Review: What happened last Friday 13th
Written by: David Harrison
I am four pints and in, and Todd are delivering great Melvinseque riff laden performance which ranty screamy lyrics from an out of control fella that gets down off the stage and joins the audience. Breaking the fourth wall of a gig he is throwing his preppy frame into the audience. People move back and i find myself at the front. He hurls himself about at the crowd, attempting to bring people down his long microphone lead caught underfoot. About three metres from me a bundle of people are on the floor. Reports say there is broken glasses and people being hit by microphones. He bashes really hard into me and being a big fella that is used to the mosh I stay upright.
It seems like that isn’t enough for our Singer of Todd who is actively attacking the audience. I don’t know what happens next but I wake up in the dressing room with him apologising to me profusely. According to the Drowned in Sound message boards It seems in the melee he had clothes-lined me and then in turned jumped down like the missing scene from the Wrestler, this either knocked me out or concussed me so I can’t remember it.
I wake in the dressing room I can’t see shit, did he brain me properly? My arm hurts like hell, everyone is fussing. A short guy in glasses is having a go at me for making a fuss and I demand he make me a roll up. Looking over at my arm I realise that.
A) My nice new expensive glasses have had a lens knocked out
b) My arm is hanging horribly wrong.
Assuming it wrongly it must be dislocated I call up the infamous Dr Tom. ‘Dr Tom, I think my arm is dislocated what should I do’. I enrol the whining short guy to my home-made surgery
‘You ready this is going to hurt’ Dr Tom says through the phone.
‘Get your helper to pull the arm down as far as it will go, then out and in theory it should pop back in’
Yank, scream, ouch, it flops back down in the same place, with only an increased pain.
‘Any other tips’ I ask Dr Tom on the end of the phone
‘Call an ambulance’
In the background Todd are still playing albeit without the Lead Singer who is getting increasingly agitated by the damage he has created. I tell him to go out on stage and don’t worry about me… ‘Finish the Set’ I demand, he refuses.
‘ I feel sick’ Todd’s singer says, whether it is because he is drunk or upset by the big hairy sasquatch screaming in pain that he caused. I am finding looking through one clean lens terribly difficult I shut my right eye.
‘Give me a roll up’ I demand somewhat unfairly from the short guy through my one eye.
Short guy gives me a roll up and Todd’s singer pukes over the side of the chair. The band carry on playing to an Audience that is slightly relieved that the speaker stack didn’t fall on their head.
At this point the manager of the venue and some security pile in the door. Put out those cigarettes… Oh yeah this 2009 smoking is forbid in venues. We put them out and I ask them to send somebody to look for my glasses lens and they ask whether I will need an ambulance, which they kindly order. They comment on the glass covered floor, It seems Todd’s Singer caused an awful lot of smashed pints as well, and almost knocked over a speaker stack.
Todd’s singer stops puking.
The big burly security guard sits me outside, and the preppy Todd character sits down and starts talking to me. I say this would be a perfect time for an interview, so start asking him questions about how why what and when, none of which the answers I can remember but took my mind off my limp and painful arm, he talks about himself a bit. I remember why I am rubbish interviewer, I couldn’t ever care less about what an artist has to say about their outlook on life. I just often like their guitar licks.
A hero barman turns up with my glasses lens and I enrol some random blonde lady that is passing by to pop them back in. Sitting in the back of the Ambulance alone, I realised it was Friday 13th. The ambulance driver continues to go along the idea of that my arm is dislocated, so queue another 20 minutes of trying to pop back in the unpoppable. Lordy this hurts, but what can you do but laugh, it helps to be on laughing gas at the time.
A month on and it is Friday 13th again. I am about to leave the house, enrolled into a boys night out to to go see The Watchman. It is weeks on and I am anything but laughing, Todd’s lead Singer has caused a lot of pain for his little show and I haven’t heard site nor hair of him or the band. People tell me I should pay attention to those TV ads that say ‘Had an Accident that wasn’t your fault’.
That same week a friend got hit by a HGV and I was in too much pain to make the trip to her funeral, I have since had a pretty invasive operation, been tanked up on morphine codine for weeks. Sometimes I wake feeling the skin around my 15 skin staples tightening in, feels like 15 little blades slicing me up. It is bloody weeks of torture, now afraid of infection I am on antibiotics combined with the painkillers. Suppose I have lost weight, I know there are a lot worse injuries and death out there and I count myself lucky, I really do. But can’t help wonder why I have been given this daily burden for a bands live performance.
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Update:
Friday 13th March - 2009
In Gabrieles warf on the Southbank meeting a bunch of old mates to go watch the Watchmen mid telling the story of how it happened a skinny fella comes up to me and asks me about the shoulder.
London is a big city and I haven’t been out in it at all in the last month. There are 10 million odd people in the city. And this skinny fella turns out to be Todd’s lead singer Laurence.
In fact I happen to be standing next to a table of the band Todd!? Not only is the first time I have been out of the house past 9pm, it is also exactly another Friday 13th later.
All a bit twilight zone… The guy doesn’t even live in London.
He tells me been trying to get in touch apologises a lot. Explain his theatrics were nervousness and drunkeness around his first performance rather then any breaking of boundaries of violence for the act.
The leader of the band (aka the man with biggest beard) shudders everytime any kind of sue word is mentioned and is probably very glad he isn’t back in the states.
They mention that their bass player isn’t well enough for a gig they have just canceled and I offer them to play the position, thinking it would be an amusing irony.
Then spent 3 hours watching the mind numbingly boring Watchmen.
HA! AMAZING SCENES.
Still think you should sue.