Thinking Like Baz

Today I felt like the only future I had was as a bitching roadie.

Let me explain: I was sat in Mama Nani's, a restaurant near the studio with loads of friendly cats (and by cats I mean felines, not the jazz-lingo-of-the-1940's term for another human being) that serves an awesome nasi bryani, when the Aftershock show appeared on Hitz.tv.

I sat there and watched as bands I've known since I first got onto this crazy weird thing known as 'the local indie music scene' rocked out as audiences went wild.

And I found myself depressed.

I'd been working like a dog for God knows how many days trying to sort out all the Y2k stuff, get the tour going, make sure everything is set for the launch, all that bullshit. Y2k's been around for a good four years and we've finally got an album done. Some of those bands on the screen had been around for less and it got me insanely depressed.

Jealous? Possibly. Envious? Maybe. I found myself thinking thoughts that I know I shouldn't, uncontrolled and uncensored. Most of all, I found myself thinking, "why the hell are those guys up there and I'm downhere?" It'd all been building up. Just the day before I heard the person who I now only refer to as "The End" on the radio and it got me fuming, thinking the same things I was thinking as I was sat there in Mama Nani's.

"Who the hell do these guys think they are?" "What makes them so special?" "My bands worked tons harder than those guys!" Real pretentious shit spewing from my mind. It got me depressed and angry at the same time and I had to take some panadol to alleviate the mental pain.

Then it struck me: fucking hell, I sound like Baz.

At least, I think his name was Baz.

Baz was the guy who ran the guitar store in Shrewsbury that my band at the time used to go to whenever we could, even if we weren't buying anything. Sometimes it fun just hanging out in a store like that, making a mental wishlist of all the stuff you want once you 'make it'. Baz was an old fella, probably in his late forties (or maybe he was younger and the drugs just took their toll).

In the room where one would test the guitars, there was a toilet seat for a chair, two amps and a huge picture above the door of Baz's old band from the 70's. The band even had a bassist complete with a Fender Jazz bass and a big fro, bandana tied around the bottom of it a la Hendrix.

And there, in the middle of the band, front and centre, was Baz: tight blue jeans, platform shoes, hairy chest in full view and frills down the arms of his jacket like Robert Plant, caught in full high pitched scream.

We'd hang out at the place, testing guitars and pedals. Baz usually brought in a couple lefty's which always kept me happy. And, best of all, Baz would tell us stories.

"Yeah, I saw Hendrix play," he'd say, "he was shit."

What? Hendrix? Shit?

"Guitar wasn't in tune, playing all sloppy, God he was crap."

Baz used to be a roadie for one of the big rock bands of the seventies (it could have been Black Sabbath, but I may be mistaken). And he'd regale us with stories of how shit this band was, or that guitarist, or how some singer couldn't hit the notes.

I look back at Baz now because I look at where he got to in life: running a guitar store, talking about how all these legends in rock weren't as good as we were led to believe, and yet the only memory of his band's greatness was in a picture hung up above a room that uses a toilet seat for a chair where kids like me go in to test guitars without any idea how to tune it, murdering 'Stairway to Heaven' note by note. He may have the dirt on the real experience of watching the legends at their supposed prime, but their contribution to the language lives on. His doesn't.

And I look back and I wonder: am I going to turn out like that? Am I gonna be running the studio at the age of forty, Y2k and Triple 6 Poser and all the other stuff I do a thing of the past, not even a footnote in the overall local music history, a band photo on the wall, regaling kids about how I saw OAG at Rock the World IV and telling them it was 'bollocks'?

Maybe.

But then I look back at Baz from a different angle: he probably gave it his all, and it was probably not meant to be. And he's still doing something he loves. In fact, he's giving the kids of the future the opportunity to try and get themselves in the history of rock, to see what the gods have in store for them. He didn't sell out, he didn't cash his chips and work some dead-end 9 to 5 job. He's still in the business of rock.

And I look back from that angle and it puts a smile to my face. I guess, in the end, all I can do is my best. And if it's not meant to be, at least I know I gave it my all and I've still got the studio.

...

Still not gonna stop me from bitching, though. Fucking young punks, who the fuck do they think they are?! Especially that band O-(this post was cut short before a bevy of bridges are permanently burnt).