The 3d's

26th August 2005

..............................THE BEAUTY OF THE BEAST
........................................(in glorious 3D)

I was listening to a song the other night when I experienced again that moment of excitement, the frisson that a great rock song can give you. I don’t think the moment has a name. But luckily my merry band of friends have given it one (like we did with many other things). The song had “beast” OR the song gave me “the beast”. That beast, the spark you can get from a great song, seems to ignite some sort of primitive passions and can turn into an all-consuming fire.
You are once again a teenager and invincible.
and it makes you feel like - driving fast in your car, skulling a beer, hell! skulling a whisky - even incorrectly filling in your tax form.
The song I was listening to was “Serve the Servants” by Nirvana. We were getting ready to go out and I had an itunes hit list playing as an accompaniment.
What a great mood it placed me in.
Ironically the song contains the line.
"Teenage angst has paid off well / Now I'm bored and old"
because for a while there I was far more the angsty teen than the bored old guy with the tweed jacket and those funny bits of leather on the elbows.
Punk rock has provided me with “the beast” more than any other music form.
Moments of frisson so papable you could slice them up and feed them to the dog, from bands like the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, the Buzzcocks. Ah… Those were the days. No wonder we acted like maniacs, if that was our soundtrack. The godfather of punk too – Iggy. He is beastmaster general and his songs still get me.
Banning “Loose”, “No Fun” or “Gimme Danger“ etc from the car when I‘m driving after junior is born might be a very good idea.

I never really went crazy about Nirvana when they first emerged although I remember watching the video for “Smells like Teen Spirit “ and knowing something was Up. I just don’t jump on bandwagons very well when they come through. I think I am too cynical for that. My first instinct if everybody tells me something is good is “Ok well see”. Reticence, caution or a reluctance to trust others judgement, I dont know why. I had the same reaction to the Smiths as well. In both cases once the bandwagon was well in gone and in fact on the scrap heap - I was ready for the ride. In both of those cases they became some of my favourite bands.
Five years after the fact I’m like
“have you heard Nevermind?.. oh-my-god!”
to weary/wary friends, who knew what was about to come.
The minor tragedy is that when NIRVANA came to New Zealand I met them and saw them live from the side of the stage and didn’t realize I was witnessing rock history or that I would end up regarding them as, not only a truly great rock band but the LAST truly great rock band.
I knew they were good. I just didn’t know they were THAT good - my own obsession being a few years away.
I was at the Nirvana concert because my good friends, the 3d’s, were the support band. I was Dave Mitchell, one of the guitarists, roadie which was a fairly terrifying prospect.
Terrifying mostly because I really didn’t want to ACTUALLY be a roadie. I didn’t want to run out on stage and do anything. I just wanted a free ticket to the gig and a chance to help them finish off their rider. And the chances I would have to do something were quite high because of the way Dave approached his instrument.

To those who haven't seen him play perhaps I should explain.
If, when you think of a person playing guitar, you imagine someone like Wes Montgomery sitting passively on a chair caressing his instrument with the tenderness with which you would treat a small furry animal you are miles away from Dave Mitchell’s “style”. He attacks the guitar and though there are long segments of relative calm they are punctuated by brief periods of frenzied ugliness. He looks like someone trying to rip a small bird to pieces with his barehands.
After the sort of onslaught he subjects the thing to, it’s a wonder there is a guitar left. And sometimes there isn’t. During his recent performance in Dunedin he got so excited he smashed the guitar up. Unfortunately it was not his guitar. Some poor fool lent him their instrument. And I imagine him watching Dave saying ..
“yeah! Go for it man! Yeah Dave! Whoooo!”
Followed by the sounds of smashing etc.. then..
“No, No, no! noooo.. my guitar … lord no..”
After a good gig, sometimes Dave's glasses were so steamed up he could barely see to exit the stage. He would just have to follow the smell of whisky. The stage itself could look like a slaughterhouse. Blood everywhere.
Another job for Daves roadie can be simply FINDING the guitar after gig because he can often just throw it away once he’s finished abusing it.

The 3d’s were “the little band that could” in my New Zealand music life. They could have gone all the way. Not to mainstream success but certainly to the sort of success in the “alternative” sub-market that I respected. They could have actually MADE some money. They had some influencial fans - Sonic Youth/Pavement/Guided by Voices etc ...and they were my mates.

The Nirvana gig went ok but onstage Nirvana were so incredibly loud they made the 3d’s sound like a wind up toy. I was almost physically sick they were so loud. My body felt like it was being punched. We met them too, and they were very nice boys. Dave Grohl and his bird watched the 3d’s from the side of the stage with me and loved it.
Yay! I think back and realise it was just as well I didn’t rate them as I do know, because I would have been all gushy and that’s awful.

The only other time I appeared on stage or side-stage in my brief career as guitar roadie was when the 3d’s played at Western Springs with U2. This was quite early on and as the 3d's had little experience of a venue of this size, the nerve quotient was high. Very high actually and I amused myself on the way to Western Springs in the van by teasing the most fraught of them, drummer Dominic, mercilessly. He was beyond nervous, petrified , is a more apt description. His complexion was a shade of green I had never seen before or since. He looked like he wanted to die. It was great.

BIG GREEN MAN

In the end all I had to do was grin and Dom would say..
“fuck off mate”

When we travelled in the van down the bullock track hill beside the stadium Dominic couldn’t even look at the venue.
Luckily, I was there to tell him what was going on..
“ It’s filling up now.. boy”
followed by a whistle.
“Wow “ I said helpfully “this is the same stage David Bowie was on.. remember..”
“Imagine… 30,000 people.. that’s like a normal gig you guys play but times… oh let me see then… 70.. “
Silence. Stony silence.
“I sure wouldn’t want to make a mistake.. Not in front of that big a crowd…”
Right about this time there was probably a minor amount of physical violence directed my way and I was told my short career as a guitar roadie would be over after today.
We got down and backstage and were shown our caravan. We had a few beers and pretty soon everyone in the band started to relax a bit. Then something awful happened. I started to get nervous.
Dominic picked up on it immediately.
“You alright mate. You look a bit peeky”
“have something to eat. You need your strength. After all you wouldn’t want to run on stage in front of ALL THOSE PEOPLE and trip up or anything.. eh”
I looked at Dave. He seemed peaceful enough.
“Dave “ I said “be kind to your guitar tonight”
“I’m feeling pretty pissed off actually .and I think I’ll take it out on….hemmm let me see… yes… my guitar will do nicely”
Then just before they were about to go on Dave said
“I don’t know if I turned on my tuner”
Me “just turn it on when you go on”
“I dont think so. I need you to go and do it. It’s a bit tricky”
I thought he was joking.
Me - “No way” and “Why do I have to do it?”
All of the band together “ Because you are Dave’s roadie”
Bastard. I knew they were right.
The stadium wasn’t full but there were a lot of people there.
When I ran out on to the stage to check the tuner I made two mistakes. I forgot to run in the roadie half stooping gait, aIso I had failed to wear the international roadies uniform of a black product T-shirt with a bunch of keys hanging of my belt. As a consequence the crowd didn’t know I was a roadie and rose as one and cheering as I came out, thinking I was the band. As soon as they realsied I was me there ahhhh turned to oooooooohh and the sat back down again. I was pretty pleased with my work. I have disappointed a few people in my time but never 20,000 punters at once.

The 3d’s played without mishap and Dave failed to trouble a single string or small bird throughout.

There is another story to relate from the U2 concert.
After the playing and the gratuitous opening and consuming of beer and wine afterwards, we were hungry. Dom and I went off and stuck our heads in the support bands tent. Club sandwiches and what we in New Zealand laughingly call "celebrities". .. I dont think so.
Emboldened by the brief time onstage, Dom as crowd pleaser, me as a massive disappointment, we decided to eat in the U2 tent. Adam was there. He told Dom he enjoyed the concert. We selected some crayfish or oysters or maybe it was irish stew I can’t remember and noticed some official type was watching us. The food was ok but it was boring there so we went back to our festive caravan.
A while later someone poked their head into the caravan and said the tour manager was not going to pay the 3d’s because someone had broken the rules, eating in the special U2 enclosure.
“who the hell could that have been?”
I muttered under my breath as I shimmied out the caravan window.
To cut a long story short.
Bono, or Saint Bono as he should be rightly known, found out about the bullshit ..
“I wont be havin’ that at all ..at all… at all.. “ he allegedly drawled in pidgin irish…
He sent over a bottle of bubbly and DOUBLED the 3d’s fee for the gig.
What a guy. And if I ever become Mayor, the streets wont have no name.. They will be called Bono Ave. or similar
One of the best gigs the 3d's played and the time they made me the most proud was when they performed at the Big day Out in 1996. The promoter, Doug Hood had somehow scheduled the 3d's to play last on the big stage. I dont know how he did It - trickery, skullduggery, or maybe he just asked the organisers..regardless - The 3d's were sort-of head lining and playing AFTER - the Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden, Nick Cave and The Breeders. Soundgarden were on before them and before they finished their long winded pretentious writhing many people in the crowd had crossed to the 3d's side of the stage. Some began chanting for them. I couldn't believe it. The band had just returned from a tour of the states. I had seen them play before they left, which was ok. But there is nothing like touring to hone a bands skills and on that night they were magnificent. They were tight. They were loose. They were powerful and they were my buddies. Watching them perform I could scarcely believe I had once had the priviledge of underwhelming the crowd before they graced the stage with their 3 dimensional asses.
That night I experienced more frisson and "beast" than I knew what the hell to do with. Glorious.