I Predict A Summer Of Mr. Brightside On Fire...

I’m more than aware that I’m in a minority here, but I’m going to say it. I absolutely hate pub bands. This point of view hasn’t just come from being subjected to them in pubs – although that alone would be a good enough reason – it’s also been manufactured through having to work alongside them as a DJ. I say ‘alongside’ although in their eyes it’s clearly ‘below’ – a long way below. Every gang of grubby Hendrix wannabes I’ve ever had the misfortune to work with have treated me, as a DJ, with nothing but utter contempt. To ‘The Chequebook Stubs’, a DJ is merely there in order to plug the gaps during the numerous amounts of unnecessary breaks they insist they need during performances. Oh and to use my lights too. Yes, they’ll look at you as if you’ve just smeared the blood of their own aborted child over their crumpled stone-washed denim, but they’ll be straight in there expecting to have your disco lights flashing away when they’re on. They reek of arrogance and their own self-importance. To ‘The Potato Skins’, that 40 year old gutbucket wrapped in a net curtain’s wedding they’re at isn’t just a gig at a dust infused British Legion hut, it’s the Oscars after party. I’m sure even the Rolling Stones with all their talent and worldwide success don’t have such an extreme air of supremacy around them like these wankers do.

As I said, these part-time bands think they’re several echelons up the artistic scale than a DJ and none of them have any respect for a DJ when they’re playing. One group I once had to work beneath were called 00-70s. Do you see what they’ve done there? If it’s not clear, it’s Double O Seventies. Anyway, we need to forget 00-70s now because this next anecdote is absolutely not about the aforementioned band at all. Nope. Definitely isn’t. OK? So, I had the misfortune to have been booked at a wedding along with this band which was not called 00-70s. (I’ll get on to why I don’t understand the need to have both a disco and a band in a moment.) But this band - who were definitely not called 00-70s - remain in my memory for being the classic example of the archetypal arrogant and contemptuous cunts that all these amateur bands are. To begin with, I had a list of demands thrust into my hand from one of them and was told that in no uncertain terms was I to play any of the songs on said list. The pretentious twat carried on as though I would be in contempt of court if I played the proper version of a 70s classic, clearly spoiling any party-goers enjoyment of one of the crass covers they were planning to inflict upon us. Am I wrong though to be annoyed by this smug shit’s nerve? Or his snotty attitude in dictating to me what I was allowed to play? I’m not that awkward that I wouldn’t even play ball, but his superior arrogance got my back up immediately. So anyway, I have to start of course – I’m merely the warm up act, they’re the main attraction. I’ve been playing my stuff now for about forty-five minutes whilst they’re all sat in the bar lounging about like they’re awaiting their scores at Eurovision, when suddenly they get up and take up their positions. I look at my phone for the time – I still have ten minutes yet, what are they doing? What they’re doing is ‘warming up’ all their equipment and instruments. Not only had they already done this forty-five minutes ago, but they don’t wait till I’ve finished playing, oh no. Without a care in the world the keyboard player starts playing piano scales over the top of my music, and at volume far louder than I was playing. Thanks! Never mind that people were dancing and enjoying themselves, fuck them, the keyboardist is in the room and we all must bow down to his needs. It was all I could do to not kick his crappy Casio keyboard off its fucking stand I can tell you. Then we get the drummer testing the levels of his drums! They’re fucking drums! You hit them with a stick, you don’t plug them in. But no, like they all do, he has to start banging about all over the shop along with the cunt at the keyboards because obviously since he set them up earlier, his drums will somehow have changed. But they don’t care. They’re the band. That’s the only reason anyone is there! Not for a wedding, not for a disco – them! Imagine if I did that, started playing “Born Slippy” in the middle of their menial rendition of “Boogie Nights”. But I wouldn’t. I know my place. I know I’m just doing a disco at wedding at a working men’s club which smells like 1973. I have more respect than that. I just wait ten years and then slag them off in a blog…

Other objectionable oxygen-thieves I encountered were at my now ex-girlfriend’s 21st birthday. For some inexplicable reason she was obsessed with one specific pub band. I’ve no idea why them specifically because these shitty covers bands are like the musical equivalent of Eastern European hatchbacks. There’s too many of them, there’s little or no difference between any of them and most of all they’re basically inferior copies of previously good products . This particular flange of baboons was called Punchmonkey – a quick google sees that pleasingly they don’t appear to exist anymore. Why my ex was so intent in following them about is anybody’s guess, although knowing what I know now about her, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she had granted backstage access to one if not all of them at some point in our relationship.On the night in question, just like the band that certainly wasn’t called 00-70s and every other tinpot outfit, they treated me like shit. I was merely their support. I would have to be squashed into a tiny corner so they could spread out all over the place and “Oh, can we use your lights though?”… I recall the dance floor being full of inebriated airheads squawking like buzzards along to the unnecessarily lengthy ‘Dirty Dancing Megamix’. But this was not something Punchmonkey gave two hoots – or even two um, whatever noise monkeys make – about and subsequently did as they all do and start tuning up, testing microphone levels and “one-twoing” all over “Do You Love Me”.

It baffles me as to why someone books a band and a disco. In fact it baffles me why someone even books a band? For starters, booking one of these thousands of “Mr Brightside” re-enactors, you’re immediately making the assumption that everyone in the world – or at least at your party - likes nothing but guitar based rock. So if you want We Found Love, Rhythm Is A Dancer, Macarena, The Cha Cha Slide or Let Me Be Your Fantasy, or basically anything that isn’t by four men and a guitar at your party, then you’re fucked. You do someone the honour of turning up at their wedding do and you’re not allowed to hear any of the music you’d like to hear. You’d like to hear Calvin Harris? Human League? Steps? You can forget it. After all, it’s not ‘proper music’ is it… Bands can play a small selection of guitar based inferior cover versions – the same small selection of guitar based inferior covers as all the other identikit wasters out there. Why is that better than a DJ with thousands and thousands of songs at their disposal? Songs of every genre, from every year, for every taste and every age group. Not only that, but the original versions of the songs too. Why have Bon Jovi’s own version of “Livin’ On A Prayer” when some balding cunts from Stevenage can have a stab at it instead? Lastly, the expense! A DJ costs about a tenth of what these bands charge (if they don’t, then they’re taking the piss). Why spend ten times as much money to have a thousand times less music?

As well as private parties, I’ve had to endure these arseholes at pubs where I’ve worked too. For some reason, every single pub landlord seems to hate discos and love bands. Every pub I’ve ever DJ’d in, the landlord/lady will never ever promote the fact there’s a disco on, but as soon as there’s a fucking band on, they can’t stop promoting it. Obviously nobody likes the idea of hearing every genre of popular music from the 1950s to 2014, that’s not worth promoting to people. But clearly the prospect of hearing third-rate covers of “I Predict A Riot” at insanely distorted volume is what every pub-goer is after.

Yes, insanely distorted. Because bands are never "too loud". Nobody ever tells a band to turn their volume down. Bands can be as loud as they like. Discos? They’re always “too loud”. Bands? Never. It can be window rattling distortion, so loud that the seating is bleeding, so loud that you can’t even have a conversation in the usually serene lavatories. Everyone in the vicinity knows it’s too loud, but nobody will complain. Yet when DJing, I will constantly be told to turn it down – even though I make a point of never playing too loudly. One rule of DJing – it’s always better to have someone tell you to turn it up than turn it down.I hope that if you don’t now also hate these egotistical anuses as much as I do, that I have at least made you see a different side to them. Or you might have now have realised that they’re all exactly the same as each other. Perhaps the next time you happen upon one of these ten-a-penny clusterfucks – probably in O-Neill’s - you might like to play ‘Shit Band Bingo’. Just look at the list below and simply tick off each cover one-by-one as they murder them one-by-one:

KINGS OF LEON – SEX ON FIRE

BLUR – SONG 2

BRYAN ADAMS – SUMMER OF 69

LYNRD SKYNRD – SWEET HOME ALABAMA

KAISER CHIEFS – I PREDICT A RIOT

THE KILLERS – MR. BRIGHTSIDE

THE FRATELLIS – CHELSEA DAGGER

THE EAGLES – HOTEL CALIFORNIA

KINGS OF LEON – USE SOMEBODY

AC/DC – HIGHWAY TO HELL

FREE – ALRIGHT NOW

THE COMMITMENTS – MUSTANG SALLY

THE KINKS – LOLA

BON JOVI – LIVIN’ ON A PRAYER

OASIS - WONDERWALL

Hopefully by then you’ll start seeing things from my perspective. If so, then next time you're unfortunate enough to have one inflicted upon your person, just for me, go over to the aged bell-wipe standing on a chair thinking he’s Brandon Flowers and tell him “you’re all the fucking same” and watch it kick off. Well, they did ‘predict a riot’ didn’t they…