“I don’t know these three songs”, Phil said. I stared at him. Couldn’t believe what I had just heard. You know, one of those moments when you are so dumb founded that you are actually speechless because of the complete insanity of what has just been said.

This occurs for about five seconds right beside the parallel emotion of pure anger that hits you. It springs to the forefront of your consciousness and then slowly dissipates over the five seconds of induced coma you have just experienced. I say induced because some how your unconscious brain works out that simply yelling, screaming and abusing people for being fuckwits isn’t very constructive, so your brain actually shuts you down for a short time so the “I am going to kill you slowly and painfully by pulling your intestines out through your throat and gleefully throttling you with them” response doesn’t get acted on.

Let me explain. My names Geoff and I play guitar in a covers band. The third part of a pretty good three piece rhythm section once we get going. The rest of the band is keyboards, lead guitar and our singer. We have been trying to get our “shit together” for about a year having done a few free gigs around town and now we are about to play our first paying gig.

And Phil is our bass player. He is actually bass player number eleven. I’ll get to the reason why we have had eleven later but right now he IS our bass player. Phil is a good bass player as well. He can get the groove going really well, when he knows the songs that is. But right now he is standing in front of me fifteen minutes before we start playing in our first paid gig, holding the set list he has had for three months and telling me he doesn’t know three of the songs in the first set.

“Have you got the music”, he asks. I am still looking at him. I think I have been staring for longer than five seconds as he is looking at me like you would look at someone who isn’t quite right.

“Yes”, I reply. The coma is about to come back but is fought off by my brain twisting itself inside out trying to work out how he cannot know the songs as I am sure we have practiced them and played them at our last gig and at practice last week..

It’s while I am retrieving the music from my bright yellow folder, bright yellow as all life saving devices are, that Richard our lead guitarist (extraordinaire) comes over to me.

We haven’t done a proper sound check”, he says. “What”, I reply turning to him while still looking for the music Phil needs. “We haven’t done a proper sound check”, he states again. I look at him. He looks at me. “We need to do a proper sound check”, he repeats.

My brain can’t take much more of this. I am looking for the music for three songs Phil should have learnt weeks ago, that have been on the set list for four weeks, that he now announces fifteen minutes before we play that he doesn’t know and now Richard is telling me the sound check we did fifteen minutes ago wasn’t a “proper one” so we need to do a proper one.

And we have to start playing in fifteen minutes as the pub is filling up and the George the bar manager is starting to look at us like we are raving lunatics as we have been setting up for an hour now and we are still not ready.

“You’re joking aren’t you”, I say to Richard who clearly doesn’t look like he’s joking but it’s something you say to impress upon the people the stupidity of what they are saying.

“No”, he says getting more agitated and looking at me. “We need a proper sound check at gig volumes, I need to check the front of house and fold back volumes with you playing this time and I can’t fucking hear myself over the bass and drums”.

“We can’t do it again”, I say “The pubs filling up, George is starting to look at us as we are idiots and we have to start playing in fifteen”. I look at my watch “eleven minutes. I set them up pretty much Ok when you guys were playing so it will have to do”.

“Well then its going to sound like shit”, he says as he walks off to the other side of the stage. I call it a stage but I think it’s really called a riser. A few planks over some old beer crates and covered with some old carpet to hold it all together. It’s very springy in places and if you did a Pete Townsend you would go through and break your neck even though it’s only about a foot off the floor.

He picks up his guitar and starts doing riffs up and down the fret board at a ridiculously loud volume. Stops, leans back to his amp, tweaks one of the knobs then he is off again making more noise than a bloody 747 taking off.

“Is that the music”, Phil says. I realise he is standing in front of me. He snuck up on me while I was watching Richard try and shatter the windows with the feedback from his guitar.

“Yeah, here it is”, I reply. “I walk back to his bass guitar with him and he puts it on and starts quickly running through the music. “Will you be able to play them”, I ask.

After all it was just at the last band practice that we were discussing how many of us could sight read music and play at the same time. Phil and Greg, the keyboard player, are the only ones who can. Me, I couldn’t sight read a dotted minim if my life depended on it. Matter of fact having failed year 10 music nearly 30 years ago the chances of me recognising anything written on a scoresheet are about as good as Keith Richards’s chance of going to an AA meeting.

“Yeah should be ok”, he says. I look at my watch 9 minutes to go. What do I have to do. I look back at my guitar and amp sitting half set up beside the drums. “Oh fuck” I say to myself and head back to my gear.

On the way back Greg comes over to me” All set ?”, he says. “We’re fucked”, I reply. “Why”, he looks quizzically at me” . “Phil doesn’t know three songs in the first set. It’s going to start badly”.

Greg looks at me again just like Phil did before. I look at him wondering if I have one of those three dimensional pictures on my head that you have to stare at for about 5 minutes before you see the hidden picture

“How the fuck cant he know the songs, what have you guys been doing for four weeks” Greg explodes at me.

Greg has just come back from four weeks visiting his parents over seas in Europe and generally having a good time. And when I say just come back I mean he landed this morning at 9:00am and has had about eight hours sleep in three days. He left just when we were booked for our first gig and we knew it was going to be interesting pulling it off but we have practiced a lot with our eleven bass players over the last year so we figured we must know the music by now.

So to say he’s a little tired is an understatement. I open my mouth to reply that “I don’t know” but nothing comes out. My brain is trying to understand it myself plus the fact we are going to “sound like shit”.

What with helping Wayne in with his drums, setting up the PA, then moving the dance floor with the bar staff because it was to close to the band, then moving the PA speakers again with Richard, and then doing the sound check that wasn’t a sound check, I haven’t had time to properly set my own gear up.

Greg looks at me again like I am an idiot and walks off to Phil. I look at my watch. Five minutes to go. Fuck. I turn on my amp, quickly grab my effects pedals throw them together and plug everything in, then plug in my guitar and hit a chord. Nothing happens. Shit. I look down at my effects and trace the cables from one to the other and to the amp. Yip there are all ok. Hit another chord. Nothing. Fuck. Look at my watch 8.27pm. Fuck Fuck Fuck.

It’s about now beads of sweat start to break out on my forehead. I check all my cables again. Hit another chord. I can hear a faint buzzing from my amp and the chord sounds like it,s a million miles away but nothing is really coming through. I start to panic. I put my guitar down and quickly go over to Richard.

“I can’t get anything out of my amp” I say. He looks at me like I am a complete moron and says” Something plugged into the wrong place”. I look at him with my eyes obviously pleading for help and he stares at me, leans back, tweaks his amp again and starts on another mind bendingly fast lead riff up his fret board. Fuck I think to myself and go back to my guitar and amp.

I get on my knee’s and am checking every plug in and out of my effects pedals when Wayne walks past me to get behind his drums. “Time to start rocking”, he says. I look at my watch. 8:32pm. Fuck fuck fuck. I trace the lead from my guitar through the effects pedals again all the way to the amp. Nothing wrong. I hit another chord. Nothing.

Greg comes over on his way to the keyboards. “How’s it going”, he says. I look at him and he can see me panicking. “ I cant get anything out of my amp” I say. “ Well get it sorted. We’re starting now.” He replies “Oh and forget those three songs Phil doesn’t know. We’ll play a shorter first set and plug the gap later..

Shit Shit Shit. My brain starts to go into a coma again when all of a sudden I think. Check all the settings, not just cables. I run my eyes over the amp channel volumes, gain, bass, middle, treble, reverb, all look ok.. Not that I can see anything any more as I am really starting to really panic now.

I quickly start running through my entire effects pedal settings one by one. I have three different distortion units all connected together after a Roland ME50 multi effects unit. I only do rhythm and a little lead but you would be amazed at how many different distorted guitar sounds you need to do a range of covers.

I start with the ME 50. This little bugger can do amazing things but it can also stuff you up if something isn’t quite right. I check the cables are plugged in correctly and start going through each setting. Distortion, Chorus, Echo, Sustain, compressor. There it is. Got you, you little bugger. The compressor was slightly on which kills the sound completely from the whole unit. Fuck. I quickly turn it down and look up.

“Good evening everyone” Bill says. The pubs pretty full and Bill doing his intro. I hit my guitar tuner and check my tuning. G string is slightly out. Tweak that. Perfect. Effects all good. Ready.

My pulse drops down back to around 150 a minute just as Bill says “we are going to kick off tonight with an old Tom Petty number called, Breakdown” . As he finishes the word breakdown the Drums, bass and keyboards start off laying down a nice smooth back track. Da-Dum Da Da. Da-Dum Da Da.

I look over to Richard who nods at me. I do the lead for the first part of this song and then we play it together. Kind of like an Eagles thing with dual guitars harmonising together.

I take a breath and relax for a second waiting for the beat to go around again. Greg looks back at me and smiles as he plunks away on the keyboard. For a man who hasn’t slept much in the last few days he looks way to good.

Okay time to play. Just as the beat comes around for me to start playing I hit my distortion foot switch. What happens next not only surprises me but also everyone in the pub.

The scream of feedback from my amp as soon as I hit the footswitch nearly makes me wet my pants. I jump about a metre into the air and Greg, in front of me physically ducks as the noise rockets past him. He spins around mouthing “what the fuck” as Waynes head snaps round to me so fast he misses his high hat and the beat skips. Richard, Bill and Phil’s heads snap around like the Marx brothers and all look at me like I’m insane and the crowd who were just starting to move to the beat all stop and just look at me. George, from behind the bar shakes his head and disappears through the doorway.

I hit the footswitch and the screaming stops. Da-Dum Da Da. Da-Dum Da Da.

Its amazing how in less than a second you can put up a sign saying. “ Yes I am a complete dickhead” and what happens next either confirms it or gets you off the hook just like a get out of jail free pass.

Of course in my panic to set up I hadn’t checked the settings on all the distortion units. I still had it setup for the end of our last gig which was another free gig we did at a charity event a week before. At the end of it we were rocking hard. We finished up with that old Elton John classic Saturday Nights alright for Fighting where both Richard and I were doing lead with a big drum roll and lots off crazy runs to end the song.

I crouched down and quickly reset my distortion then stood up. As I stepped forward to my microphone the crowd all looked at me.

“Anyone need a change of undies. Because I sure do”. The crowd laughed, the band smiled and the ice was broken. As I stepped back from the microphone I looked up at Richard. He was shaking his head and laughing. I started to play on the beat and a bar later he came in still laughing at me.

The perfect beginning to a very unsavoury end.