fucking naive, waiting for me to finish my sentence about how great the fucking gig was. I catch myself and my temper and I look at his soppy face and my heart melts a bit and suddenly I’m glad I didn’t hit him and I’m glad we never had a big fight. This was the last gig and I don’t need to work with him again and he’s such a nice guy and means so well and I couldn’t bear to burst his little bubble of non-reality. So I relax a bit and smile and say
“Yeah, Figgs. Yeah. Great one to finish on. You’re right, it was a great gig.” and he goes
“Yeah! And my girlfriend filmed it all!”