Tales of a Sweaty Idiot, vol. 1

So in addition to cooking food and drinking beer, Great Men do actually play music from time to time! Last week such an event occurred in Nottingham at a lovely place called the Golden Fleece, organised by a fellow called Will who has broken every bone in his body but still didn't let that be an excuse to miss us. Excuses that other people successfully used were "my friend got spewy" and "it's warm outside".

Before I go further let me mention a guitar that I call the Black Lodge Telecaster. It's called this because I spent ages with a ruler, masking tape, and spray paint to give it some stripes to look a bit like the floor of the Black Lodge from Twin Peaks. Lemma 1: I am an idiot.

Back to the Fleece: Supporting us were a band called The Cupid Stunt from Leeds, who I'm pleased to say were a pleasure as gentlemen and a pleasure as a band. Great Men approve of The Cupid Stunt. Hopefully we'll get a trip to Yorkshire to play with them some time. Like us they have guitar, bass, and electronically generated drums: a soundman's dream! They do have vocals, but that's probably because Greg can sing and I can't so fair enough!

Then we came on and played all our hit singles. I could talk about the music all day but there's only 2 things you really need to know:

1) Although the night before I'd been planning on playing my red Les Paul, some weird technical glitches meant I played the Black Lodge Telecaster instead. Incidentally guitar gimps I've recently upgraded to 11s and I'd recommend it.

2) It was a hot day. Ignorant commoners everywhere claimed it was a heat wave and that they might die. I crossed my fingers. I also played guitar under some lights near a kitchen that had just given me some tasty fish and chips. Lemma 2: I am sweaty. I am portly and maroon, I am the sky and the water.

Some of you may be scientists, some of you artists, still more of you just not as stupid as me. Long story short when a sweaty idiot plays guitar quite aggressively and said guitar has dubiously painted lines on it, this happens:

I was actually quite relieved because when I first looked down at my guitar I thought I was bleeding black blood.

At this point perhaps you'd expect a moral to the story, or maybe just to discover that I'd learned my lesson. Well yesterday I stabbed my hand with a fork, and now I'm off back to the garage to put a fresh coat of spray paint on my new Les Paul...