I walked into the theatre for the sound check. The lights were dimmed and the stage was empty. I could hear the chattering of the people as we filtered in. There was no pushing or shoving. I looked around and what was a large theatre from the outside only contained about 200 seats on the inside. This seemed very odd indeed. Suddenly there was mayhem. There were 3000 people in the queue outside and they were all club members with premium tickets. All were contractually promised entry!

Prince then walked out onto the stage dressed in jeans, trainers and a torn T-shirt 5 sizes too big for him. He was unshaven and had the aroma of stale bread. The stage he walked out onto was massive however. In fact it was so massive Tiger Woods would often come there to practice his driving abilities (he could do one circuit in under 3 minutes in his banana-yellow Ferrari!). I raised my hand, a common attention-getter, to offer Prince a suggestion.
“What can I do for ya?” He asked me whilst wiping the dribble from his chin.
“Why don’t we all stand on the stage and you perform out here amongst the seats?” I responded. I could tell by the look in his one good eye that I had hit him with a most gratifying solution to his over-booking problem.

Whilst Prince pondured the intricacies of such an exchange of roles over a short sharp shot of Tequila, the NPG came onto the gargantuan stage to check the sound.

A large woman in granny-knitted cardigan, thick black rimmed glasses and a hairnet sat at the drums. A kid, no older than six or seven, with a broken leg and a pair of crutches so long they cleared his head by a good four inches, picked up the bass. They began to tap and strum as they tuned and mixed the sound.

Meanwhile people are flooding in through the back doors of the 200 seater theatre and walking up onto the preposterously sized stage where they proceeded to move to the back. All the time Prince is directing proceedings. A cymbal crashes to the floor. Oops, Granny G forgot to tighten the nut. She groans and puffs as she contorts her back to the bent position to pick up the offending items. Kiddy Legless breaks his first string. Twang! Prince gets his groove on, revealing his ‘builders crack’.

The NPG duo are then joined by a dog the size of a horse. Skipper the Ripper by name, shit in the aisle by nature. Skipper barks in time to the rhythm of the bass. The drums are still being put together again by the shaking appendages of Badass Granny G.
“Damn!” Prince exclaims, “this is one tight motha-fuckin’ band y’all!”.

I laugh.

So, now we are all set. The crowd is assembled on the stage and Prince is standing on the seat backs of row ‘C’, quite a balancing act considering his Tequila-laced brain. Granny G, finally with a tightly fitted drum kit, is in the first aisle sitting poised for the first number. Kiddy Legless is in the other aisle, minus his crutches and a larger-than-him guitar around his neck, hopping tentatively for balance. Skipper is pissing against seat 24 in row ‘D’.

All are amused.

The lights go down. Smoke bellows out onto the stage and we are all engulfed in a haze of white mist. Oh dear I thought. A bell rings. Ah, this must be the opening number! Starfish and Coffee no less! The crowd goes wild. We can see nothing, but we can sure hear that alarm bell ring……

……wait a minute, where is the music. Where is the piano intro? The drum? The bass? The bark? Nowhere to be heard. But the bell continues to ring.

Shit I think to myself. And I was having so much fun…… I casually rolled over, reached for my clock and realised that it was time to get up. I switched off the alarm and dozed for about ten minutes as I listened to a very distant barking of a dog and a high pitched falsetto sing the immortal lines “Down Skipper Down. A-ooo-A!”.

ONLY 8 MORE DAYS TO GO!!!

inspired...

Jon stop sleeping and dreaming the days away and deal with it!!!

(very funny by the way )