Our Manual Friend / January 24 2008
Sonny Starr, drummer with punk band The Dysons, turned up at the studio last night. In his arms was a bundle of technical manuals. ‘Here ya go,’ he said, cheerfully.
‘What are these, Sonny?’ I asked.
‘Reading books.’ Intelligence and literacy are not his defining characteristics.
I was going to ignore them initially, but propelled by some kind of subconscious directive, I suddenly felt obliged to take a closer look.
‘Sonny . . ?’ I began in exasperation, ‘ . . . these all belong to me! These are the missing manuals for three-quarters of the equipment in the control room - what the hell are you doing with them?’
‘No idea,’ he said nonchalantly, and sat down on the leather sofa with a heavy thump.
Over the following few minutes, I found out from him that Staz, the monosyllabic, neanderthal guitarist for The Sic Boy Federation, the band he was in at the time, had stolen them from me when they were recording in the studio I had in Mansfield. ‘Well, thanks for eventually returning them,’ I told him, blankly.
Sonny wanted to book some recording time for The Dysons but I issued a flat refusal due to the fact that Staz was the guitarist in his new band also.
‘Remember the last time I was engineering for you?’ I asked him, ‘when that black man was passing in the street below and Staz took it upon himself to open the studio window and urinate on the poor chap’s head? That incident did not exactly endear you lot to me, neither did the one when your bass player pissed in an empty can of Stella and my assistant drank some of it thinking it was warm beer . . . not to mention the fact that Staz shat on the bloody toilet seat as some kind of ironic gesture or protest against the government.’
‘I’ve changed,’ was his meek reply.
I was getting very angry now: ‘And you stink!’ I told him. ‘What the hell is that smell?’
‘Chickens.’
He held out his hands and I could see that they were red raw; they were covered in welts and scratches, some of which were bleeding. He explained to me that he has been working part-time in a large factory in Leicester, employed as a chicken-catcher. He runs around after the poor creatures all day, grabs them by the neck and tosses them into a large bin, ready for slaughter.
‘My God,’ I told him, ‘I didn’t realise such a job existed.’
‘Oh yeah,’ he said, ‘it’s very popular amongst drummers.’
Filed under Idiots / Musicians / Punk / Recording Studio / Rock'n'Roll Excess / Sonny Starr
Comments
4 comments on “Our Manual Friend”
Nelson Galaxy / January 24th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Ah madman, how we laughed when the Sic Boys were in the studio. Didn’t one of their other pranks involve the stealing of a drum kit? How we laughed and laughed. At least I now know why that warm beer tasted so tart.
Napoleon Fantastic / January 24th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
How we laughed.
I forgot about the drum kit stealing.
I told Sonny I’d never heard of out-of-work drummers doing chicken-catching and he said ‘Who do you think does it - little tiny monkeys? Little monkeys riding around on small dogs herding them all up? Are you thick?’
Nelson Galaxy / January 25th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Dog shagger
Jo Beaufoix / January 29th, 2008 at 1:45 am
Nelson, you just made me spit my drink out. Bad boy.
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