There's an Egg in My Soup (17 page)

After a couple of months, the band asked me to join them as singer/harmonica player, to play rhythm and blues. I was delighted, for many reasons – primarily because I was sick to death of playing in the ex-pat pubs in Warsaw, but also because I was stagnating in Minsk, with no hobbies besides reading and binging.

As a band, the will to work was there. Unfortunately, it just wasn't always there at the same time. We rehearsed on Sundays, which was a bad day to do anything. Sundays in Poland are days of rest. And I
mean, days of rest. Most Poles won't lift a finger on Sundays. Whole towns go into shutdown mode. If you want to get anything, you generally have to get it by one o'clock or you starve. Although I usually managed to pick up a cooked chicken from a kiosk that remained open a bit longer at the train station.

I had to travel to Kaluszyn every week, with the cooked chicken under my arm, which was a bit of a chore for me. In winter on Sunday, when you're tired and feeling miserable, the last thing you want to do is to sit on the cold back seat of a bus. My general Sunday routine was to stay in bed for most of it, getting up when the greater part of the day was gone, head to the cinema and then go back to bed until Monday.

Rehearsals generally started at around three, which meant I didn't get up until about one. It was dark and cold when I left, dark and freezing when I returned home. No breakfast, no dinner, just coffee or beer and the chicken at the clubhouse, with the musty odour of cigarettes and dirty guitar strings.

We would all arrive on a Sunday afternoon carrying various moods with us. Pawel the bass player was the most unpredictable. It depended on how much vodka he had drunk on Saturday, and how much he wanted to drink on Sunday. Many times I'd arrive at the club and he'd be asleep on the couch. No one would wake him until we were all plugged in and ready to go. Kazik was always willing to work when he was able, but the
problem there was getting him to sit behind his kit for long enough to get through a decent set. He was a bit of a drinker too, and he'd be up off his seat every ten minutes for either a beer, a cigarette or a visit to the toilet. It drove Jarek mad, but I just found it amusing.

With rehearsals going as well as could be expected, the next problem facing us was our name. They had been called ‘After All' until I came along and disregarded it. It wasn't bluesy enough and didn't have any ring to it. I proposed ‘Comfortably Southern' and ‘Blue Juice', and we all finally agreed with the former. A week later at rehearsals, they came up to me with long faces. None of the Poles could pronounce it. So we went back to the drawing board and a monosyllabic title that I don't even want to remember was finally decided upon.

It was some six months later when our first gig proper was organised. Before that we'd run a few open house parties at the club by way of rehearsal. We had worked hard and had a great sound and it had become really enjoyable. It takes a lot to get two hours of material together and not one of the boys would let up until every number was perfect. Whereas I practised with them every Sunday, they played together every night. That's how dedicated they were.

On the day of the gig I remember being nervous. It was mid-summer and the heat was reminiscent of the day I had first arrived in Poland. We were booked to
play in a small bar in Minsk, one that had not been open for very long and was keen to establish itself as something more than just another drinking den for winos.

Most people came out of curiosity, people of all ages. Live music was a very rare thing and it was a grand night out. We won that night and, even though it was a dingy pub in a dingy town way off in the eastern recesses of Poland, it felt good. Because it's the achievement, damn it, albeit short-lived, that makes it worthwhile.

There were many more gigs after the summer, further afield in oddball towns. There were long drives home at night in the backs of vans, with bottles of vodka passed around to keep out the cold. I enjoyed the whole idea of it. It was a good way of letting off steam after a heavy week. We got into a studio and things got better. There was more interest in us as a band. Then the gear got upgraded and a few leaps were made on the ladder, up from the mud-coated rungs at the bottom towards the painted ones at the top. Less crowded but harder work. I remembered, though, what a full-time musician had once said to me: Music is great as a hobby, but not for keeping the fridge full. And the reason for that is simple – the fun goes out of it.

Not everything should be fun, but it helps. I had a little desk calendar in my room that had a new proverb for each day. One sticks in my mind: ‘When a man finds
what he likes doing and gets paid for it, then he's found his job.' Of course, it's practically impossible to achieve that, and gets harder as time goes on and you're still trying to figure out what it is that will fulfil that wish. But it's a nice goal to work towards.

We were enjoying the band, but we weren't getting paid much. I didn't worry too much about that, I wasn't doing it for money. But some of the guys surely were. Maybe that was one factor that contributed to the rising damp that finally set in, but eventually the fun part began to suffer. Climbing into a cold van on a Tuesday night in the middle of winter to get to a gig when you'd rather be at home with a hot pot of tea is perhaps the best way of having a bad time when you're in a band. The arc of the mood pendulum is wider and people get irritable. After the gig, when the adrenaline is high, it's better. But there's a lot of drinking to carry it forward and a blind man can see that a happy medium is a very difficult thing to find.

There was one gig in a town further south on a Monday evening. A town further south called Sokolow Podlaski, a place really not worth describing. Nobody knew how the hell a gig had been arranged for a Monday evening, but it was, and we had to do it. Kazik was drinking along the way and, as usual, the van was being stopped every twenty minutes for him to get out for a piss in the snow. It was bitterly cold, we were all very miserable, and Pawel the elder was getting annoyed.
He had just come from work in the factory and hadn't eaten and all he wanted to do was get the whole thing over with and head home to bed.

When we arrived, the place was inert and empty. All the gear had to be carried down into the club from the cold car park. Pawel and I went off to find some food, managing to get two microwave hamburgers each from one of those hotdog kiosks. I normally wouldn't go near them, but we had no alternative. Standing outside in the stiff evening with our hands freezing up rapidly, wolfing down the burgers before the sound check, Pawel suddenly tells me with utter sincerity that he's not in the mood and he is either going to be brilliant or a downright disgrace. Either way, he doesn't particularly care.

I think that's what finished it. It didn't look like it at the time, since we had our first gig in Warsaw lined up for the following week. But the jaded expression on his face said it all. There he was, heading towards his thirtieth birthday, eating microwave hamburgers on a freezing Monday night, having just come from his factory job.

I think back now and recall an omen. There was a man who was sort of an adopted member of the band, who came to all the gigs and all the rehearsals without fail. Because the club belonged to the kids in the town, a lot of people would drift in and out on a Sunday and listen to the band. But this man was there
every week, at times whispering a few words to Jarek about the sound or the set-up or the quality of new numbers. Apart from that he rarely spoke. He just sat, listened and drank. He was probably in his forties, but looked a hell of a lot older because he was a bit of a boozer. I only ever knew him by his first name, Janusz, and whenever I asked who he was I was simply told that he was an ‘old blues man'. I had no idea what that meant, but, used to the guys' reserve, I left it alone. Janusz clearly loved the lads.

One night, however, we played in a bar that had a piano, and at the end of the night when the place was clearing out and we were all sitting around having a beer, Janusz strolled up to the keys and began playing. I can't remember what he played, but whatever it was it was beautiful. It was only then that the guys told me he'd been a professional musician.

The following Saturday, I'm on the bus heading to the club before the gig in Warsaw. The weather is simply fierce. There's a blizzard blowing outside and the driver is crawling along at a snail's pace. Not far out of town the bus stops and I see Kazik getting on. He gives me a wave and as he pushes through the people to get to the back to where I'm sitting, I notice something unusual about him. He's pissed, but that's not wholly unusual. This time he resembles a soulless carcass. He looks like he hasn't slept in two days and as he sits down and begins to explain things to me, it turns out
that it's exactly that.

Today is Saturday. Himself and Pawel the elder were out on Thursday, watching some local band in the pub in Minsk. They are both fairly heavy drinkers, but the amount consumed that evening must have been double the normal and an argument ensued. Kazik got called a crap drummer and Pawel got called a crap bass player. As a result of this simple trade of words, Kazik became depressed and continued on the binge through Friday, Friday night, Saturday morning and this afternoon.

‘Tom,' he says, as his pickled eyes roll over in their sockets, ‘this is our last concert.'

He can barely keep his head up and when we get off the bus, I have to carry him through the driving snow to the club, where the younger Pawel and Jarek sit waiting. As soon as Jarek sees the two of us approaching, his face literally caves in. His patience had been waning anyway over the past few weeks, with the amount of drinking at rehearsals and the unprofessional approach towards the band as a whole. There had been arguments, which I kept out of. I was only ever there once a week, and stayed away from the jar on most occasions. From what I could see, whatever the problem was, it went back years. The drinking was more deep-rooted and there was nothing I could do about it.

Kazik is placed on the couch and quickly regresses into the land of nod. I try to do the explaining, but it's
not easy. Young Pawel simply looks inconsolable and my heart goes out to him. At only seventeen, he probably viewed all this as a possible break and had sat in his room with his guitar on his lap for five hours a day. Jarek doesn't even look at me while I talk. He simply shakes his head and stares at the sleeping Kazik, who shows no signs of waking up, never mind being able to clench a pair of drumsticks.

‘So, where's Pawel?' Jarek suddenly asks. Nobody knows. So we wait. Finally, after half an hour under the most taut ceiling of silence, Jarek swears and goes out to phone him. Although I think his condition is rather obvious to all by now.

Ten minutes later, Jarek bursts back in, telling me to ring the bar in Warsaw and cancel the gig. It seems that Pawel did exactly the same thing as Kazik and is now in bed, somewhere away down the yellow brick road with a bottle of vodka.

It may be difficult for people back home to appreciate the role alcohol plays in Poland. For us, we go out on a Friday or Saturday, over-indulge a bit and get our act together again for work on Monday. We're aware of what we're doing and we know it has to come to an end. For a lot of Poles, used to dissatisfaction in many areas of life, that end is not perceived. If they start on a binge, it doesn't matter if it goes on for days. If it puts them in a happier state of mind, they'll stay there until they feel it's time to cope with whatever it is
they've run away from. If they don't turn up for work, so be it. So, when Jarek tells me to cancel the gig, he knows what he is talking about. These guys could be out for the next week. Unfortunately, though, it isn't that simple.

The venue, Morgan's Irish Bar, is a popular Irish bar run by a man from Northern Ireland, Ollie, who has always been really decent to me and other fellow travellers. He has put people up in his own house when they were stuck, and gives everyone credit behind the bar. He was the first Irishman I met in Warsaw and he made us all feel like a group of close friends. I played the odd gig in his first bar, sometimes sitting there to wait for the first train back to Minsk at 5am. Ollie would still be there, telling me to go into the kitchen to make myself a sandwich.

He had opened a far superior bar in the centre of Warsaw and was booking in bands to attract the crowds. I just couldn't afford to leave him without a band on a Saturday night.

So I go over to where Pawel lives and after arguing with his mother, manage to root him out of bed. He emerges finally, half dressed and laughing like a donkey in the freezing snow and darkness. When we get back to the club, Kazik is being fed with coffee, even though he hasn't woken up yet. Everybody ignores Pawel, who doesn't seem too concerned, searching under the seats for something to drink. Miraculously, we get everyone
into the van and on the road to Warsaw. Kazik still hasn't woken up though, and Pawel has managed to find a beer somewhere to get stuck into along the way.

It's a nightmare, it really is. In an hour's time we have to do a two-hour set in a very popular spot. We arrive at around seven to set up, and I inform Ollie that he needn't worry, they're just a bit tired. Right at that moment, Pawel staggers to the bar and orders two-ounce shots of vodka for himself and Kazik, who has finally woken up. Ollie stares. Isn't he one of yours?

The night went well. In fact, it was the best gig we ever did. On the way home in the van, I made a vague attempt at patching up the members of the group. I was going home for Christmas and said we'd all have a nice break and get it together after the holidays. They didn't look convinced. At least, nobody was going to make the first move of reconciliation. A simple handshake was all it would have taken. And I thought the Irish were stubborn.

When I came back after Christmas, there was worse news. The town council had decided to close down the clubhouse. So even if the band were still together, we had no place to rehearse in. It was attracting the wrong people, was the reason given. I wasn't so sure.