Brain Tales (#2 in a series.)

So, having recorded some crappy little tunes the idea of playing live was muted to promote the stuff. Martin obviously couldn't sing and drum at the same time so we decided to put all the drums on backing tape along with a few effects and just have Bobby on guitar and me on bass. This meant that we could travel light, if we hired bass amps at the venue we only had to carry two guitars, a small guitar amp and a tape player. So we did, often travelling  in a small car or even by buss and train. Our tour of Holland started with us lugging gear onto a ferry then into a hire car at the other end, my guitar on the roof rack!!

Our first gig was at the John Bull in Chiswick. A small pub to which we invited all our mates. The set ended with a banana fight with the crowd and for weeks afterwards, the pub stank of banana pulp which was stuck to the carpet and the light fittings. Throwing stuff into the crowd was regular Brian Brain activity which began with bananas and ended up with all sorts of shit from inflatable bunny rabbits to ping pong balls a and the like. At one gig in the East end of London (The Bridge house), we nearly got a kicking from a load of skinheads, Cockney Reject fans, who had been pelted with bananas. We only escaped certain pulverisation by running  off while they were beating some other poor sods up! Middlesbrough was just as bad, where we got bottled offstage by marauding hordes of hooligans and I got hit in the neck by a piece of metal thrown from the crowd. We ran off stage under raining beer glasses to find a girl squatting on the floor of the dressing room taking a piss in the middle of the carpet, like a dog......Martin slept with her later.

And so it went on, playing in the UK was taking our lives into our hands. Most of the time it was Martin who bore the brunt of the violence on stage as it was he who was always winding people up by staggering into the audience pissed as a fart. At one gig, even the sound engineer ran on stage and gave him a smack because he was using the microphone to deliberately get feedback from the monitors. I've never seen that happen ever...being beaten up by your own road crew while on stage...priceless. The pay was bad, the van we had was freezing cold, the audiences were by and large not there. We had a couple of decent gigs along the way, we supported Delta 5 a couple of times which was fun, UK subs was a good crowd and the Sci-Fi festival at Leeds was OK. But mostly, nobody knew quite what to make of this strange trio in the UK, so we thought it might be better to try America!!