The Courtesans and The Voyeur
Part IV
11. Electrowerkz,
London, 18th February 2017
Saturday 18th February 2017
The Courtesans, The Vultures, Leashes
Electrowerkz, London
FINALLY… it was 04.00 on Saturday 18th February
2017. My alarm clock went off and I was up and out of bed like a kid on
Christmas morning, because today, today I was finally going to get to see The
Courtesans, but as usual I’m jumping ahead of myself.
The last time I’d seen them play was Saturday 21st
December 2015, which is 1 year 1 month and 28 days or 415 days, not that I’m
counting or anything… In that time lots of things have happen to both The
Courtesans and me.
Here are just a few of them.
A new logo. Can we have it on a set of button badges please, white
double cross on a black background and black double cross on a white
background, two badges for £1. Can we also have the logo printed onto a T Shirt
too please? Thanks.
I’d love to tell you where this photo was taken but I can’t, well I
could but I’d have to kill you, safe to say it has gone where no other
Courtesans CD has gone before or since.
Here it is at the entrance to the Bat Cave. The CD only lasted just
over a week on the road because it was getting damaged, but in that short time
it travelled just under 6,000 miles, which puts it somewhere over America or
South East Asia.
Just under 1,000 feet above sea level overlooking the British Jurassic
Coast… Jurassic Coast, Saff talking to Mark, there has to be a joke in there
somewhere…
Photographic proof (if it was needed) that Agnes is not of this world…
PHONE HOME!
My loony but very lovely daughter having a Courtesans/Hollywood sign,
red dragon, Star Wars moment. We had so much fun doing it, but it was also such
a right royal pain in the arse - we actually haven’t taken it apart, it’s under
her bed waiting for more additions this Easter… EEK!
Mark and myself at last year’s Downpour Festival, we really should have
phoned each other… Just for the record it was taken during Saxon’s set, they
played “Motorcycle Man” Mark turned around and said, “Well, that’s another box
ticked…”
As I drove my truck along the side of the runway of RAF Coltishall, I
was directed between the Control Tower and one of the main hangers, where on
the wall I saw a hand painted image of this. I tried to stop and take a photo
on my phone but I was threatened with being shot, so I thought better of it.
The Courtesans and Stampede Press UK did a deal and The Courtesans profile
went through the roof, I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if they
had joined forces two years ago.
Back to today, my alarm went off at 04.00 by 06.00 I was at work and by 16.00 and over 200 miles later I was leaving work and making my way home.
By 18.30 I was on the way to Cockfosters, oh yeah, I forgot
to mention, because The Courtesans had decided to go on stage at 10pm, I couldn’t
guarantee that I’d be able to make the
last train out of Liverpool Street Station, so the easiest solution was to
drive to Cockfosters, park the car, tube it in, do the gig and then tube it out
again on the newly started night tube, presuming I could get back to King’s
Cross - without walking, while hoping and praying that the car would still be
there when I got back to Cockfosters.
By 19.00 I was parked up, £2.00 until the morning. RESULT!
I rushed into the station grabbed a member of staff and
asked for the cheapest return to Angel, which is a very apt station to be
heading for to see The Courtesans, £11.60 said the nice man. WTF!? I very
calmly replied, “Do you have contactless or an Oyster Card?” asked the nice
man, “WTF!?” I said repeating myself.
I showed the nice man my bank cards, turns out I do have
contactless cards, “That’ll cost you £6.20” said the nice man. RESULT! Suddenly
everything seemed to be coming up me. No. Hold on. That’s not right is it?
20.00 arrived just as I did and together we walked around
the corner to the venue.
It was 15 minutes to show time. I walked in and bumped into
Howard who was working the door which was great for me because I had loads of
questions to ask him. I just battered him, poor bloke. Still, his answers
helped explain a few things and trigger off a few ideas for next time.
But why was Howard working the door anyway? How is he
supposed to manage when he’s busy working the door? Isn’t that the job of the
venue to provide staff for that kind of thing? While chatting to him he would disappear
to go and deal with whatever it was he needed to deal with, I almost offered my
services, but I thought better of it, I didn’t really want to tread on toes and
get ideas above my station. I was starting to get a bad vibe about this.
And then it happened… “I’m on the guest list” said the
voice. You’ve got to be kidding me, I thought to myself. Howard then asked,
“Which band?” Did he really just ask “Which band?” I continued to think to
myself. “[insert band name]” replied the voice. You’ve got to be kidding me,
you walk into the room, like you are stepping onto a yacht and calmly announce
that you’re on the guest list, to a support band, in a venue that holds 200-ish
people… WTF!? Go smell yourself. It’s a good job I hadn’t offered my services,
I’d have smacked them in the chops and told them to fuck off before throwing
them out onto the street… Guest List… MY ARSE!
It’s me isn’t it? It’s OK you can tell me.
The sound checks for the support bands were running late so
off to the bar I went and if it hadn’t been for that I wouldn’t have heard the
best one liner this year by a long way, which instantly made me think of Mark,
Nick and the Iron Maiden Football Thread Forum.
There was a guy in a Download T Shirt from a few years ago.
In walk half a dozen lads, one of which said very loudly, “Download, which year
is it?” to which his mate said, “Why didn’t you wear your shirt from last
year?” to which he replied, “It’s still wet…”
On the wall I noticed a large Courtesans poster, it looked
so good just hanging there, not one of those hand drawn ones either but a print
of the EP cover. Um… But my days of poster liberation have a long time past and
I thought it was best to leave it for someone else to liberate (see what I did
there…?).
20.50 and exactly 35 minutes late the Leashes start the
evening’s entertainment. I’ve seen the Leashes support The Courtesans twice
before and even though their noise isn’t for me, and it’s not, I do like their
attitude. It’s a four piece band, three of them trying look like complete
freaks while the drummer looks like Richard Carpenter (from The Carpenters)
which is really ironic because it was Karen Carpenter that was the drummer, in
fact she won drummer of the year in front of John Bonham (Led Zep) which is SO
funny…
The morale of the story is, on a stage full of freaks it’s
the “normal” one who stands out… and more power to his elbow for doing so.
It took 30 minutes to complete their set and by the end of it
they had won over at least a third of the room.
Back into the bar area to collect my thoughts, take notes,
people watch and hopefully find somewhere to sleep. Somewhere over my right
hand shoulder I heard a member of staff say something along the lines of,
taking down the posters at the end of the night. Did I hear that right? I
looked around without trying to make it too obvious and that’s when I noticed
the complete lack of posters and flyers. I hadn’t noticed how sterile the venue
was until then, well, I knew something wasn’t quite right, I just couldn’t put
my finger on it.
After earwigging more of the conversation I rushed back into
the main room, not a poster or flyer to be seen, well apart from the few
Courtesans posters, out the corner of my eye I saw a member of staff watching
me as I actively went hunting for the said missing posters and flyers, my
actions must have looked proper dodgy but I was on a mission and that bad vibe
from earlier puffed out its chest and started to shout look at me.
Thankfully the change over between the Leashes and The
Vultures was very quick. While that was going on I over heard people comment on
the late running of the gig, getting tubes and that poster. I promise you I
heard people talking about that poster and rightly so, it looked so good and as
I looked around, I noticed at least one of them was missing and I smiled to
myself.
Again The Courtesans have provided another stunning support
band, The Vultures, how do I describe The Vultures? I’m not sure I can, to be
honest I’m not sure how I would even try to begin to describe them. I guess
you’ll just have to Google them and if you do you won’t be sorry. I was
mesmerised (see what I did there…?). I’m going to check them out some more.
To the bass player, yes I saw you hit yourself in the face
with the microphone, it made me laugh and your reaction made me smile.
Brilliant stuff.
I’ve been up since 04.00 GET ON WITH IT!!! The change over
took forever. I heard people trying to guess the set list, wanting, wishing,
they start with that song… or this song… it made me smile… it was just like
being at a proper gig.
More chatter about getting the tube, I didn’t need to clock watch
too much, all I had to do was get back to Cockfosters, for me the problem was
getting from Angel back to King’s Cross because the last tube was at midnight
+30, and if all that wasn’t enough, another one of those posters was missing…
and I couldn’t pretend it wasn’t bothering me, because it was, once a collector
always a collector.
Finally and almost one hour late The Courtesans decide to
grace us with their presence do they not realise that I’ve been up since 04.00
and it’s been over a year since I last saw them play. BASTARDS!
By now I’m stage right and leaning on it. The lights go off,
total darkness, the crowd scream, the band walk on stage and all stand in
position, waiting to pounce, just like an animal at the top of the food chain eyeing
up its next victim, except Sinead, there is a massive space where Sinead should
be standing. Without panic, Agnes, Saff and Vikki look the crowd in the eye,
they stare at the crowd as the crowd stare at them, the intro tape rolls and
the band slide gracefully into Scream.
STOP! Shouted Sinead at the end of the song, all the way
through Scream the band members were pointing at the desk, wedges, monitors,
pointing up, pointing down, obviously it is going very wrong up there on that
stage. There was no pretending, you couldn’t hide it if you tried, the band
members shouted their instructions towards the desk at the back of the room and
my heart sank. Really? What is the point of a sound check if this happens, but
on a positive, I love it when this kind of stuff happens, you get to see just
how much the band want it and to be honest, I’ve seen bigger bands in bigger
venues have exactly the same problem.
Mindfunk, Walsall Junction 10, 25th July 1991,
springs to mind, when the band walked off stage for 20 minutes while the crew
fixed the problem, before coming back on and pinning everyone to the back of
the venue.
Status Quo, Hammersmith Odeon, 31st March 2016, which
was the last time I saw Rick play live… three sold out nights and it’s the
third night that it all went tits up tonto, I have the official bootleg of that
gig and it still makes me smile to hear the chaos going on around them. Go and
Google it… Brilliant stuff.
RIP Rick Parfitt
Eventually the band re-start the gig with Liberate, but it’s
not working and I’m loving it, just for the record, I was knelling in front of
Agnes taking photos and for me the sound was good, it wasn’t brilliant, but it
was good, I don’t know where the sound I was hearing was coming from, was there
a stage fill under the stage somewhere or just the PA and the angle I was
knelling at, but I wasn’t complaining about it.
The band were struggling so much with the sound there were
times it was painful to watch, but they didn’t give up and neither did the
audience. There was so much support, love, for the band, it was almost as if
the audience wanted it work more than the band did, it almost became a team
effort… Did I just write that? Sounds a bit over the top and pompous doesn’t
it, I just can’t think of another way to word it.
Talking of the audience, half a dozen of the Vegan Lesbian
Sinead Supports Club had turned up for the gig and had positioned themselves
stage centre and on the barrier, “We love you Sinead…” they screamed and
shouted, constantly… Yeah, Yeah, we get it, you know the singer in the band, it
was just like being back at the school disco and from my own very personal
point of view, it was all a bit cringe worthy. Unwittingly what they did was to
give Sinead a convenient hook the hang off, while all the chaos of trying to
sort the sound out was going on around her, Sinead had a focus, something and
someone to interact with and because of that our focus was shifted to their
interaction, it was a brilliant piece of stage craft, I have no idea if she did
it deliberately as an act or whether it was just a bit banter and bravado,
either way, what Sinead did was easily up there with anything I’ve seen David
Lee Roth or Blaze do when they were in full flow.
This was my eleventh Courtesans gig and its getting more
difficult to write something new or fresh about the band as a band or
individually, but there it was, just waiting to be put into print. Long live
the VLSSC…
Irony of ironies the sixth song in the set was a new song
“FUBAR” you couldn’t make it up. IT WAS STUNNING! It was an instead fix, I was
buzzing my tits off. Remember that Tamworth gig when I banged on about
Liberate? It was just like that all over again. It floored me. It was a good
job I was already knelling down.
Slowly and surly the sounds problems got sorted out and by
the time the gig was reaching the end I’m not sure anyone had even noticed,
well not consciously anyway. The Courtesans, being The Courtesans did exactly
what I’ve seen them do so many times before, which is simply rise to the
challenge. It’s almost as if they court the problems, desire it, need it, crave
it, something to battle and fight against.
I’ve missed seeing this band, I really have.
I’m not sure why I started to think we must be near the end
of the gig, I just did. By now the room was lapping up everything The Courtesans
were offering them, the band was ripping into each song on the set list as if
their lives depended on it. My knees were killing me, I’d been knelling down
for almost an hour and I really was in a lot of pain. I’m an old man, I can’t
be doing this shit anymore and I’ve been up since 04.00 – I’m not sure if I’ve
mentioned that…
Feel The Same, was
the fifth song to be played from the EP, well that’s done then, when they
advertised the gig as the Better Safe Than Sober EP launch they weren’t joking.
The Courtesans don’t really do normal and I’m not entirely
sure if anyone has taught them the rules to the game. For example, you can’t
end a gig with a new song, so they didn’t, they ended the gig with TWO new
songs… Have I learnt nothing from that Evesham gig on Halloween… HA! HA! HA!
Seriously, just how much balls that take, you just can’t do
that, so they did. You can’t end a gig with two completely new songs, so they
did. Had anyone in that room heard them before? I hadn’t, and I’m down with the
cool cats… init… bro… oh man, ya kno’ what I mean… Dog…
Between the two songs Sinead then went on the mother of all
rants, full on in your face rant, bloody hell fire, I wouldn’t want to be on
the receiving end of her temper, she scared the shit out of me. The Tamworth
Terror…
The more I think about it, the more it made sense to end the
gig with those two songs, especially the last one, it was actually very clever.
Nice one.
Don’t stay away too long.
As for those new songs, I think they will go down as marking
a change in the band, nothing to left of centre, noting to radical, just
another bit of evolution, and when I look at the set list it isn’t the songs that
are on it that I notice, it’s the songs that ARE NOT on it that I notice. The
band just gets better and better and if they can keep producing songs like that
then it’s going to a long fun filled ride.
After the gig I did my usual staying out of the way and watching.
The band did their usual straight to the merch stand to say hello and sign
things. I grabbed a set list, liberated one of the last posters still hanging,
continued to take notes before I forgot what I’d just witnessed and eventually
made my way to the merch to buy another set of CDs.
Two copies of the EP, second pressing, and another copy of
1917, second pressing, but this time it was for me, the only issue I have is
that when I played it, it was actually the first pressing, so I have a copy of
1917 with the second pressing cover and booklet but with the first pressing CD.
RESULT! All I have to do now get another copy of the second pressing of 1917
with the correct disc before they finally sell out. EEK!
I did say I was a collector.
Even though I’d been up since 04.00 and I’d had a really
rough day and I was tired and sober, I positively bounced up the road towards
the tube station, I was buzzing my tits off. I love seeing this band, I really
do.
My evening drew to an end very calmly. I got to Cockfosters
without any real drama, I thanked the tube driver as we passed on the platform.
My car was still there and Status Quo thundered out of the speakers on the way
home.
Once home I went through the photos I’d taken and started a
rough copy of what you’ve just read.
Somewhere after 05.00 I went to bed.
Roll on the rest of the tour…
To be continued…
Noggin xx
