Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Mellotronists

<< ligger"??????????? Define, please? >>

someone who's neither audience nor directly connected with the band, but who
belongs in the former & fancies the latter more. if they make themselves
useful, all well & good, at which point someone might start referring to them
as "the roadie" or, if they're lucky, a "tech" of some sort. usually, though,
they're just in the way and the adulation gets on y'r nerves after about 5
seconds or the first time they're in the way while your arms are full of
marshall cab. they'll be forever banging on about how they have been
practising the bass or something, in the vain hope that one day y'r actual
bass player will break his wrist (not that this handicaps most of us) or get
sacked. occasionally the ligger will attempt to orchestrate a transgression
on a band-member's part which will enable his own hiring ("well, he's always
at the gigs anyway, which is more than we can say for..." you get the idea).
they can occasionally, however, make themselves useful retrieving that last-
pint-before-we-go-on when you've made a dash to tune up or re-arrange snare
drums after the last lot have fucked off or been boo-ed off, though the
mid-set bar trips are usually left to people closer to the band.....

I have seen this strategy work exactly once, in the case of one stevie
baggot. years ago, our own steve dinsdale was the drummer in (I kid you not)
a hanoi rocks tribute band called "cheyenne pearls". baggot played sax and
sang, both badly, but in that context, no-one cared. a few years later, after
a sustained bout of ligging, he was hired by dogs d'amour in text-book
circumstances, and at the marquee, no less.

now you know the correct english rock&roll term for those people you thought
of as merely over-keen. don't ever give one a laminate or guest-list status.
this might sem a bit harsh, but you have been warned.

d/r.m.i./400nr1098, oft-gazed upon but never handled by liggers.