I am an Alessi Pleasure squeezer!

The final gig of this week is also the final in Sao Paulo before I move off on to Brazilia to do three gigs.The venue is our rehearsal studio but as it also has a stage in it, it can and does often become a host to gigs. The journey for me is negligible and the surroundings are familiar.
The response to the gig is phenomenal, bringing in twice as many people as expected, making it wall to wall in there. That was fantastic but it brought with it a problem, the heat was unbearable. It was so hot in there that the evaporated sweat was pouring down the walls in a stream. When we prepare to take the stage we can barely breathe. The only stage light is one red bulb, that must be the most rudimentary stage lighting I have ever performed under and I was just about able to see what I was doing.
Until, someone starts filming with a professional camera. Now I know that it is impossible to manage filming done by people with cameras in their phones but when someone is filming with something as big as a profressional camera, you would expect that person to gain some permission to do the filming, but no, not this person.
It is a shame he did not, because he is a big Neurotics fan, we could have worked something out for him, but no! Out of the blue he comes on with this thing with a blinding white light to help him film in crisp high definition. The effect on me, who has little or no light to counteract his, means as he keeps trying to film from below I cannot see anything but blinding light. Despite my shades I cannot see anything of my guitar neck or fret board. He keeps on sticking it in our faces too, with no idea of how obtrusive it is. He has just changed a difficult lighting situation into an impossible one and is now helping to ruin the beginning of our set. As soon as I finish with 'Wake Up' which was a mess because of him, I shout at him to stop it, the light has to go off. Eventually he films in ambient light which is fine and we try our best to turn a mess into The Mess, which takes off to a thunderous start.

Each time we finish a song we have to have a moment to breathe a bit. I am being filmed by multiple cameras and also there are a couple of professional looking photographers there all capturing the snot, sweat and gunk coming out of every facial orifice, not nice!
In this heat, I am struggling but I've mentally calculated that I think I can just make it through the entire set, just.
The scene in front of me is astonishing, the audience are going wild, they don't care about the heat and here's the thing, they are singing along and often drown out our vocals, I have never known anything like it and these moments are going to be cherished by me for years to come. It reminded me of the Cavern in Liverpool in the sixties where there was no ventilation at all and those nights at the birth of rock 'n' roll caused the smoke, the perfume the sweat to coalesce on the ceiling and drip onto the heads of the kids in the audience. Our night was a bit like that, we're not the Beatles but this was down to earth no nonsense dirty, sweaty rock 'n' roll, straight from the heart to the heart with no corporate nonsense in-between. Grade A content shot straight into the vein of desire to create a need for more, more, more bullshit free rock. Down with corporate music, down with the music corporations who what to keep us in our places, down with corporate influences who wants creativity to fit the right shapes. It shouldn't, be awkward, that's what it is all about. Be different, don't follow, lead!
Don't take No for an answer, take it as a challenge.

The sweat is now running down the inside of my shades so that the entire audience looks like one, a seething sea of excitement, I'm still trying to play my music accurately but the only place I can clearly see is directly below me, when I am not looking through my glasses. I look at the puddle at my feet, the sweat dripping off my arms, my soaking clothes, the waterfall of a face and I am alarmed.
I didn't know I had that much water in me and now I definitely don't. Soon in a desperate measure, my body will be forced to take water from my brain and then I will fall, guitar around my neck in to the very audience that normally sustains me.

But I am one stubborn sonofabitch and I want to complete this set, I can do this and I will do it. I am enjoying this and I will squeeze every drop of pleasure out of this moment, I am an Alessi Pleasure Squeezer, rain it down on meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
We finish the number, Demente comes over and says that David is feeling really ill because of the heat and can't do the full set.
That is fine, that is completely understandable, drummers have the most physical job in a band such as this, if I am  struggling, then he definitely would be. He valiantly agrees to do three more numbers which only leaves a couple we dont do. I know it's cruel, but I think, Brazilians Nil, Pasty Northern Europeans One....yes!
We finish to deafening applause and do not go back on, we are done, we are finished.

Yes and I am still standing, and after I do some photo posing for people and have secured my guitar, I accept some help worthy of James Brown and his stage managed feints when he is helped from the stage because he is so funked up. Mine has a little more reality and I was lead by a punk down some very steep steps out into the street where I catch a breeze and begin to recover.
There isn't a single scrap of my clothes that is not soaking, I needed ringing out.The punk offers me some of his cold water and I would dearly loved to have finished it all but I guzzled heartily and then gave it back.
I then happily sign some cd's and records as I am beginning to come around.
This is the greatest gig of the tour so far, in a few days time I will be leaving for Brasília and another backing band, the Brasilia Neurotics perhaps?

Could it better this.

We shall see.