Are We A Bus, The Inside Story Of Life On The Road, Part 11

The Merry Go Round

How merrily we go round

How merrily we go round

The merry-go-round

Babyshambles

In the morning, I wake up to my alarm at nine o’ clock feeling slightly worse for wear. I stayed up for quite a while and only went to bed about five hours ago after drinking white wine and doing charlie with a few of the boys. What happened to starting as you mean to carry on and all that blahdy blah? I resolve right now to behave. It can’t be that bloody hard, can it?  Thousands, millions, even, do it every day. What on earth is wrong with me?

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Today we are at a theatre somewhere in middle England. I haven’t studied the itinerary yet and unfortunately the dates are not helpfully printed on the back of my trusty laminated Access All Areas pass for this tour. The rest of the merchandise is due today so I’d better get in there and see if it’s arrived, so I can get cracking. I also want to rearrange the boxes that went on the truck last night, as they were the last things to go on. Unfortunately, that means some local guys are probably trying to cart it all into the venue right now, unless I get my act together and go and stop them. I want to put the ones I don’t need to one side and then get them put at the front of the truck so that they can stay there each day and I can keep track of where they are.

I pull on my jeans and Vans and go outside to see what’s going on. It’s five-past-nine and, naturally, they’ve already been humped into the venue. That’ll teach me to be five minutes late for load-in. Best set my alarm a little earlier tomorrow. Honestly, the one day you don’t need the local hands to be on it, they are, right? I spend the next twenty minutes playing hide and seek with my stock and carting most of it back to the truck, popping the few boxes I do need by the merchandise stall in the foyer. I can’t really set up until later on, as the public can come in and out all day. So, I just put them in a nice tidy stack behind the tables. That should do for now.

I go off to catering to get some breakfast and coffee and just as I’m sat down, I remember that I meant to ask if the courier had been there at all. Oh well, it’s still early, and they never deliver this early anyway, so I can go and speak to the venue staff after some well-needed brekkie.

I pop over to say hi to Vic in the Production Office and to find the Promoter’s Rep for today, a guy named Simon. They’re both tucked up in a tiny office, which I eventually find after going up and down, and round a million staircases all made up of exactly three steps. Why such short flights of stairs? I have no idea. Snow White’s seven dwarves? Just for fun, perhaps? I inform Vic and Simon that I’m expecting another delivery, and ask if they could keep an ear out for anything and let me know. I also go and find the venue staff, tell the local hands and anyone else I can find so that if the driver turns up at the stage door or any other door, they can make sure he doesn’t bugger off before leaving my delivery behind.

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Seeing that there is little else to do at the moment, I decide to go back to bed for a bit and sleep off a little of my hangover. I keep waking up and checking my phone and after two hours decide that I better haul my arse out of bed and shower so I can check on the delivery. Still no sign and no word of it. After calling the merch company to check he has the right address, I find out that he tried to deliver it at 9.20 that morning. Are you kidding me? I went round everywhere and everyone and I certainly didn’t see him. So now, I have to try and get him to come back but the driver apparently now has to make me last on his round, as it’s our fault he couldn’t find the stage door, or the front door, which was open for the box office. Drivers! They test my patience. All they have to do is collect things and deliver them. Driving and circumnavigating the UK or maybe even just a small part of it is all they have to do! How come they’re always so dumbfounded by delivery addresses and er, doors, or whatever?

In your average music venue, this could have been tight — if they turned up at five and the punters flooded through the doors at seven, for instance — tight but  still doable. Unfortunately in theatres like this, they actually generally close the box office about five and then half an hour later or something, when they’ve briefed the security and their staff have set up, then they open the doors to the foyer, usually about an hour before they let the punters to their seats. That means the merchandise area is going to be already teaming with people by the time my new stock items gets here. Eff.

When you’re selling several grand’s-worth of merchandise, you can’t realistically keep a tally system, especially when it’s really busy at the end of a show. So instead, you count in at the beginning and count out at the end, and hope the money you have matches the amount of sales you appear to have made. Generally it’s fine, and if there is a difference, it’s usually because the band have dipped into the funds when you weren’t looking or some cheeky devil has pinched one when your back is turned. If you have a secure area it makes life a lot easier, but some of the venues often just provide a few tables, so you really have to be on the ball to make sure nothing is in reach of drunken punters who think it’s funny to run off with your stock.

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Anyway, at half-six they’re already piling in. I have half my items displayed and ready. The rest are still on a bloody sightseeing tour of what I’ve discovered to be Nottingham. At quarter to seven, my flustered driver turns up at the stage door and thankfully, the local stop-ons carry it all through to the lobby for me. I get out my penknife and start opening the first of a dozen boxes. I start counting and pull out a few items to make a display with. I have a bit of an audience (rubberneckers), but I tell people that I’ll have it all set in half an hour, should they want to come back and purchase something then. Everyone seems perfectly happy to do that, so I get on with my display.

The rest of the night goes well and is fairly uneventful. It turns out that the local support band is a band I know from home. I get a twenty percent commission from the support bands, so I’m really happy that Gideon and these guys are with us; because, you see, if tonight is anything to go by, then I should do pretty well on top of my usual wage.  I pack up at the end of the night, and get my delivery and leftover stock from the gig last on the truck.

We only have one sleeper bus on this tour. My bunk is upstairs near the back lounge, which, seeing as I’m usually one of the last up, isn’t normally a problem. But tonight I’m really tired, so I’m retiring straight to my bunk. It is going off in the lounge. Everyone seems to be staying up tonight, but I’m bowing out and will have to party another day.

Just as I’m about to climb into my bunk, an incident happens which reminds me why it can be annoying to have other girls on the tour, no matter who they are. There are four bunks at the front of the bus, which have a door to separate them from the rest of the bunks. This is probably because it’s one of those that convert to a lounge. I have already chosen a top bunk by the back lounge when these two other girls decide we should have a girly area. I’m not really too fussed about it, but I start to feel like I’m not joining in and am being a bit of a spoil sport, so I concede and move my things to a bunk near the other girls. The fourth bunk is to be a junk bunk.

There are three of us at the front, but now I’m really close to someone who snores, I mean really snores. I’ve never heard anything like it. A tour bus quite often sounds like the frog chorus after a heavy night of drinking, after everyone’s gotten blocked noses from too much coke, but this guy’s in a league of his own. I have absolutely no intention of being any closer to him than is necessary, so I move back to my old bunk. Maybe they’ll evict him tomorrow. I finally get to bed an hour later than planned after being forced into playing musical bunks.

Over and good night.

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Bee
My blog follows the escapades of me, Bee, rock 'n' roll adventurer and swag girl as I travel the world assisting Tour Managers and selling merchandise for various bands. My fellow travellers include the band, the crew, the fans and various industry types. It lifts the lid on the myths surrounding the music biz and gives you a glimpse into that magical, filthy world. This makes what the kids in Skins get up to merely aspirational! My crew is older, but comically we're not yet wiser, and all of Europe is our playground. Are We a Bus?