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Germany & London 2006 |
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The Boys
played two sell out dates in London on 22/23 September 2006 marking
their 30th anniversary.
Duncan Reid
gives
his account of their triumphant return with photos from Norwegian
journalist
Albert Collett
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The
Boys at The Barfly, London
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Four gigs in the space of nine days. Weddings, saunas and cupboards –we’ve played them all. It started with an e-mail from Vom. “This rehearsal on the Friday before the Essen gig” it started innocuously, “Got a problem. Forgot our friends are getting married that day and Mary says she’ll kill me if we don’t go. Don’t worry, I’ve sorted for us to play at the wedding instead of rehearsing and we can have a run through while they’re in the Church”. I let Cas know and he said it was fine as long as the bridesmaids were good looking. John and Matt thought it would make a nice change. Friday 15 SeptemberSo, if its Friday it must be Stansted to Dusseldorf and from the airport to a beer garden on the Rhine. Beautiful setting in the open air and nice warm weather for the wedding guests and neighbours to hear us murder the Boys repertoire in an unrehearsed shambles. To add to the air of danger the guests started to arrive as we were setting up the drum kit. That was the pre gig run through out the window. First up for the night’s entertainment was Vom’s long standing friend Monique doing an acoustic set with Vom, thumping a wooden box by hand, and a guitarist who seemed to worry about everything more than I do. Very good though. Weaving in and out of the crowd of guests I noticed a small man, glasses, thinning on top and older than the rest of the guests. He was dancing with all the good looking women, chatting them up, carrying a glass of beer in one hand, and cracking dirty jokes with their husbands. Bloody hell he’s small for a German, I thought, but they must put something in the Ovaltine here. After a while he came over to me, grin on his face, and said “Hello mate, I’m a plumber from Essex what do you do?”. He then told me the filthiest joke I’ve ever heard. The penny dropped. “Are you Vom’s dad?” I asked. “Who?” he says, “Oh, you mean Steve. Yes, he’s the big one of the family”. If the rest of them are like those two it must be chaos. Next up were the Spittin Vicars who were very tight and slick. Oh good, I thought, we’ll look even better now. They got a standing ovation with Vom’s dad on a chair leading everyone on. In the end we played fine and it was really good fun. Moments of amnesia were pretty limited although often spectacular. For instance, Vom kicked off Brickfield Nights, John came in with his guitar and Matt launched into the riff from Weekend. Geordie from the Spittin Vicars thought we were getting too clever for our own good. John, Matt, Cas and I played under a large canvas canopy. Vom, however, was behind us in the open air. As it started raining I looked around to see his dad, obviously useful with spouting water, standing over him with an umbrella. “Oi” he shouted at me, “come ‘ere”. Fearing something serious was up I went over. He leaned towards me and shouted, “I can’t see why you’re in the band. Get off” and stood there with a big grin on his face. I wandered back to the front and sang First Time. The night
progressed well. It was good to be back with the lads again. After dark
a big bonfire was lit and Vom and I loaded it up with logs in an
alcoholic haze. It got so hot we debated sitting there in our
underpants. The bride, Mischa, was a lovely girl who gave me a kiss to
say thank you for playing at her wedding. Little did she know how near a
major disaster she could have witnessed. |
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Saturday 16 SeptemberNot a good start to the day as my head reverberated from the result of a bit too much the night before. Still, a quick Chinese buffet at the local hotel and we were off to Essen with Geordie in the back of the bus acting as roadie for the night. Great lad, Geordie, so called because of his thick Sunderland accent (I know, but I didn’t give him the nickname) and never short with a helping hand. |
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Essen is not at the heart of the
German tourist industry. The roads surrounding the gig were full of
a multitude of very helpful young (and not so young) girls in very
short skirts. You could see they were helpful because every now and
then men in cars would pull up and ask them for directions. The
young girls helpfully took the men to their nearby caravans to let
them look at their road maps (I guess).
As we pulled up to the gig there
was a Vom clone at the gate, one of an army of little Germans who
gang together and dye their spikey hair black and red. Its hard to
overstate how famous Vom is in Germany now. Every time the bus
pulled up at lights you could see the commotion among passers by who
spotted him. Even Turkish builders and that’s famous. It’s a credit
to him that he remains so friendly to everyone and puts so much hard
work into keeping the Boys going.
The gig was a very hardcore affair. Looking out from the stage the glare of lights shining off the bald heads was blinding. There was a good crowd of people at the front with hair, however, who clearly knew the songs and the cheers gradually spread from them to the rest as the gig progressed. |
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But –it was hot. Must have been 50C in the shade
and with a nice big stage giving me plenty of bouncing room the gig took
its toll. During First Time I suddenly felt freezing cold and started
shivering. This had happened to me once before when we played the
Marquee. On that occasion I passed out a little later from dehydration.
This time, while the crowd were calling for an encore, I told the lads I
could only do one more. Vom looked at me and told me my lips and face
had turned grey. We didn’t know Turning Grey but Sick on You was nearly
as appropriate to play as an encore. Just as well we were only allowed
50 minutes. Sunday 17 September8 a.m. There’s a f*****g marching band in the street with tubas and trumpets. What do these people think they are doing this early in the morning to a man with a throbbing head and a dry mouth. Managed to grab a little more
sleep after they marched off and then there was just time before
catching the plane home to go down the local pub for some good hearty
German grub. The marching band were in there dressed in full uniform,
medals and jackboots, having a jolly time eating their lunch. They
stared at us as if we looked outrageous. |
Matt Dangerfield & Duncan Reid
5 Days Later –Friday 22 SeptemberThis is getting serious now. I organised the gigs at the Barfly because I knew a lot of people wanted a London gig and also, if truth be known, because my daughter Lauren has never had the chance to see us live and I wanted that to happen while we can still carry it off. But in the meantime someone at work noticed the Barfly posters, said “aren’t you in a band called The Boys”. My whole credibility was on the line. I’m a world class worrier and I was on top form that day. The dressing room at the Barfly is a walk in cupboard so tuning up before the gig was an intimate, get to know you sort of affair. As we went upstairs to the stage the things that hit me were the crush of bodies and the heat. After Essen I was hoping I wouldn’t turn grey but, as it happened, the temperature wasn’t anything like as hot as then. I don’t remember much from the gig itself, which seemed to pass in a flash. There were plenty of technical problems both for Matt and myself and the sound on stage was terrible. However, the audience were great. They seemed to know the words to every song, and for me, made the night with their singing on Heroine, which is a song we didn’t know that well. It was good to play a really slow song and it certainly improved the set compared to Independent Girl which it replaced. I was worried that someone would get injured down the front but everyone seemed to escape safe and sound. Afterwards it was clear the sound had been a deal better out front than on stage since everyone I met was bowled over, including the people I was worried about. I was speaking to a crowd of them when I felt a tug on my arm and heard, “Dad, you were so good”. That made the whole weekend. Later on about 20 people tried to get into our cupboard, so I left to make sure I wouldn’t be too wasted for the Saturday night. Saturday 23 September There was a totally different feeling before this one. You still get nervous, of course, because there is so much that can go wrong which is outside your control. But this time we had double checked the causes of Friday’s technical problems and we knew what the conditions were going to be like. There was a feeling of confidence in the cupboard. On stage it was much better. The sound was good and we were much tighter. There were a few false starts and certain people forgot how Cop Cars kicks off but, hey, it didn’t matter. After one of the cocked up starts I heard one guy in the audience say to his friend “See, that’s what proper punk bands do”. It was one of those nights when, if we’d known any more songs, we could have played on, but we managed to make an hour and a quarter and, believe me, that’s a record for us. We struggled to get past 40 minutes in the seventies. Afterwards, a few people were begging me to play more shows in London. I’ll never say never but, at least for the time being, it was mission accomplished. With the limited amount of time I can give to The Boys, I’d like to see the offers from Spain, Italy, Norway, Argentina, Brazil, the USA etc come to fruition. On the other hand, Vom is very keen to play London again as it gives him an opportunity to see his mad plumbing dad and Cas will play anywhere, anytime. So, it all finished up in great style at a function room nearby which Matt very smartly booked. It was great to see so many faces from the past. Andrew Mattheson, Mark our old roadie who pulled us out of so many scapes with jealous boyfriends when we were younger, Chris Bashford cocky as ever, Beryl who took such great photos, Jean Cataldo who promoted us in France, all mingled in with the Backstage Passers from more recent years and others from Texas and Spain. Here’s to the next 30 years. Duncan Reid |
Cas, Matt & Duncan