The Drones’ worst show ever was in York in England on 24 April 2007. York is like a citadel, it’s a walled city, and they were doing all this medieval cosplay when we arrived – the women were all dressed as Maid Marian and all the men were like knights in shining armour. I vividly remember a guy dressed in chain mail pushing a pram.
Remembering the frisson there used to be between the UK and minions like us from the colonies, it made us laugh – like, look at these fucking idiots. And the minute we got into the gig venue, it was the same thing – kids dressed up like 1977-by-numbers punks. More cosplay!
I don’t think any Australian band back then ever looked forward to the UK leg of a tour, unless they were in London or at an All Tomorrow’s Parties festival. People usually came to our shows but at this one they just didn’t, except for these three little 15-year-olds who were dressed up like Joe Strummer, and they were yelling at us, which was a bit annoying. These days you can have people like Courtney Barnett and King Gizz and the kids will go sick, but back then, people really hated Australians in England.
Anyway, all our equipment broke down. The gig ended with just me, playing through my amp which had somehow survived. Everyone else’s amps had died all at the same time. I wrapped it up, went off and we went out the back to where the van was, and every window in the van had been smashed. Everything had been stolen. So we were like, for fuck’s sake! How much worse can it get?!
We were making a list for the cops about everything that had gone missing. (Maybe we made a few exaggerations on some stuff … ) And just when I’m about to hand over the list, they got a call on the radio that they’d found the guy. So all the cops took off. Half an hour later they came back with all of our shit in these huge police evidence bags, and all of it was completely covered in mud. Somehow this single guy had lugged five people’s stuff down by a canal, and the cops had found him, beaten the crap out of him and got all our shit back. They were all covered in mud too, but they were very pleased with themselves, and we were quite happy to see our stuff.
Eventually it was time to go. We went to the nearest dumpster, pulled all the cardboard out of it and gaffer-taped it to the car so we’d have windows for the drive to Somerset, where we actually were playing an All Tomorrow’s Parties gig. That was the longest, coldest drive in human history.
The only good thing we got out of that were those police evidence bags – they lasted for about five years as laundry bags. They were fucking great!
It was miserable but funny. We always found a way to make things funny. I’m amazed at how resilient we were.
Gareth Liddiard’s band Tropical Fuck Storm is touring Australia now
