Packing the van is like one massive game of tetris. This was never more true than last weekend when we packed it early morning before departing to single two’s film set. The day after the shoot I opened the back of the still laden van to try and find some gaffa tape, only to be met by a black wall of cabs and flight cases with arms crossed and heads shaking, not a chance of finding anything in all that gear! I retreated. The film shoot checklist was:
School gym: check.
We did a few favors (wink) for a school teacher and managed to get a school gym to shoot the video in. It was big, wooden, reverby and had big gym ropes that we were climbing like we were 13 again. We were toying with the idea of the video starting with us cheesily descending from these ropes but in hindsight it was probably for the best.
Big tall lights and smoke machine: check.
Smoke machines are fun and mega cool, especially when you have 1.5k’s worth of lights shining through the smoke. Although the smoke makes you feel like you smoke about 60 a day, it does give your hair, drums and guitars a nice greasy conditioning coating. Lovely.
Gear, gear and a little more gear: check check.
Video shoots we’ve done previously were quite tedious and uneasy but this one was the complete opposite, if knackering! The amount of gear we had was one of my favorite bits, especially Rugger’s mega-stack-wall-of-amp. If only we could have patched it all in!! I do need my hearing though so maybe it was good that we didn’t.
A stellar film crew: check.
Blake Claridge was shooting the vid for us (all by himself!) and aside from doing a great job, he was a very nice chap also. Blake was all things lights, camera and action. Other crew included our mate Kev Scullion who took photos and had to use all that was left of his hungover strength to pull the camera trolley around us in circles while Blake crouched on it and filmed. I’m not sure he had that in mind when he came down but he was certainly cream crackered by the end of it. Jeej was as always roadie and camera puller on a slower scale, as was Candy who also did our make-up. On tea duty was Miss Fisher (known by the kids as ‘maam’), a home ec teacher who was right next door to us who provided us with tea and had to listen to us play the same song through about 35 times whilst trying to get some marking done. She only managed to do 4 pieces. Job well done.
The week before we had another film shoot but a bit more informal in that it was whilst we were playing a gig in ‘the flat’, our rehearsal space. Now this room looks crowded when we have anyone more than us 5 in it at any one time. At the gig we must have had about 60? We had never played a show in this format before, and what was planned to be a small intimate show with only closest mates turned into a wicked house party with pretty much everyone there entirely sh*t faced. As there we a lot of hardcore followers there from many a year ago we decided to play a mixed set with a lucky dip. At certain points in the set we would announce ‘It’s Brucie Bonus Time!!’ and we would hand a red lunchbox with a photo of ‘tashe glory Bruce Forsyth gaffa taped on each side to the crowd. They then pick a random old song from inside for us to play. The night got sweatier and messier as it went on, my only regret is that I did not get that pint of gammon that was being bbq’d and served in plastic glasses! I can feel a new breed of gigs coming on….
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