More Embarrassing Banding Moments
Also known as ‘Reason’s Why Liv Shouldn’t Be Allowed Out Without Supervision.’
I told you in my last ‘Embarrassing Banding Moments’ (click here to read) that I would be able to make a series of these, as the amount of these stories are limitless, due to the fact I am an idiot. If you ever feel bad about doing something silly, please take comfort in the fact that you will never be able to make a fool out of yourself as often as I can. So without further ado, here are three more chronicles of my stupidity- enjoy!
So it’s the summer of 2016 and my first ever trip to the Durham Miners Gala. Our story begins a few days before the gala when I decided to dye my hair bright red. I could say I was dying it red considering the political views the gala supports, but I think it was more to do with the fact that I was trying to look cool- spoiler alert: I failed.
Crazy colour hair dye washes out rather quickly, especially red. I knew this. However I only thought of the hair dye washing out in the shower. No danger of that happening in the middle of Durham, right? Unless, for some strange reason, it happened to rain and my hair got soaked- I didn’t think about this. You can see where this is going. It rained for pretty much the entire day. I’m not talking about a little bit of fine precipitation, I’m talking needing-an-ark-to-get-home-type-rain. Did I think to pack a hooded garment of some kind? Hell no, because I am a fool. The hair dye washed out and went everywhere. It dripped on my music. It stained my shirt collar. My Mother was thrilled about trying to get that out in the wash. It went in my eyes and stained the skin around my hair line red. Have you ever got hair dye in your eyes? You could genuinely use it as a form of torture. By the time we were halfway through the march down, I looked like I had committed a homicide or was auditioning for the role of Carrie. It wasn’t one of my better looks.
Ah when you’re young and think you can handle your drink.
When I was in my late teens a couple of my mates ,from the band I was playing for at the time, had set up a brass section that was hired by local rock bands. I was asked if I wanted to play trumpet with them and being young and a classic rock fan, I thought I was beyond cool. As, we were living the rock and roll life, we were allowed to have a couple of beers before and during the performance. In the time that this story takes place, I’d already done a few gigs with this brass section. We’d even headlined at the Manchester Academy, so I thought I was a seasoned professional at both trumpet playing and beer drinking. We played a gig in a bar in Warrington. The band we were playing with were the headliners of this gig which meant we were the last band on and we had a few hours to kill. Both the band and my brass section mates had at least ten years drinking experience over me, but me being the idiot that I am, tried to keep up. At the time it felt like I’d had many pints, but in reality I probably had about three and a can in the car on the way to the gig.
The time came to take to the stage. We started the first song which had a loud brass riff at the beginning. Beer is a magical thing, it can completely change your perspective on life. It can make you attracted to people you wouldn’t normally fancy or convince you that you can dance like Beyonce. I thought I sounded amazing. It was only when my mate, Will, who was also playing trumpet, turned to me and asked if I was drunk whilst moving the end of my trumpet away from the microphone that I felt the cold realisation that maybe I was hearing something completely different to everyone else.
I’d like to say that I never played under the influence again after that, but you know what they say- practise makes perfect, so instead I’ll say I’ve never again played that badly under the influence…
Don’t drink and play, kids, it’s not big and its not clever.
An impromtu performance of the YMCA in a Mcdonald’s Drive-Thru? I’m lovin’ it!
Last year I depped with Golborne Band at Oldham Pride. It was a lovely day of glitter, rainbows and celebtrating love with the cheesiest of pop tunes- I made a video diary (or vlog, as the cool kids say) of the day- click below to watch, if you fancy.
However, the event I am about to relate, didn’t get recorded on camera. Somehow myself and my friends, Matt (also known as Daffodil) and Natalie- The Three Musketeers, have never had a car journey that hasn’t been eventful. It’s worth noting that during the course of this weekend, we had discovered this particular version of the YMCA. If you think the YMCA couldn’t sound any more camp, click to listen.
On the way home from Oldham, we decided to stop off at Mcdonald’s. Quite a few people had clearly had the same idea as us and we found ourselves sat in the Drive-Thru queue. Now we could have just put some tune on and chilled as we waited for our Quarter Pounders with cheese, like normal people, but did we? Absolutely not. We decided to open all of the windows and blast this version of the YMCA. Not only that we decided to utilise a soprano cornet and a tambourine that we had taken to the pride gig. Daffodil took the soprano and blasted the tune out of the car window, I attempted to keep the tambourine in time without dropping it out of my window and Natalie managed to drive the car and do the choreography without crashing. Now you would have thought we’d have stopped once we got to the windows to collect our food. Nope, we continued our performance for pretty much the entire duration. Do you know what was even stranger about this? We couldn’t even blame this performance on having one too many beers as we were all completely sober and still thought it was a good idea.
The patrons of Mcdonald’s got the pleasure of dinner and a show- how lucky they were.
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