Ho
bloody ho…
I never thought I’d say this but I hate Christmas. Now, before you sharpen your carving forks and calculate throwing trajectories, here me out on this one.
There was a time when I couldn’t get enough of the season of good cheer, my childhood memories of the holiday are of excitement driven insomnia coupled with midnight raids upon the Christmas tree to see what had been placed under them during the night whilst driving by mother to the bottle and my father to the pub by my incessant harping on about what kind of prezzie I might receive. Fantastic, if you’re are a kid.
I am not a kid anymore (thank you). I am an adult now and the older you get the more of those invisible strings you can see pulling at your limbs and indeed your life. What’s more, I am an adult musician/DJ and I have a story to tell you about what happens to adult musicians/DJ’s when they play at Christmas.
Your intrepid musical Lemming set out to play a Christmas gig for a bunch of nurses at a local hospital (cue all the boys reading this to yell RESULT!!!). I myself was not unaware of the potential for such and evening but I remained calm and in control of my ageing libido for two reasons;
With these two reasons implanted firmly in mind, both I and my partner in crime Andy ‘Scratch and Sniff’ Smith proceeded to warm up the decks and focus the lights for an evening of maximum R’n B. This partnership has had its fair share of successes and failures (successes; playing to 800 people in a seaside ballroom and rocking the night away, failures; playing an 80’s soul boy night and bringing no soul records).
Normally we have to deal with some pretty inane requests. These are usually deflected with a warm smile and a ‘sure, we’ll play it later’ followed by a mad scrabble through the cases to find said request. Tonight we were to be treated by a different kind of health service. The lack of taste squad were on the prairie and they were riding the ponies full tilt to towards Shit Music valley.
Now full of Christmas cheer (i.e. three pints of Holsten and two jugs of vodka & black), we are inundated with requests thus;
Punter 1#: Play some Kylie
DJ: Okay (dutifully pays single from said
diminutive Aussie)
Punter 2#: Turn that shit off and play some real music!
DJ;
Okay what would you like?
Punter 2#: I don’t know, ANYTHING CHRISTMASSY!
DJ;
(confused) Right then, anything (plays well known party fave)
Punter
1#: (drunken rage): WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?
DJ: Er…Slade’s ‘Here
It Is Merry Christmas’
Punter1#: PLAY SOME DANCE MUSIC YOU CUNTS!!!
DJ:
(going red with rising frustration) Right….Dance music.
Punter 2#: What’s
this shit?
DJ: We’ve had a request for some dance music
Punter 2#:
Fuck that, play something slow, I want to snog my boyfriend.
DJ: Well
maybe a bit later...
Punter 2#: NO, NOW OR I’LL TELL MY BOYFRIEND YOU
MADE A PASS AT ME!
DJ: (now under considerable pressure to deliver the
goods) Er, okay…
(plays Sexual Healing by Mr Marvin Gaye)
Punter 1#:
NO, NO, NO! WE WANT TO DANCE!!!
(DJ pulls machine gun from bag and empties three clips into crowd and then plays ‘Helter Skelter’ as we begin to dodge the police marksman gathering outside).
Punter 3#: (surfaces from behind a table) Have you got any Slade?
On the upside however, a full dance floor is a nice sight to see and the pay is infinitely better than the usual board of fare offered to me and my brethren in the band. Having said that, no-one often pesters me to play Kylie songs when I and the guys play live (not that we wouldn’t have a go mind you). You pays your money and you takes your chance.
DJing aside, all Christmas seems to do nowadays is deplete the contents of your wallet/purse/mattress and increase the chance of you cheerfully throttling a sales assistant after they inform you that they don’t know how to work the till because they’ve just been hired for the Xmas season and you’ll have to wait until the man with the key comes back to clear the £350,000 bill for a novelty swearing dildo they’ve just entered by mistake.
The New Year will be a clean sheet (the glass is always half full with yours truly) and there is great news afoot in the form of I and the Band (Rob, Paul Tim & I) along with our cultural ambassador and wife to Rob, Jo, who will be jetting off on the 9th of January to New York City to play a number of shows. America; you lucky, lucky people…
Run while you can.
The gigs will be recorded for future release & deletion by our mother record company Lazy Gun in the New Year. If it turns out to be great we will never let you all forget it but if they turn out to be shit, we will lie and say they were brilliant because nobody likes a loser.
Best to be truthful about the lies or else no-one will respect you. I think ex-President Clinton said that.
I remain as ever, last in line at the grotto.
Simon ‘Humbug’ Walsh