Excuse me, I’m NOT with the band
My husband, Meeester is in a band. In fact he’s been in two bands since I met him.
I hooked up with him 16 years ago despite the fact that he is a musician. I never ever wanted anyone ever to label me as a groupie.
When Meeester was in his first band in his twenties, they toured all over the place. They went from Boston to Belarus, from Norway to Paris to Vienna. A wonderful time was had by all. I never went with them, for, unlike Anita Pallenberg, I am NOT with the band.
I went on one trip and vowed never to go again.
So, for all of you wannabe groupies, take heed, for this is the grim reality what being a groupie consists of.
The Journey
You will drive hundreds of miles in a van that only goes up to 50mph if the wind is in the right direction. You will empty your entire bank account into the pockets of motorway service station owners along the way. You would have brought sandwiches but how rock and Roll is a lunch box? Answer: Not very.
The van may also break down at various intervals. You will be expected not to whine on these occasions.
The Arrival
You arrive at the venue and will wait outside whilst band find the bloke they need to speak to before setting up. This guy is always called Dave (or Donny, if you’re in the Western Isles). He is always not there yet.
Alone for the first time, you will have to chat to the drummer’s girlfriend, who is different from the last girl you saw him with and different from the girl you will see him with next.
You think, “I’d better chat to her, but I don’t want to invest too much as she’ll be history come this time next month. She’s nice, but I will try not to get too attached”
The Get-In
You will grudgingly help with the load in. Never do heavy lifting, just take a token amount of cables in, that’s your lot.
Never ever carry a bloke’s guitar for him. Nothing says, “I’m with the band” like a lassie carrying her man’s axe. Meeester made me do this on Saturday at a festival because he had too much else to carry and I was not happy at breaking this fundamental rule of mine. This is the first time in 15 years that I have done it. Rest assured, I did whine about it.
And I’ve seen it happen so many times before. See girlfriend carry man’s guitar, man has no respect for girlfriend. She’s on her way out. Only people who play guitars should carry guitars. I carry my handbag and myself only. I feel jinxed now.
The Sound-Check
Shut UP! How annoying! Do anything else than hang around for the sound-check. Go for a walk, go for a pint, go run at a wobbly spear. Just distance your ear drums from “Bang! Bang! Bang!” “ Tchoo Thcoo Tcchoo! One-Tcchooo!”
Sound-checks will also take forever. Don’t plan on seeing your man any time soon. More chat with the soon to be ex-girlfriend of the drummer will be the order of the day.
The Cuisine
You will be forced to eat a crappy take-away. Few bands have their own chef, you know, and catering tents are only at festivals.
For the common and garden touring band and their entourage, it’s chips or a kebab or nothing. And if it’s in the Highlands of Scotland you better hope you arrive in town before seven o’clock or everything will be closed and you will all be fighting over a Pot Noodle that someone bought earlier from the last open petrol station, 150 miles away.
The Gig
If you’re lucky, you will get to watch your man’s band play for 40 mins on stage . However, even this is fraught with anxiety as you spot other women drooling over your boyfriend at the front of the stage. These girls are legion and want desparately to live the groupie dream. These girls have not read blogs like this; they have read the many salacious memoirs of Pamela Des Barres or Pearl Lowe and want a piece of the groupie action.
The Earning Your Keep.
This is not a euphemism for groupie like sexual attention. You will be expected to help out and sadly this doesn’t mean being asked up on stage to duet with your loved one, Sonny and Cher style.
You may be asked to sell band merchandise (or hand out flyers, see this for more). This will involve stopping folk from nicking stuff, haggling with you or fending off drunken advances from cretins.
Worst of all, you may be sat outside in the cold corridor, unable to even see the band at all. You will have travelled hundreds of miles to sell five t-shirts and a couple of CDs. Rock and Roll!
The After Gig Party
After the gig the band will want to relax, have a few drinks and wind down. You will still be selling merchandise.
If you’re lucky your man may come and offer you a drink from the rider. You will be disappointed when the rider doesn’t have any chilled Chardonnay. You will force down a warm can of McEwan’s Export instead and instantly need the loo and be unable to go because you can’t leave the merchandise.
When you finally pack up and join the band you will find a much younger woman hitting on your man. You will approach and be ignored by her. Your man may even introduce you as his girlfriend to her and she will still ignore you and carry on trying to bed your man. At one point, either of you are going to have to find an unlocked cupboard and kick her into it and lock it behind her to get rid of her. Either that or the bass player will snap her up, keeping everyone happy.
But make no mistake, these women will stop at nothing and you must be very secure in your relationship to be able to tolerate it and not want to go all Yoko Ono on their asses.
The Accommodation
Invariably you will discover the accommodation for the band has enough beds for band members only. Or worse, is one room only. Or worse, doesn’t exist and you all have to sleep in the van or at some random’s house.
Wannabe groupies may think hanging out with the band will mean wild sex with your chosen bloke in a series of luxurious hotel rooms. Sorry, that is rarely the case. There is nothing sexy about being squashed in a nylon sofa in a single sleeping bag with your snoring boyfriend whilst listening to the drummer and his new girlfriend getting it on 1 metre away from you.
The next day
Drive hundreds of miles to do it all again.
Epilogue
Girls that hang around with the band rarely last long. After my one token trip I let Meeester go and live the rock and roll dream on his own. Much better that way. And no groupie floozie tempted him away, after all.
We celebrate our 11th wedding anniversary this week. Happy Anniversary Meeester! Don’t ever make me carry your guitar again.
Tag, I’m it!
For the first time ever I’ve been tagged to write a post. It’s on High Vibes, which I believe to be on the subject of what you do to keep yourself positive. Thanks for the tag, lovely Taexelia, Queen of the Foxes.
One apparently has to share five tricks for staying positive. I’ve decided to tell five little stories about times when I needed a bit of positivity and what I/others did to get my/their mojo back.
1. The Story of the Evil German Bastard who Broke My Heart When I Was Nineteen.
I was obsessed with a German exchange student 8 years older than me at University. For three years we went back and forth to Scotland and Germany. I was deliriously obsessed with him. The female members of my family loved him, the males didn’t. That should have been a warning. He was so good looking and charming that I couldn’t believe that he would even look twice at me. My dad, who is a normally personable chap, would sit and glare at him whenever I took him home. My mum and sister would look at him with awe.
After two years he dumped me for a nurse whom let’s face it he’d been shagging all along. I was borderline suicidal. I had fantasies of little blonde bilingual babies. But for a year after dumping me, he would still visit. He would invariably sleep with me, raising false hope. Then one night after doing this he felt all guilty about cheating on his girlfriend. He was actually in tears. The utter cheek of him! Something in me snapped. I took his bag, jacket and shoes and flung them out into Great Western Road (Glasgow’s main drag) and told him to leave. I actually flung him out the door in a T-shirt and boxers in February. My flatmates practically gave me a Mexican Wave. Two years later I met Meeester and I thought, “Thank God.”
Item One: Get rid of bad people from your life who stop the good ones coming along.
2. The Story of Leaving My So Called Fabulous Production Job
This is worthy of a longer post. So see this as a kind of trailer. When you work for a company for 8 years and have (along with your colleagues) turned a little production department that made crappy videos for colleges into a major player in the commercial production world, heading up Global Live Broadcasts for Blue Chip Companies, you’d think a payrise to bring your salary up to a measly £25,000 wouldn’t be out of order. Apparently it was. I left.
Item 2: If anyone takes the piss, then leave.
3. Surprise Story!
At the end of last year I was very ill. I won’t go into details. For my birthday I wanted nothing, but a surprise. On my birthday Meeester set me a challenge. He gave me a canvas, paints and brushes and told me I had 30 days to sell my work on Ebay for ANY money. Here it is:
I got £73 for it and I gave the proceeds to the Cats Protection League. As a reward Meeester let me choose the jewellery of my choice in Thailand but the real reward was the painting. Doing that painting and seeing all my friends and family (and some unknown bidders!) bidding for it, made me well again. And I’ve been painting ever since.
Item3: Surprise someone. Life’s too short on surprises.
4. The Travel Bug
I’ve always been a traveller. Sounds like the start to a ropey folk song, doesn’t it? Travel is the best thing ever. I’ve turned my husband and kids into travellers too. That’s why I call us the Flying Martinis.
I would love to write a travelogue and was delighted that so many of my friends and family enjoyed reading my daily emails from Finland and then when I started blogging, my Sri Lanka and Thailand Travelogues. See some of them here and here (or look in the April archives)
By the time I’m 40 I am going to get a travelogue published. I am, I can. No question.
Item 4: Have an ambition and realise it.
5. Music is Soul Food
What a flipping hippy thing to say. But it’s true. Tonight I am going to watch the wonderful Meeester and some of my most favourite people in the world play their 6 new songs live in front of a small audience in a dodgy little dive called The Moorings before they take them to various festivals in the summer. The band, the Lorelei, are in their second wave. To cut a long story short they made a very emotional and difficult decision to part with their original lead singer and songwriter about 10 years ago even though they were quite successful.
It’s not been easy. They’ve had to find a new singer (Meeester), turn their hands to writing without the powerful but often destructive presence of lead singer No1, and have been scrutinised by all the fans of the band from back when. All that and the old leader singer turns up at their first gig and stares them all out. Toooo difficult.
Despite all that they have been booked up for festivals, easily pack out Aberdeen’s Lemon Tree every time they play and are gaining new fans every day.
Tonight they go back on with all new songs, a lot happier and creative than they have ever been and I’m so proud of them all. One more thing, if any of them are reading this, gonna sell some flipping records now so that we can all live La Vida Loca?
Item Five: Have faith in yourself and prove your critics wrong.
So there we are. Now it’s my turn to tag five others:
KayessJayKay
EvvyB
American Scot
Joseph
Surviving Motherhood
Anyone else who wants tagged let me know and I’ll add you to the list. Simply click here for the rules.
You’re It!
