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| This is me rocking out at the reunion gig mentioned at the end of this blog. |
I’ve been thinking about writing this for a while and as there was recently a petition up on Facebook to get us to reform*, the time is probably right to do so. This is probably quite self-indulgent and I don’t expect anyone who wasn’t in the band to understand it all. My apologies for that but I want to get all of this out so I remember it when I go senile.
What’s in a name
Once upon a time, there was a band called Penfold. Penfold fucking rocked. However, it turns out that other bands had also named themselves after Dangermouse’s sidekick and so Penfold decided to change their name.
They emailed a bunch of their friends to ask them what their favourite from a bunch of ska-based pun names which included Rootin’ Tootin Skamoon was. Battleska Galactica was by far and away the most popular so that became their new moniker.
On the subject of names before I ramble on about something else, there was a band called Battleska from Cambridge. They got a little bit annoyed because they thought we had stolen their name and apparently (even though they never came anywhere near Folkestone and we never went anywhere near Cambirdge) people were turning up to up gigs thinking we were them. Having listened to some of their songs, I can only conclude that these people were glad they did so.
This didn’t stop Battleska from Cambridge from getting angrier and angrier over time and at one point posting a message on their message board with the title “Battleska Galactici-fuckoff” saying that they were going to go to the musicians union and then run home and tell their mummy who would tell on us to our mum.
An even more amusing name based story surrounds the publicity over our first final gig when Lewis gave an interview to the local paper who ask him if we could supply them with a photograph to accompany the story. He tells them to get one from the internet and I can only assume that the journalist Googled ‘Battleska Galactica’ and took the first photo that came up, as when the article came out the following week there was a picture of some people we’d never met before. After a little Googling ourselves, we discovered that it was actually a picture of another band called Battleska Galactica from Wellington, New Zealand.
We didn’t make a fuss about them having our name though because we’re not dicks.
Getting from A to B
One day a short while after Battleska Galactica became Battleska Galactica, I was round at Luke and Jason’s flat and it turned out that they didn’t have anyone to take their equipment to their gig that evening and Luke offered me some money and hugs to do so. I did so. This is how I became a roadie for the band.
I was the band’s roadie for several gigs, most notably when they played at the Tunbridge Wells Forum with some band who at the time were going to be the Next Big Thing. I wouldn’t know as I never got to see them as I was guarding my car at the time. The hydraulics that hold up my boot failed when it was opened and the boot slammed shut with the glass windscreen going right through a bass drum. The Next BigThing were quite nice about it but I did spend the entire Battleska set sat out by my car on my own listening to muffled versions of their songs.
A while after this, I was asked to join the band when they wanted to make the sound bigger. I think they probably felt guilty about the windscreen incident and also having to ask me to drive them everywhere. This way, they would surely feel less guilty.
Transportation was to continue to be an issue through all of the BSG years. There was at least one occassion when we had to call a gig off due to lack of transport. We even tried to hire a car for one. Me and Lewis got on the train to Ashford and went to a hire car place to find out that we couldn’t hire a car for some reason. So we just went to McDonalds and came home. That must be the most expensive Maccy D’s I’ve ever had.
We also had one gig that we played somewhere up Norfolk way when Kirsty’s mini broke down on the A-road some distance away from the venue. We ended up having to leave our brass section there and played the gig as a four-piece. I can’t remember if we were humming the brass lines or not but I definitely remember there being a discussion about doing so.
It was earlier on that journey that we invented inter-car charades, which was later to become a Battleska favourite. Without the invention of mobile phones the game would have never have been possible. Another BSG car game was our own unique version of I Spy. Essentially it was a drawn out version in silly voices where you got extremely excited and passionate whenever anyone offered a stupid or correct answer.
Other traffic related stories involve me managing to reverse Galactica One, our minibus into a car belong to the Filaments two days after acquiring it. Having to then play a gig they were at was very awkward. I did give them my number but never heard anything about having to pay for any repairs. If you are out there Ms Filaments, I’m still really sorry.
Galactica One could actually hold an infinite amount of equipment as long as you managed to arrange it in the right order. One evening after a gig in Birmingham, our touring buddies, Reason 69, asked us to take their equipment onto the next gig for them, which resulted in me and Paul spending about twenty minutes playing the minibus equivalent of Tetris.
Driving back home from gigs made me an expert at staying awake and driving late at night. On long journeys home, someone would inevitably shout “STEW! WAKE UP!” during a lull in conversation. I’d respond with “I’M AWAKE!” Comedy gold. They didn’t need to worry though, I’d be half full of adrenalin from the gig and half full of Red Bull and wouldn’t be able to sleep until an hour after getting home.
What goes on tour stays on tour
I mentioned the tour we were on with Reason 69. It was actually the only time we properly went on tour and in true Battleska style, it was pretty poorly organised. A couple of the gigs fell through but it was still one of the most enjoyable things we did.
This was when the infamous “Luke peeing in a Pringles can” story occurred. We were driving around Birmingham on a seemingly never ending ring road trying to find some vague indicator about where the venue was. This was in the days before mobile phones had internet facilities on them, and so Luke had to phone up a friend who had gone to uni in Birmingham and try to get them to direct us over the phone.
Somehow it worked but it took a while to do so and Luke whose bladder resembles a Lidl’s bin bag – able to hold a lot but not for very long – was so desperate that he needed to go while we were navigating around the ring road. With nowhere to stop, his only option was the recently emptied Pringles can. This would not be the last time he would urinate in a moving vehicle.
I had bought a book called something along the lines of “1001 days out for Children” and we used this to find us a campsite called the Billing Aquadrome. We used this as a base for our tour and where we had many fun adventures.
As well as fairground rides and a quiz, it was essentially heaven on earth.
We had a frisbee and we were playing Olympic Frisbee when it went into a lake where some ducks were doing whatever it is that ducks do. Unfortunately it was too far for any of us to reach in and get it. Quick as a flash, I shouted “Someone! Get me the bread!” and using nothing but the power of my ingenuity, I strategically threw the bread so that the ducks nudged the frisbee back to us. This was one of the prodest moments of my life and resulted in me earning the nickname ‘Duckman’.
Two other moments of the tour that stick in my mind are based around when we went into towns to find something to do. The first is when we went to a bowling alley and discovered that the computers were recording how fast you were throwing the ball as well as how many pins you’d hit. This then resulted in us all trying to throw the ball the fastest. Luke won because he is great at smashing things with the power of a thousand exploding suns.
The other was when we went to the swimming pool. I don’t swim so I can’t vouch for the validity of this but the others informed me that the water slide was amazingly named the Cosmic Fantasy Whizz Tube. This tickled us pink and I was quite annoyed when the others didn’t go for calling our final EP ‘Cosmic Fantasy Whizz Tunes’.
I hate camping, though and so I ended up sleeping in Galactica One. On the first night that we stayed anywhere, we were driving around for some time trying to find somewhere to camp (this was prior to our Aquadrome discovery) and when everyone was getting tired, we just decided to stop up by what appeared to be a deserted field. Most of the guys set up camp in the field only to discover in the morning that they had camped in a horse’s paddock.
Having been driving and sleeping in the bus, I was quite keen to get an early start back on our final day at the Aquadrome as we had a gig in Canterbury that evening. Everyone else seemed to be faffing in the way that was common of Battleska members and I was grumpy so I thought I’d try and help pack up the others tents while they were faffing. This resulted in me ending up breaking one of Kirsty’s tent poles which made the drive home a little uncomfortable.
Gigging in the rigging
Going to places where no-one has heard of you before is always an interesting experience. People are either not going to care and make you have a crappy time or they’re going to really get into what you’re doing and you’re going to have an amazing time. We were fortunate enough that we’d receive the latter reaction more often and I was always amazed by how much merchandise we would sell at gigs.
Often the others would say they couldn’t be bothered with getting the merch box out and hawking it around but being an accountant I would insist that we did so. I seem to remember that we actually sold out of t-shirts when we played at Rock’n’Rant – a music/comedy mash up – when we were expecting to sell nothing. That was easily one of the most polite crowds we ever played for.
Some gigs are obviously much more memorable than others. A couple of my favourites are when we played in a field in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. We’d played earlier that evening at the Gulbenkian in Canterbury and all made the journey to this random location where some kid had booked us to play at a festival in a field that his parents own for his birthday or something.
We were due for quite a late stage time but by the time we eventually took the stage – it was delayed as everything was running late – it was probably around 2am and the entire crowd were entranced. Luke got them to all sit down at the start of My Brother Thom whilst the drums started the intro and getting everyone to jump up when the instruments kicked in.
This was also the gig when I did the most dickish rock star thing I’ve ever done. We were only about half the way into our set when the kid who was organising it told us we had one more song. This happened several times but the fact that we’d made a big trek to get there, had our stage time repeatedly pushed back and the crowd lapping up everything we did made me a bit annoyed about it.
So I grabbed the mic or got Luke to announce (I forget which in my old age) that we had been told we could only play one more song and asked them whether they wanted one more or two more. As they were loving it all, the response was that they wanted two and so we over-ran but I don’t think the organiser was actually too annoyed by this fortunately.
This contrasts sharply with other gigs when we pretty much played to no-one except the soundman and our other halves. They could be quite demoralising. The worst was at the Tap’n’Tin when we played with a local band but were on after them. Their entire crowd left when they finished and left us in a deserted room.
Some of our songs had the odd rude word in them and when we’d get booked to play more family type shows – church fetes, open air gigs at the ampitheatre and the like – Luke and Lewis would often be singing along and realise what they were about to sing and substitute it with a “Woo!”
There were other things which occurred on a more regular basis which generally just served to make them funnier. Kirsty had a trumpet solo for the intro to Festa di Carne part 2. It was pretty much guaranteed that if you could catch her attention in any way that she would burst out laughing, so we used to try to invent more and more amusing ways of putting her off.
One common feature of the gigs when Motown was in the band was that he would either play faster or slower depending on which specific intoxicating substance he’d imbibed. It made it interesting for the rest of the band to try to keep pace.
Motown’s final gig was at Stripes but either the promoter or manager of the bar got annoyed that we had overrun and literally cut the power. A bit annoyed as it was a special moment, someone in the crowd shouted ‘Drum Solo’ which resulted in Motown playing for what could have been 10 seconds or 10 minutes whilst everyone bowed down.
Another Stripes moment I’ve just remembered (this is getting quite ramble-y as I think of more things to add) was the day that Luke handed in his final piece of uni work. He was more drunk than usual before we took to the stage. The floor at Stripes was always either sticky or slippy and Luke managed to fall over a significant number of times (I couldn’t tell you how many as I was busy rocking out), actually playing a large amount of the gig lying on his back.
Take 37
Gigging – when it went well – was the most enjoyable thing about playing in a band, but I also enjoyed the more creative side of things, in writing and recording. It’s always great when you can come up with that one little bit which makes the whole song click.
Many of our songs had in jokes or references that no common listener would be likely to get. This always made it feel a bit more personal and a bit more special. For example, My Brother Thom was named as such because of the fact that I picked my brother’s middle name when he was born. He was named after Thomas the Tank Engine because I was a cool kid.
My brother was to play a part in the band. He managed to get a writing credit on Songs From The Crypt. We were sat around at work one day when we used to work together and I showed him the lyrics to Skank Away Your Heartache that I was working on at the time. Over the course of the working afternoon when we were slacking off, we completed the lyrics together. Dan can take credit for the invention of the word ‘poonfest’ which I’m sure will be in the Oxford English Dictionary one day soon. Unbenownst to me until now, Poonfest is actually a national holiday in Canada.
There is a line in All About The Mary Celeste about ‘Captain Ben’. My housemate Ben thought this was about him but it was actually a reference to Captain Benjamin Briggs of the Mary Celeste. However, when the song evolved to have a more political meaning, it could be said that it then morphed into in some way. It was more fun to think we were singing about him anyway.
These little things are the bits of songs that I like most. Not just our songs, but any songs. Ben Folds is great at really personalising songs and taking them from a regular song to something which seems to have a bit more meaning because it is more personal. Anyway, I digress.
All About The Mary Celeste and Vito were originally going to be part of a concept album which the rest of the band poo-pooed. It would have been amazing though, I think. How many ska bands have done concept albums? From a quick Google it would seem to be about 3 or four. It was going to be about a guy in a mental home with multiple personalities and all of the songs would reference each other. It would have been brilliant but unfortunately no-one shared my vision.
Recording was always an interesting experience. I love how stuff comes together when you layer it over the top of other stuff but I am also not the best musician and so getting something down can be quite a long and frustrating experience. I remember one time wishing the ground would literally swallow me up as I had played the same simple riff wrong about 10 times and everyone else was getting frustrated with me.
I wasn’t the only one to mess up. On the album version of Sexual Walking, we noticed that Luke had played the middle 8 poorly and as the album was essentially recorded live, it wasn’t possible for us to redo it. The name Sexual Walking comes from the wrestling computer game Smackdown where it is the name of one of the taunts. We managed to accidentally find a piece of wrestling commentary that was the exact same length as the middle 8 and layered it over the top to hide the mistake.
On at least two occassions I had to either call in sick or turn up late for work in order for us to complete some recording or mixing. I felt a little bit bad about it at the time but I obviously didn’t care too much as it didn’t weigh on my mind for too long. Perhaps I felt I had to do it to make up for all the time I wasted playing things badly.
Talking of wasting time, the intro to Skank Away Your Heartache features Lewis blowing on some big jars that we’d filled with water. Not in itself a waste of time, but he did spend 15 minutes of paid recording time tuning the bottles by adding and pouring out the minutest bits of water until he got the note he was after.
Getting our equipment to recording sessions was often a tricky task. At the time, I was the only driver in the band and just had a Rover Metro. Our greatest accomplishment was managing to fit four people, a drumkit, a bass, two guitars and a bunch of leads into it in one time. It probably wasn’t very comfortable but as I was driving, I wasn’t affected by this.
I’m proud of the music we produced. Even Household Name Records said we were “cool.” Although they did point out that they thought we had ripped off Lightyear. On listening to it closely, it did appear as if we had done so. For once, this was unintentional though.
When we posted the copy of Will Skank For Cash to various labels, Luke would kiss every envelope and say/wish “10 million dollars!” with each one. Unfortunately it never came true. Sometimes I felt that maybe we could have made it to a higher level, but it was never to be for various reasons.
You guys are a joy to watch
One of my favourite things about being in a band was the fact that you get to see other bands for free and getting to meet and hang out with them. We met some awesome people in other bands this way. Far too many to list fully, but it was always good to find out that musicians you respected were also lovely people.
There are two bands I do want to mention, though. The first is Army of Juan who later changed their name to Let Our Enemies Beware. We played them in a battle of the bands at the Beacon Court. They were a three piece with 2 guitarists and a drummer and they blew me and Paul away. Their main guitarist ended up breaking his guitar in two. We ended up beating them and felt bad about it because they were so incredible. Chatting to the guitarist afterwards he was one of the nicest guys ever and instead of being all rock’n’roll about having broken his guitar he was actually a bit sad about not being able to use it again which amused me.
The second is Lightyear. These guys were heroes to us and we supported them at the Concorde 2 in Brighton. I had no guitar tuner so I shyly went up to Nelb to ask if I could borrow his which he very graciously lent me. After the gig Ian who was clearly quite drunk by that point was insistent on telling us that he enjoyed our set which was really nice to hear.
At the same time though you would get booked to play with some horrid and rubbish bands. The rubbish bands, I didn’t really have any problem with. They were generally young kids learning how to be musicians and I’m sure that some of my early gigs weren’t any better.
I never understood why some bands would be dicks to other bands, though. You have to deal with each other on a regular basis, so why try to make problems for yourself? Some promoters were the same which made even less sense as you rely on the bands for what you do.
Another battle of the bands at the Beacon Court, we played against a band who were basically just ripping off Rage Against the Machine. They were obviously annoyed about losing as the next time we went to the venue, one of the bar staff showed us that they’d had to put a poster up in the toilets to cover where the band we beat had carved the c-word into the wall.
I’m gonna be a big big star
Whilst I played guitar, there were occassions when I would have to fill in on bass. The most notable of these was when we were playing at the Purple Turtle in London and despite setting off about 2 days before he had to be there, Jim managed to be late for the gig. So late in fact that he didn’t turn up until the final song of the set. I had to persuade the bassist from the band before us to lend me his bass. He was very precious about it and it took some time. Being left handed, I then had to play it upside down and make up the basslines as we went along. Fortunately we picked our simplest songs but it was still not an experience I would recommend.
Jim wasn’t the only one to turn up after our start time. Pierre once arrived 5 minutes after our stage time when we were supporting Fandangle at their album launch show (which turned out not to be their album launch show as the CDs weren’t ready) in Islington. We were preparing to somehow work out how to play an acoustic-style set on electric guitars when finally he showed.
These sorts of occurrences may have had some bearing on why we didn’t end up with 10 million dollars.
Band rehearsals could sometimes be quite taxing. We were one of the laziest bands that has ever existed. And sometimes one of the grumpiest. We would turn up on a Tuesday and run through our 30 minute set once. We’d then have a break and then we’d have a discussion about whether we needed to rehearse any further because we all knew the set anyway. This may also have had an affect on why we didn’t make it any further than we did.
We did become famous enough to get a tab for Will Skank For Cash on several websites. However, it is inaccurate, so I e-mailed some of these sites offering the correct version but none of them seemed to care.
There is nothing quite like having people sing your songs back to you and playing a hometown show was always a bit special. Our final gig was special for that reason but will always remain in my mind as one of the worst I’ve ever played as pretty much everything that could go wrong with my equipment did go wrong. My favourite bit was when Paul and Motown who had both left the band got back up on stage and shouted the chorus to Cheer Up Linkin Park into a mic. It provided a nice ‘full circle’ kind of moment.
Reunion
I got a text message one day after we’d split up which asked if we’d like to support the Voodoo Glow Skulls. The Voodoos were a band that had inspired a few members of our band and we decided to reform to play the show.
We had a couple of rehearsals and I managed to persuade Trev to give me and a few other members of the band a lift to the gig in the Kingskin van. This resulted in me and Lewis finding some alcoholic cola shots which were a pound each which we had a significant number of before the barman pointed out that we could buy the bottle for around £15. Which I did and distributed it amongst the band and those who had come to see us.
I have never been so drunk for a gig but it was such amazing fun. For once when I played the solo to Cheer Up Linkin Park wrong it was due to being unable to remember how to play a guitar rather than to being unable to remember how to play the song.
As for the prospect of another reuninon show? Well, it’s looking like a possibility. Most of the band are keen to do it but one of the problems we had before was our poor organisational skills so we’ll have to wait and see. Watch this space.
* The petition had a 5 week limit on it which was a complete impossibility due to Luke being on honeymoon for three weeks over this period and for some reason it was taken down only about a week after the band was made aware of it.