Sacred Mother Tongue Tour Diary

By Darrin South – Vocals

Day 19 – Vivaz, Scarborough

We’re greeted in Scarborough by the promoter who also happens to be the owner.  This guy loves to talk and tells pretty much the complete history of music while we’re waiting around for the sound guy.  We hear all about Robert Palmer who is apparently the ‘local boy done good’ right through from day 1 of his career, to where he is now.  This dude’s brain is full of dates, line up changes, wives, ex-wives and album releases, so we enjoy a couple of drinks while he takes us down memory lane and tots up our knowledge of Scarborough’s music scene.  Don’t get me wrong, he’s a lovely bloke and seriously into his music; but I’m sure we all grew a beard while listening to his tales.

An opening joke about Andy’s vodka habit provokes the owner to return with the favoured local drink, a Ghostbuster.  It’s (s)lime green and consists of 4 vodka’s, blue WKD and Red Bull, which turns this half pint mixture an awesome shade of green.  Andy of course starts sinking these like it’s cherryade and I can see it’s gonna be another classic Andy James night of special-ness; but we’ll get to that. 

It’s a strange set up tonight in that they have an early rock disco booked for the local Scandinavian juveniles, this closes at 9 o’clock.  So from 7 – 9 the place is rammed, then worryingly, it empties out completely about half an hour before support band ‘The Fallen’ are due to go on.  Luckily, the doors re-open and a different set of punters start to wander in giving them a fighting chance, as they take the stage with their modern day epic metal, kinda like Avenged Sevenfold.  I’m happy as hell there’s finally a band on as the waiting around has been killing us.  We’ve been here for hours now, listening to cheesy disco tracks and watching an astonishing array of Swedish jail bait wearing next to fuck all.  In a bid to keep our minds clean and our thoughts professional, we’d resorted to getting slowly drunk at the bar, (some of us faster than others, mentioning no names of course AJ), and competing with each other in a ‘how many beer mats can you flip over and catch’ style game…  We know how to live the dream man.

As we go on there seems to be a number of people here now that have come to see us and we get a great response to most of our songs.  ‘Two Thousand Eight Hundred’ starts a bit of movement out front and gets them all in the mood before the best response of the night comes as we chug our way through ‘Numb’.

I seem to have attracted the attention of one guy as I’m wearing my favourite ‘The Haunted’ T-Shirt and he’s clearly their biggest fan, which he goes on to tell me all night long.  Its funny how wearing a particular shirt can make you best buddies with a complete stranger at first sight, (or enemies of course).

Anyway as we come off stage, the real club night kicks off till 4am and another new crowd of people turn up, absolutely cramming the place wall to wall with pissheads.  By this time we’re fitting in nicely with the clientele as we’re all feeling the effects and Andy is still sinking Ghostbusters like they’re going out of fashion.  There’s an awesome couple on the dancefloor giving us great viewing.  Try and picture this; the dude is having it large, swinging his arms around and doing his best (I’ve seen a rave on TV once) dance, right in front of his bird, getting in her face and everything.  But she’s just standing there looking at him with that ‘Oh my God you’re such a dick, I want to leave so we can have an argument’ face on her.  He’s oblivious to it and continues to ‘have it large’ right up in her grill for a good half an hour… classic.

Outside, Josh and I meet a total wreck-head stumbling up the street shouting his head off at the ol Bill, who are just ignoring him and driving away.  Then he gets refused entry to Vivaz much to his disappointment as he seems to know all the staff.  So he’s over talking to us in the best speech he can muster up at this point, and he invites us to punch him in the knob;  A strange proposal to say the least, and don’t think we weren’t contemplating it just to get rid of the twat, but we managed to restrain.  When asked why he wanted us to do it, he said ‘Go on, I deserve it… I’m being a right Cunt, punch me in the knob!’  Wish I had!!!

We end the night by leaving Andy, star-shaped on the pavement, before a few friendly lads help him up and he starts zig-zagging his way back to the van. We’ve all got hangovers before we even go to bed, but I reckon Andy is gonna win, as usual, after we decide upon his drinks count at 22, slimy green Ghostbusters. 

Day 20 – Legends, Newcastle

On the drive up to Newcastle we stop off for an hour at the beach in some small town on the east coast.  It’s a blinding day and we’re nursing our hangovers so this seems a good spot for us to sit and talk bollocks whilst throwing pebbles at other pebbles across the beach.  Lee always seems to be the winner at this game and his aim is considerably better than ours.  So an hour or so of this and the fun’s over and we’re off to Newcastle.

The first thing to mention is the birds in Newcastle; man their gorgeous and we can’t help but start to place the majority of them in the 9’s or even 10’s.  I don’t know what’s in the water up here but their skin is perfect, they’ve all got great legs and the natural beauty of these girls make Cheryl Cole seem like quite an average 6 or 7 around these parts! 

As we load in to the venue there’s some break dance display thing going on over the road where they’ve got a couple of drummers set up in the street, and a mat for the dancers.  It’s pretty cool and the acoustics of the street make the drums sound amazing.  Turns out that Lee knows one of the drummers, as he went to ACM with him… small world.

‘Beyond the Grave’ are support for tonight and seem like a really great bunch of lads.  They’re having some Bass player issue, and so have a stand in tonight in the form of Edinburgh’s finest, ‘Immanis’ guitarist ‘Ramage’. They rip the place up with their blend of ‘Iron Maiden’ meets ‘Killswitch Engage’, and everything is warmed up nicely for us to go on.

As our ‘Theme from Predator’ intro track plays out, there are loads of ‘Arnie’ quotes being bounced round the room and it’s apparent that this place shares our sense of humour, as we go on to continue this banter thoughout the gig.  We have a great show to a nice welcoming bunch of Geordies, and are further convinced that this is an awesome place to do a gig.  I’m not sure where Andy’s head is tonight as he decides to improvise a totally new solo to ‘The Suffering’ but nevertheless he pulls it off, and to be honest it still sounded killer to me.

After the show we’re doing the ‘meet and greet’ with some really cool people outside.  Top of the list has to be a chick called Gemma, who is not only stunning, (at least a 9), but also has a really nice nature and a great knack for conversation.  Josh and I stand and chat to her for ages before I’m informed of why Luke from ‘Beyond the Grave’ keeps looking over.  Gemma is ‘sort of’ seeing Luke (whatever that means), so I hope he didn’t get the hump with us trying to leer in with his bird lol. 

A close second being this Arab dude that says he’s a vocal coach and is attending law school.  He kinda looks like Howard from ‘KSE’ and he’s wearing these really freaky white contact lenses which totally fuck with my brain.  Seems he’s lived up here for a while now as he definitely has that Geordie twang in his accent.  We have a right old chat about bands and vocal techniques and the usual, musician bullshit before his missus drags him away for some rock star lovin’ no doubt.  I didn’t catch your name dude, but nice to meet you.  

Thanks to everyone at the show, special thanks to the ‘Beyond the Grave’ boys for being such good hosts in their home town gig, and for putting up the video from this night of comedy, on YouTube.

To follow…

Day 21 – Rios, ..Leeds..

Day 22 – Snooty Fox, ....Wakefield....