How fitting it was that my finale with DRESSED TO KILL came at a place close to home where I’ve spent many a happy gig night on the drums – The Robin in Bilston was packed out as usual to see DTK, but I imagine that, despite our intensive promo for the night, many folk arriving had no idea about what was in store…namely 2 KISS characters playing drums on the same night.
Another week that’s proved no two weeks in my working life are ever the same – and a week in which my club is one step closer to its first major MAJOR trophy.
I’ve mentioned more than once before in these blogs about how my past keeps coming back to delight me lately. Well, it can bloody well scare you too.
But in a good way.
My dear friend Gray Ettrick, who stood shoulder to shoulder with me for 6 desperate years in Shotgun Wedding dreamimg of rock stardom that never materialised, was the one member of the band who kept everything relating to what we got up to. And I mean EVERYTHING.
Happy New Year to you all. Thanks for visiting the site once again.
So, how's your Christmas belly then? Mine's nicely cultivated - so now presumably it's time to turn masochistic and retrieve some dignity to my appearance by going for 2 bowls of Special K a day. After all, there is one last Dressed To Kill gig to stay trim for...
Yes, you heard me right. I now have one last night in the lycra and the slap next month - FRIDAY 4th FEBRUARY to be precise, at the Robin RnB club in Bilston which is pretty much the closest venue to home for me as it goes.
“Ain’t it funny how the time slips away…’cos now I’m leaving and I wish I could stay…”
Paul Stanley definitely wrote that song for me. It’s 5 years on from my first show as a full Dressed To Kill member at the Nottingham KISS Expo, and now my time in the world’s longest-running (and best) tribute to the Hottest Band In The World is at an end. I’ve already bored you witless with the reasons why in a previous blog, so let’s just get on with the story of my last 4 gigs shall we?
Good grief I’m angry today – I am ‘the Guns Of The Navarone’ as Samuel L Jackson put it in Pulp Fiction. And it’s not just because I’m having to write this blog again from scratch as it didn’t load first time of asking – blooming internet connection time-out nonsense….
I’ve often been referred to as ‘band slag’ ‘have sticks will travel’ ‘he’s after everybody’s job’ and other choice summaries of my career behind the kit. Most of the time, my band choices have been based almost entirely on the enjoyment I expected to derive from it. And so, whether it’s been Shotgun Wedding, Dressed To Kill or The Three Amoebas, it’s been a laugh a minute for the right reasons.
“You’re talking out of your hat…you’re talking out of your hat and you’ve got one on. I would say ass but I can’t say ass and I don’t want to say donkey because that’s disrespectful to donkeys…”
And so it goes. Come the 4th December, I will extrapolate myself from my Peter Criss wig one last time, scrape the white, black, green, silver & red from my fizzog and prepare to hand over the DRESSED TO KILL drumstool to another poor undeserving sap.
Do I want to leave DTK? No, absolutely NOT! Since I joined in 2005, I have played my favourite songs from my favourite band to some of my favourite people – the UK KISS Army…and beyond! However, sometimes in life you have to stop doing things you love no matter how much you want to continue.
It’s constantly drummed into us (excuse the pun) that moving house is the most stressful day of your life and nothing ever comes close to matching the levels of irritation and blind panic that come with such upheaval. Last year, for example, it took Natalie and myself over 12 hours to move just 400yds up the road to our new place, with removal men who clearly thought that a vehicle equivalent to one of those Daihatsu mini-vans was sufficient to carry the worldly goods of a married couple with 4 children all under the age of 10.
