Exploits of the Frictionless Man as it wanders around the world like some kind of slippery hydra. Music, words and pictures a speciality.

Monday, May 16, 2005

Quick, start juggling before it is too late!

Gig went well on Wednesday, thank you everyone who turned up and thanks to our Swansea College boys for doing a sterling job. No thanks to the manager of the Monkey Cafe on the night who could do with a bit of humility and manners. It is one thing to ask a drummer to be quiet but quite another to follow it up with "the grown-ups are trying to talk."

What can you say to that? It seems that the aging hippy sect like nothing better than to bash on about the virtues of peace and love and tolerance whilst blithely ignoring what anyone else has to say. The number of times I have sat with some half-stoned soused old crusty whilst he "enlightens" me is too damn high. Maybe the years of listening to the sound of their own voice whilst they pontificate about the ills of the world and the Man has stunted their ability to give a damn about anyone else.

On to other subject matter now that I have vented some spleen. The CD is nearly done! We will hopefully have some for sale at the next gig on the 11th of June, I will keep you informed. Because I like you and I would not want you to feel that you were not kept in the loop.

Licking Chocolate Jesus are confirmed for the night, watch this space for details of who else we will be getting to muck in. If anyone knows a contortionist who would work for free drop me a line at frictionlessman@yahoo.co.uk because it does not have to be all music. The same goes for anyone who knows any exotic dancers, magicians or fire breathers. Let me know.

Clams.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Stuart,

Did you play downstairs in Monkey?

That happened to OKRA Mk1 (back in 2000 - before I joined), but they're really inconsistent with their volume control because I've seen punk bands play on a sunday before and they've been really loud. As is the music that the DJs play too!

The best way to get around it is to play upstairs but if they told you to play quieter up there, then thats just beyond belief.

Anyways, look forward to hearing your cd.

Mr Frictionless said...

It was in the sound check of all things! Manager man wanders in and decides to go into conference with the technician from Swansea College about the lights. We were still making a noise, checking out the sound when he decided to make his presence felt.

Fine, ask for quiet, not a problem, but a little manners never hurt. And the lack of respect that he showed to everyone in the room, the students who had worked really hard, my band and myself was hard to swallow.

Still, it always depends whether they've had their medication for the day anyway.

Rhys Hughes said...

That's nothing. Try being a writer! A publisher wandered into my house while I was working on my latest novel and told me to SHUT IT!

Mr Frictionless said...

I worked in an undertakers that catered for overweight gentlemen, and one day whilst trying to force a particularly large chunk of dead flesh into the casket the uber-undertaker came in and told me to PACK IT IN!

Rhys Hughes said...

I once worked in a laundry. One day I was loading dirty clothes into a washing machine and a sock fell on the floor.

I didn't notice and was about to close the washing machine door, when the owner of the establishment pointed at the item in question and told me to PUT A SOCK IN IT!

Mr Frictionless said...

Last Thursday I bought a new pair of denim slacks.

When I put them on I realised that they did not have a zip on the fly. I actually had to BUTTON IT!

Rhys Hughes said...

Many years ago I was a North Korean soldier patrolling the border between North and South Korea. My job was to set mantraps all along the frontier. Unfortunately our own soldiers kept getting caught in them, so it was decided to make them all safe. I accidentally overlooked one and was ordered by my superior officer to SHUT YOUR TRAP!

My next job after that was as an architect. I had to simplify the designs of other architects. When it came to ornamentation on the facades of buildings I was told to LEAVE IT OUT!

Mr Frictionless said...

I once had a job delivering motor vehicle spare parts, and one day a customer who lived half way up Ben Nevis called me. His car was overheating and he needed a new fan belt, so he asked me to bring a new BELT UP!

But when I got to the house there was a high wall and an imposing iron gate all the way around it. I spoke to him via the conveniently placed inter-com system and he instructed me to push it through the letterbox. It was a tight fit and I really had to SHOVE IT!

Rhys Hughes said...

A hundred years or so in the future I will have a job in a factory making gigantic plasters for wounded planets. If a planet like Jupiter gets a nasty looking rent in its atmosphere I'll have to fly off and stick it up with one of my plasters.

For example, a call might come in like this:

Job descritpion: Stick it up
Location: Saturn

My worst job in this respect will be when I have to:
STICK IT UP
URANUS.

Anonymous said...

I remember my father once asking me to BE QUIET. Oh...wait a minute. That's neither pun nor wordplay, just a tawdry little episode. Damn.

Mr Frictionless said...

It was twelve years ago, I think. Or it could be next week, one of the three anyway. I was supposed to be finding out how much it would cost me to get to Eccles to distribute these pamphlets that had come my way. These pamphlets were taking up space under the stairs, and I needed to put some handbills there, so the pamphlets needed to go.

As I stood in line to talk to the young lady at the information desk at the coach company I noticed a man with an accordion staring in the window. He wore black sunglasses, and I was unsure what he was looking at, but as I turned to see him better he immediately moved away, across the street and round the corner. I thought nothing more of it.

Leaving the building, A4 printed sheet of coach times safely stowed in my left inside pocket, I decided, on a whim, to see where the accordionist had gone, so I took his route across the road and around the corner, following the sound of accordion rendered power ballads. Suddenly the notes went awry and a great shrieking arose. Hastening along I came upon the mangled remains of the accordionist, his glasses broken in two to reveal eyeless sockets, and his accordion punctured beyond repair. His throat had been torn out, and leading from the pool of blood that gathered around him I could make out prints that looked like long fingered hands.

Monkeys?

I backed away, realising that my coach was due to leave sooner than this mess could be explained. And I am not a man who likes to be recorded as being in the vicinity, as a rule. I turned on my heel and hurried away. A pang of conscience was easily salved as I called to a passing faith healer:

"Vampire monkeys have attacked a blind accordionist!" I shouted, whilst pointing.

"At last! A challenge!" he replied and skipped away, as merry and gay as a spring lamb.

Hours later on the coach we drove through foreboding forests of tall pine. On board the Dutch Nude Cart-wheeling team were keeping supple by practicing in the aisle. This led to a very amusing incident when the refreshment trolley did its run. But rather than focus on the spectacle of melting chocolate bars, diet cola and warm prawn sandwiches gushing and smearing across pert naked flesh, dripping into cart wheeling crevices, slopping across Dutch buttocks and breasts, pectorals, thighs and loins, matting pubic hair and making the carpet pretty treacherous, I was fixated on the enormous pinecones that the trees flashing past sported. If a swarm of killer bees were to knock one off it could lead to an avalanche of pinecones that would spell disaster for the coach. This was a very real fear for me.

On reaching Eccles I took up position on the corner of Tootle Drive and Whitby Avenue, and took to distributing my pamphlets. A wizened crone tottered up to me on feet made of tin. She took to haranguing me:

"What can your pamphlet possibly do for me? I have two feet made of tin!"

"Why, old crone, it can make your life as fulfilling and exciting as my own!"

"CAN IT?"