All Guts, No Glory Vol. V
Gigging is great fun. It's something that I'm passionate about and really enjoy doing. Back in 2010, I went to see a show performed by my old am-dram group, Exit Stage Left. My brothers and a couple of other guys came out on stage, suited up and looking suave, to four microphones set up in stands. The music started and immediately I recognised the familiar sounds of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons. It was The Medley from The Jersey Boys musical. Their harmonies were tight and choreography simple but effective. I loved it. I wanted to be up there with them. After watching this performance, I spoke to the guys about making this thing bigger and turning it into something we could all do in our spare time. We talked and decided that this would be a cool project to work on and perform at parties, shows etc. But we didn't have a name... we sat, we discussed, we threw names around for days until we came to one.
It was perfect. It fitted with our style of singing, at the time sticking to Jersey Boys, The Overtones or Rat Pack era songs with harmonies but it still showed our playful nature and for anyone who's seen us perform, the 'Casual' side of us is definitely prominent. We performed our own public shows as well as singing at celebrations for friends and family. After I returned back from Egypt, we really decided to push it forwards. Our parents took a chance and invested in a PA system, microphones, stands, speakers, the whole shebang, provided we would make full use of them. We built our web presence with Facebook and YouTube and started putting our name out there. After a couple of band member shuffles we were set.
Me, Pip, Andrew, James & Kev were Upfront and Casual and we loved it.
It was an escape and a way to release stress as well as doing something we all loved with our mates. Performing at weddings and birthdays became such a privilege, after a while we needed to figure out a way of expanding again. In case one of us couldn't make a gig and after Andrew left to work abroad in Cyprus following in my footsteps from my previous work in Egypt we had to enlist the help of a couple of other friends, Robin & Mark.
Now with a total of 7 members at our disposal, we could accept more gigs as we could swap and change the lineup where applicable. We started promoting ourselves more on YouTube with a'Capella videos. Short pieces with tight harmonies but also including outtakes, still showcasing our relaxed and fun attitude to it and letting our audience know we didn't take ourselves too seriously. It was completely different to our normal gigs as well as they use backing tracks as opposed to being purely vocals so this gave us a different edge and shone a light on what we could really do.
Here's our mashup of Marvin Gaye, Beautiful Girls and Stand By Me...
Usually our gigs consist of us arriving and setting up with our techie, Whiting. I say 'we', what I mean is I get given some wires to hold while the others do the heavy lifting. This is also the case when it comes to packing down... I'm in charge of making sure we have a set list sorted and all the music is in the correct order. Something I pay particular attention to after I learned the hard way.
We had been invited to perform for Vodafone's Christmas party. We arrived, unloaded the cars and began to set up. As the other guys got the gear all ready, I went to grab my MacBook to start arranging the setlist.
Where was my Mac?
I couldn't find it anywhere... Not in the car, not in the wire crate, not in my bag...
Shit.
I went out to where the guys were setting up and announced the news, "Uh, guys? I've forgotten the Mac." Pip looked at me with daggers in his eyes. James scoffed and quipped, "Hah, yeah good one!" I repeated my admission, "No, I've genuinely forgotten it." Pip responded with an exasperated, "Fuck sake!" Kev and James both laughed. We were an hour away from home and set to perform in 45 minutes. There wasn't much we could do. Luckily, Kev had his work laptop on him and we accessed the venue wifi in order to download as many backing tracks as we could from our online account. We managed it but the set list wasn't what we had planned and we had to do some quick thinking improv to pull it off. Since then, it's become a running joke to ensure I have all the music with me before we leave and someone always has a backup of the tracks, just in case. Whenever something has happened or there's a problem, I'm usually not far from the root cause of it... We had a birthday party to perform at recently and beforehand, the conversation over messenger went something like this; Me - "So what's everybody wearing tonight?" Kev - "Probably my grey suit." James - "Yeah, grey." Pip - "Blue or Grey." Me - "Right well I'll be going blue so that works out with two blue and two grey" We turn up and I'm the only one wearing blue while everyone else is in grey. I looked like a prize plum. Or blueberry, if you will. Now there's also a running theme of "Hey guys, remember that time we all turned up in grey suits and Matt wore blue?" Yeah, thanks guys... One particular gig comes to mind though and is the central theme of this post. We were heading to Exeter and were setting out in two cars, I was travelling with James, Kev & Robin. We were about three quarters of the way to our gig on the M4 when we stopped in at a service station to grab refreshments and also for me to use the facilities, (standard). Once done, we jumped back in the car. We had gotten only five minutes down the road when I felt the dreaded gurgle through my intestines and knew we'd have to stop again. This was ok, I didn't panic because that would get me nowhere, stress affects everybody's stomach but mine decides to go full metal jacket. I breathed deeply and closed my eyes in the hope that it would pass.
It didn't. It grew stronger and more powerful. I was clutching my seatbelt away from my body to alleviate the pressure it was putting on my waist, I gritted my teeth and tried to ride out the waves of agony that were flowing through my abdomen and into my colon. It would come and go like a steady pulse, almost like an old medieval battering ram, being thrown forward to break down my defences and then drawn back only to gain more momentum on the next swing. I began to sweat profusely and grimace in pain. Then the car came to a halt. I opened my eyes and to my horror, noticed we'd hit a traffic jam. I looked around at any signs of the next services. I spotted the big blue sign which read, 'Services - 15miles'.
NOOOOOO! I couldn't hold it much longer!
"I'm gunna have to jump out and sit on the central reservation soon lads." They chuckled, not realising I was being deadly serious beneath the nervous laughter in my voice. Ten minutes passed and it felt like a lifetime. I tapped Kev on the shoulder and asked him to pull over in to the hard shoulder the next chance he could. He nodded, chuckled and started indicating. I asked him if he had any tissues or wet wipes, anything I could use. James fished out a packet of wipes from the glove compartment and passed them back to me.
Once we had reached the embankment of the motorway, I hopped out of the car. I studied our surroundings and noticed that at the top of the embankment was a series of bushes. I could climb up, dodge behind one and do my business undisturbed and hopefully without anybody noticing.
I started to make my way up the grassy hill when all of a sudden I heard a car horn and a cheer. I turned around to see a white van, windows down, driver waving at me and giving me the thumbs up. I responded the only way I knew how. I waved back and continued my journey determined not to let it put me off, it was becoming a matter of underwear life or death after all.
Once at the top I looked for a way around the bush, only to discover, to my dismay, that it ran what looked like the entire length of the motorway.
There was nothing I could do... I found a slight indent as close to the thorny hedgerow as I could, turned to face what now had become a crowd of onlookers, mobile phones in hand, laughter and cheers in abundance, dropped my pants and squatted. It was the biggest sense of relief in my life! I cleaned myself up using the wipes, and then felt a somewhat odd sensation. A slight tingling was occurring and I wasn't keen on it, I can tell you. I looked at the packet of wipes that James had given me only to discover they were lemony fresh dashboard cleaning wipes... in my haste and distress I hadn't noticed it before. I made my way back down the hill, smile on my face with a slight sense of infamy and chuckling at the amount of cars that could definitely see me high above the motorway as the traffic extended beyond my view from that point. I got back in the car and we had a laugh about how ridiculous my life can be sometimes. The rest of the journey went without a hitch and we were off back on the road to our gig
James kindly took some photographs as well, because if your mate is having to make an emergency stop on the side of the M4 for all to see, what else are you going to do?!
While I'm on the subject, I might as well give an extra cheeky plug to the group. Here's our YouTube channel which features our acoustic numbers, one of which you can see above and here's our Facebook page, please feel free to give us a follow if you don't already! Thanks for reading, Matt.
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