Should have just gotten my money back
I was living near Chandlers Ford at the time, but playing in a band based in Bath. This meant a lot of commuting, as I was juggling that with being a placement student in a full time job and having a girlfriend who lived in London. This left me pretty exhausted and penniless most of the time.

As you can imagine, rehearsals were pretty difficult to get organised and often would be all day affairs to make the most of the travelling involved. It was all going pretty well though, the songs were sounding good, people liked them and before long I sorted us out with a fairly high key show in Southampton (paid too!).

As the gig was on a weekend, it was up to me to find somewhere to rehearse early in the day itself as we hadn't managed to get a practice in for a little while before that. Regularly spending my time elsewhere, I had no idea where would be good for this, so I got the Yellow Pages, started searching and eventually decided on a place in Shirley, Southampton. It was easy to get to and had cheap rates, just what we needed!

That day the rest of the band drove down from Bath and I met them at the place. After a little confusion on arrival (the address looked to me like a furniture shop), we eventually found a door with a buzzer which seemed to correlate to the "A" part of the address I'd been given. A tall, hippy looking bloke answered the door and let us in. We climbed the stairs only to find this "rehearsal studio" was in fact his rather manky flat, though a sizable one at that. The guy even had a full blown PA, so rather than ask too many questions, we started setting up. Not long after, the guy said he had to nip into town and asked whether we'd be okay carrying on without him, and if he was too long we could just close up when we were done. Satisfied that we had our space, we paid him for the hire and he was off on his way.

Within about 30 seconds of Chris trying out his drums to make sure he had them set up correctly, the buzzer started manically ringing. As it wasn't stopping, we went to answer it only to be met with a seething shop manager shouting at us wondering what the hell we were playing at. After a short amount of abuse, we got him to calm down enough to explain our side of the story. Turns out, the shop owner had complained about the resident numerous times as between his flat and the shop below was no zero soundproofing. As this guy was trying to shift an old sofa in his shop, the customer could barely hear him talk as we were playing away obliviously upstairs. He offered for us to hear how loud it was, now slightly calmer and believing that we were oblivious in this situation. As the drums started, their barely muffled monstrous sound bellowed around the now rocked-out furniture shop.

Reluctantly we had to start packing away, panicking slightly that this big gig was this evening and that we were all pretty rusty. Combine that with the fact that we were all living pretty much hand to mouth at the time, meant that there was no chance of getting anything else booked even if something was available. The atmosphere was pretty shit to say the least.

So after packing the equipment, getting it down to this flat, carrying it up stairs, setting it up, dismantling it and carrying it back to the car, the others looked dispondently around wearing their "what now?" faces. I would have phoned the guy, but the only number we had for him was his landline.

I was damn angry at this point and frustrated at not being able to vent that anger though I hadn't forgotten the fact that we were in this guys flat, the place where he lived. Although filthy and with very little of worth other than his PA and some food in the kitchen, it was still where he called home. I went through each of his condiments in the kitchen, pissing a little in every one. Urine was the medium and vengeance was the game. I became a pissing machine, on his sofa, on his PA, on his floorboards, as many places as my bladder would allow until I was spent. Once this was done, I looked around to try and find something of roughly equal worth to what we'd paid for the rehearsal time. Unfortunately what was there was pretty shitty and unsurprisingly smelling of piss so I left it at that.

If I hadn't done the whole peeing thing in anger, I may have subsequently contacted him when he was in to get my money back, but as it was I thought it better not to contact him again. It seemed like a great form of revenge at the time, but in the long run, that money would really have come in handy.
( ma0sm, Thu 17 Sep 2009, 15:10, 1 reply)

That's
kinda mean.
(TheHBoxster is probably playing Beatles Rock Band on, Thu 17 Sep 2009, 18:59, closed)