RCdc -> RE: Young and daft.....for those who romanticise their youth.... (12/4/2007 4:38:47 AM)
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This is Darcy. Ahhh, to be 18 again! Back then I was living in Nottingham (Robin Hood country for those not familiar with my home town [;)]) and at the height of my love affair with all things rock and roll! I had been playing guitar for a couple of years, before switching to bass and was in my first proper, gigging band. Money, which came from my day job, which earned me something like £90 a week, and which seemed like a fortune at the time after surviving on Saturday and Sunday job wages for the previous two years, was often spent on the latest album by the likes of Motley Crue, Iron Maiden, Ratt, Poison, Dokken, or some other group of pretty boys wearing make-up and lingerie. The rest went on beer (which was the princely sum of 66 pence a pint when I started boozing regularly in 1986, a good two years before I was legally allowed [;)]), and getting into rock clubs. As NG says, some of the mates I had back then are still close mates today (I was out with one just last night at a 'secret' Duran Duran gig in London), and we would all chip in if one of us was skint and make sure nobody went without beer and a kebab on the way home. My priorities back in those days were rock and roll, beer, and more rock and roll! My band played all manner of sweaty, dark little pubs, but the rock scene in Nottingham was just amazing! Everybody was either in bands, or knew somebody in a band, so there was no shortage of live entertainment. On top of our local talent, Rock City, our local gig mecca, had garnered a reputation as being one of the best places in England, if not Europe, to play, and so we got all manner of bands flying to the UK, playing at the Marquee in London, and at Rock City, and then flying over to Europe to continue their tours. We'd see up and coming bands, both there and at the nearby Royal Concert Hall (which held about 3000 people to Rock City's 2000), and caught bands on the way up like Def Leppard (on their first tour after Rick Allen lost his arm), Iron Maiden, and Guns'n'Roses (the original line-up, natch, on their first full tour of the UK). Life was simple - beer, rock and roll, and women (usually in that order, due to our relative shyness around the gentler sex - my god, if I knew then what I know now, and had the confidence that I have today I'd have been dangerous! [;)]). Life was certainly sweet (and is now, but for different reasons).
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