cistpop;l'

GonzoTech

1.
Final Fizz .
THE END OF EVERYTHING .


The scene at the time wasn’t typical of a couple of relatively fresh-faced record business executives. A dangerously long, vacuous echo boomed back at me when I banged on the side of the shipping container. ‘That’s it.’ I said dryly. ‘We’re out of champagne’ I followed this up with  surprisingly long fizzy burp.

The end of the booze.  Meant the end of everything. The end of the money. The end of the party. The end of the dream. There was nothing left apart from two bottles of champage and an empty trailer that was once home to 200 cases of top qulity champagne.

The reality of the situation was just about to hit: a mountain of unpaid loans, spent credit card advances, used hire purchases, full store cards, maxed-out home loans, and the cash advances available from the ATM would have to wait.

I’ll have one last peek. I exclaimed nearly tripping on the step of the trailer. I fumlbed with my mobile phone to find the light function in order to track down that last valuable case. I must have hit the wrong button my mistake as I was greeted with short bursts white LED light into the otherwise empty trailer. The walk down to back of the was surprisingly long. A long, dark, vague, and surrel journey to the bottom of the soul.
The walls were white, which I hadn’t noticed previously.The short blasts of light lit the trailer like a the stage in night club. A disctotecque devoid of music. Devoid of People. Devoid of soul. It was the saddest disco on earth. One pissed bloke wrestling with the dark and a broken torech trying to get his hands on the final fizz or any element of soul. Just me, semi-pissed, quizering in the dark with a phone flashing throught my pocket as I carried the case back to daylight.

DAH NAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I said, dangling my findings. Two bottes were left. ‘The last two bottles.’







We’d pissed a lot ‘up the wall‘. Expensive recording studios, more expensive videos, even more expensive parties, and most expensive of all expensive women. Massage girls, escorts, room attendants, shoufers. Call them what you will.

Outsdie, was only a maginally better place. But We did have booz. Ok, it wasn’t the best chapmang in the world. 50 Cent would well send this stuff back at LA, beachside restaurants, but it was good enough for us. And all the other bloodsuckers that clinged to the studio like an unused liferaft while the Titanic sank beside it. Little did they know that we going going down faster than the titanic. We’d be hitting rock-bottom before the captain had rang out his final whistel.


 Amsterdam was the perfect place to extract every eurocent you own. And all the thousands that you don’t. I din’t have enough to get a tram ride home. But I was determinded not to let reality ruin my day. Not this day.


I dropped the case, upsetting the champain, I threw one at Dan and opened the second one. We opened them in unioson with our teeth like a carefully choreographed music video. I had shaken the bottle a few times for good measure, so when it decorked, not only deed it piss champag all over me, it also felt like a shotgun had gone off in my mouth. I thought I broken my jaw for a second. At least a few teeth. I could feel the tastes of blood on my tonge, but that was#bt going to stop me enjoying this finaL moment. Anything that followed, no matter how extraordinary in nature was surely couldn’t compete with the cosumption of the 2000th bottle of champs. That trailer had only been delivered 5 monthrs prior.

Dan poured part of his bottle over me, instantly turning me into a grand prix winner. We were the biggest losers in the history of pop music.

 YEAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I screamed out loud in the shower of bubbles. That stuff felt better than radox. Throughing the empty bottle to my side and chugging from the next while whileopening the second from last one, I drank the fountain of rich creamy champagn until only the dregs were left. I had got into the habbit of leaving the bottom of champag bottles with about three centimertres of bubbly left at the bottom. People thought I was being nice. I am being nice. That shit’s expensive. But I’m not going to drink it. Lot that bit at the bottle. Sounds ridiculous I know. Pig headed. Arrogant. But I was being nice.

Take 3 centimrrtres from a bottle of champs, times it by a truck load and you have a few cases of the stuff. That was the barameter of the lifesteye we were leading. It’s not surprising, with hindsight that party was over.
The hangover was only just about to begin. The debt collectors were at the door. The Ferrari was on the ticket. The rented gear had to be returned. We’d had it all. We’d spent it all. Our only hope was that one of our tracks hit number one. As quickly as possible. The only problem was, we hadn’t got around to the recording part.


But not me. Or Steve. And luckily, at least we had a chick each.
I’d pulled a girl from the local Chinese take away. I couldn’t understand a word she was saying, which wasn‘t much. The predicament was mutual. I’m pretty sure she didn’t understand any of what I was saying. She smiled at me, again and again, as if on queue, as I finished my mumbled sentences. The girl was slouched over me awkwardly. It was a relief when she told me she had to go back to work.
Steve, my production partner had only a marginally better experience. Despite him showing all the signs of success - genuine Rolex, Ferrari parked outside, and smelling of aftershave that he had bought in Barbados at the duty-free. He was with the pump attendant from the local BP. ‘It doesn’t matter if you can’t sing!’ he finally exclaimed with a drunken jolt after telling the poor girl she had the ’perfect’ singing voice for the past six hours. She’d done a bit of modelling. Page three. She just needed to make the slight jump from page three pin-up to pop star. Her voice was little more than a monotonous, cockney whine, which was more than off-putting. Her dreams to become a pop star disappeared quicker than Steve could say: ‘Right, you better go now.’ he said, his eyes glancing across the trashed garden. ’ I need to get hold of the maid in to clear up this mess.’

There was no maid. There was no money to pay her. But it worked. The girls were gone in a flash, Girl-less once again, Steve and I looked over at each other across the rubbished lawn. He was awkwardly wearing a blue collared shirt which was sticking out at the edges , and I was in jeans, sandals, and sunglasses that had lost their shape in all the excitment. The heat of the day had gone. The excitement of the day had gone. The whole adventure had gone.


That’s when the phone rang. Some bloke over in Amsterdam needed a knob twiddler to set up a new studio.











2.
No Time To Waste


I was awoken by an official sounding Dutchman telling me that not only my flight had been paid, but they were expecting me right away. So then and there, I grabbed my bag, and scrambled for the exit. I passed my Greek landlord on the way out who made some relatively straightforward references the words ‘three months rent due’, but I never really understood the guy to be honest. Why start now? Leaving a couple of ill-matching socks and a parking ticket filled out in his name, off I went. I Took a fifty-five quid taxi ride to the airport, bought some cheap beer (false of habit), and waited for my flight. I noticed that the officially sounding Dutch geezer had gone ahead and bought me a decent airline ticket. Tat was impressive. You know what I mean by quality, so I won’t mention any names. I don’t need to. Quality airlines don’t have names, they have letters. As opposed to the other end of the spectrum where they attempt to address the fundamental shortcomings in their business model by using of words such as Easy, Fly, Air, et al.
You can tell the people who are travelling ‘el-cheapo’ the other side of passport control. They have been living at the airport for so long, they can’t remember what fresh air smells like. Not that they ever experienced that of course. They have definitely forgotten what real food tastes like. They can’t cook. For some reason they are spending three times the money they saved buying a cheap ticket in the gambling halls. It’s all part of the holiday!!!

If I had to travel with those zombie families all the way up to terminal 129 where the cheap rents reside, it would be quicker to walk home. Either that or get a taxi. How they fit a London cab around the intricate configuration of the terminal is beyond me. There could also be issues with the cabby. He’d need a passport. And a five year security check. Imagine the cab driver waiting at the airport gate being told through a cheap metallic speaker: ‘I just need to take some brief details from you sir. Its for security clearance. I just need to know EXACTLY what you have been doing for the last five years’. I’d put my money of 99.9% of these cabbies doing the quickest you-turn that they had ever had the pleasure of manoeuvring, and doing a burn for the exit. Of course, you would get the occasional one slipping through, but that would be done to communication issues between a broken intercom and a terrorist posing as a taxi driver. Rather ironically, He’s the one who’s been working day and night for the last nine months attempting to gain access to the secure areas, when suddenly his passenger demands he drives there. And he’s in.
All because of a stuttering microphone cable. Had they cable have been functioning to the specification as laid down by the Chinese manufacturers, he would be in jail now. But the airport authority - as always - went for the cheapest bidder on all-things utility, and as a result, there is a mad man videotaping the entire airport with his cab-cam.

Well, actually, there is two. When I noticed on the blinking departure board my flight was departing from terminal 128, I couldn’t help exhaling the words ‘oh fuck’. The main reason for this profanity, was that, as usual, no matter how hard I try not too, I always find myself unnaturally drawn towards the arrivals board. I’m pretty sure I’m aware that it is the arrivals board, and that it has absolutely no use to me whatsoever, and is indeed a huge proven risk (I must have missed more flights than I can remember by looking at such), but the main reason is that I find myself taken away by the exquisite origins of these flights. Buines Aires, Tel avev. Marrakesh, Timbuktu too. Xxx. And yet, there seems to be never any flights going to these places. The departure board at peak time in uk summer time is more likely to read: Costa del shite, majorcor blimy gov! and the party capital Ibiza. So you can see the arrivals board is far more interesting. Who are such pope? Are you people coming home, or are they tourists coming over? Such unnatural fascination is so obviously to blame for my increased risk of missing my fliggt.

On rare occasions. (rarer now that they have cottoned on the the scam involved) I have been known to complain adamantly that the wrong information was on the wrong board. And on one solitary occasion, I was rebooked without chard on the to the next available flight, thus being able to share drinking time with reasonable intelligent, but never the less reasonably alcoholic types who insist on paying the bill before telling you that they are in fact all pilots and they will be the ones who will be responsible for taking you to your desired destination. Don’t worry about a thing, one pilot said to me me once. Its all computer driven, he said after a long beer fuelled burp. Even the pilots get their kicks in the airport bar.

Faking a broken leg is surprising somewhat easier after with a hangover from hell and a fresh consumption of cheap beer. The hobble comes el-natural. The crutches didn’t, so I had to fight for them. Some old woman was being propped up by a pair at an interrogation window. By the look of it, and indeed the sound of it, she had to right to be in the country.
‘what visa?‘ she screamed hysterically. ‘me no visa’. A few seconds later she was ‘no crutches’ as well. I left her propping up the side of the ‘do not lean against this wall’ .

Pretending to have a broken leg may seem a little farfetched. Being driven down the inside of an airport at speed on a vehicle propelled with a juiced-up hairdryer on acid is something else. The awkward rear-facing view is uncomfortable, AND A tad embarrassing at first. But that is soon made up by the splendid views. Whizzing past three-hundred grossly unfit passengers and looking back at them with a rye smile realising they have to attempt a 12 mile hike in as many minutes to get to their plane on time is a priceless experience. At this point in the game, I realised the trip was going to be nothing short of pure quality.

Until I boarded the plane.

3.
PlANE SAILING