Nuns do Security

In the life of a band you get asked to do many things you don’t really want to do. Various things, like an interview with a magazine you don’t really like, or going to a function you think is lame, or going on tour and opening for a band you’re not really into. In our case it was Mike and the Mechanics. Our management company just had this knack of talking us into doing stuff we really didn’t want to do. When they suggested we toured with Mike and the Mechanics, I’m afraid the reaction wasn’t too good. ‘Why can’t we open for INXS or U2 or even Depeche Mode?’ we cried. ‘We’re not touring with that old fossil - no no no no No!’ in fact it would be a cold day in hell before we did that tour. Anyway three months later, one snowy day in hell, we arrived at the sound check for our first date on the Mike and the Mechanics tour. Oh, did I mention that our Management Company also looked after Mike. So when they came to us with their next great idea you can imagine it wasn’t exactly greeted with a fanfare.

They wanted us to do a tour of schools in the United States sponsored by Carefree Sugarless Gum. Now I know its pretty normal for bands to do school tours these days, so I suppose you have to give them credit for being ahead of their time, but trust me when I say their motives were purely financial, anyway that's another story. Again, a battle ensued and of course we lost, we were gonna do the tour, but only if all the schools were high schools, ‘yeah, yeah all high schools,’ they said, well lets just say they were being very economical with the truth. So we arrived at our first gig, and I have to admit it was great! It was in the school gym, it was packed with about 1500 kids and it was pandemonium, There should have been some security or something as it was getting a bit scary at the front and we had to stop the show a couple of times so our road crew could get some people out who were getting crushed. So onto the second show. It was in a large gym and the school was run by nuns I don’t know how they talked a convent school into having a rock concert but they did. I was a bit bored, so when our tour manager went to see the Mother Superior about the show I went along. We met in the gym and this is what was said, Andrew Mansi our tour manager: ‘Now we don’t want to worry you but at last nights show the kids did get a bit excited, so what are we going to do about security? Mother Superior: ‘No don’t worry, you see that line on the gym floor,’ pointing to the basketball court line about a metre from the stage, ‘we’ll tell the kids they can’t go past that line’. Mansi: ‘Hmm that's not really going to work, as I said, they do get a bit boisterous’. ‘Ok’ she said ‘what if I get some of the Football team from the college down the road to handle security.’ ‘Great idea!’ he said, and so it was left that they would arrange the security for the night.

The night of the gig came and we were pretty stoked, it was in a nice big gym even back stage you could hear the atmosphere building. When we used to go on we played a tape, it was the intro to one of our songs from the White Fields album, it was looped to give us time to sneak on stage in the dark. This would mean the audience couldn’t see us but we couldn’t see them either. Many a time in this process you would hear some other member of the band go ‘argh!!’ or ‘fuck!!’ as they stubbed there toe on a stage weight, or the corner of a Marshall cabinet. All this was created so we could hit the first power chord and the lights would simultaneously come on. And tonight was no different, except that to my utter amazement as the crowd surged forward there were about eight nuns who must have been in their sixties and seventies, linking arms tying to hold back the sea of over enthusiastic kids clambering towards the stage. They lasted about 10 seconds before being engulfed in the wave that came towards them. I could hardly play my guitar I was laughing so much. Oh, and the security from the college football team, there was one dude who later on in the gig started beating the shit out of this guy, and when Mansi pulled him off and said, ‘what the fuck are you doing that for? ‘He said, ‘the nuns told me to do it.’