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blog post on murdoc’s profile, plastic beach website 5/10/2010

Well. Wow! What A pointless week that was. Sugary Beelzebub !! The US authorities man. Total bummers. I’d snuck over to the US to go monitor the great and good ‘Gorillaz live band’, y’know, before they hit the main stage for the big Coachella festival slot. The UK warm up shows were great, but we / “they” hadn’t played with the any of the visuals or any of the guests collaborators, so y’know…the stakes were high. And so was I. I would have pulled Coachella if the band were just going to be limp. I wouldn’t have even blinked. It would have ruined the good and glorious work I’ve spent the last decade building up, and I’m not have that.….Anyway….

I was all hyped up the night before my departure, just rocking around my Plastic Beach, tweeting my nuts off. Rum n’ rohypnol on the go. Bags packed full of flick-knives and rum and spare nappies and capes and Satnavs. I couldn’t have been more fired up about this gig.

So, next right, I revved up my crappy little submarine, and after it spent two hours on its own zipping round the bay like a wonky Toyota (I have to upgrade that thing), I popped a couple of Xanies then purred my way over to the States. Feeling a bit mongy, like, but nice and calm inside….Mmmm….

It was great…Took me 24 hours of underwater hi-jinx but I eventually arrive in LA on the Tuesday, unzipped my wetsuit, and then checked myself into The Roosevelt, on Hollywood Boulevard. Nice! The so-called ‘party hotel’ of Tinsel Town. Spacious rooms, clean toilets, big wet swimming pool. Took a quick shower and then scooted down to the rehearsal venue where we were testing out the big screens...They look enormous! The Gorillaz backing band were in top form. Keyboards – check. Two sets of drums – check. Backing Vocals (four) – check. One Damon Albarn – check. Half the Clash – check. All good, and sounding unique! Let’s roll out the visuals and guests….

FRIDAY NIGHT in L.A.

So come Friday night, the April 16th, I went down to check on the Gorillaz G –Club gig, the first live gig with the visuals and some of those there guests we always crap on about. (I was at the back incognito dressed as Eddy Murphy from the Nutty Professor. Don’t know why I chose that one, but it was the last costume in the shop and it took me four hours to get the damn thing on. Still, did the job.).

But next thing, right, I notice we’re a few guests short of the full meringue. Turns out that due to that sodding Icelandic volcano explosion which went off we missed out on having the likes of Mos Def, The Hypnotic Brass, Shaun Ryder, Una Stubbs, Mark. E. Smith Bashy and Kano (or “Ashy” and “VolKano” as they’re now known round these parts), Rosie Wilson…loads of our sparkly glittery highlights…all stranded in Blighty with no way of getting to L.A.

My theory is that was Paul Simonon’s bass that managed to shift the ash out that Volcano. Nice work, Simmo!

Still, as I suspected there was more than enough action for our small, cosy little selected audience. The set looked amazing… although the atmosphere in the makeshift concert-cum-rehearsal hall was a little..er… dry.

Everyone was cross-legged so while they got blasted with 60ft screens, giant Doggy Doggs, the legendary Bobby Womack and seismic sub-sonic rumblings so deep I think half the first three rows actually sharted! I was just laughing away at the back in my Eddie Murphy suit….

At the same time their reaction was kinda somewhat static and …quiet. I don’t think they know exactly how to react….Maybe of having 8 zillion volts of sound and light blasted right at them left them a bit frazzled….And we weren’t even giving them the full spectacle….They look shell-shocked so I knew we were all set to go…Set us up good and ready for the Coachella meltdown….

That was the Friday. Friday The 16th. So, listen, after that we all go back to the Roosevelt, for our own little private Gorillaz party, to celebrate all the work we’d put together over the last couple of months. We were finally there and ready for battle. Nice hotel, as I said. Although I don’t think hiring an 8ft bouncer to kick you out of your own party when you’ve dropped more the 60k hiring a roped of area just to serve up a bunch of tepid drinks and a few chicken drumsticks is really anyway to run a top-notch LA hotel, for so called “celeb-based parties”. More like a knackers-yard for botoxed cock-knockers if you ask me.

Still, it was all good until I found a turd floating in the Jacuzzi…I should have taken that as an omen. A warning sign of darker moments to come, maybe?

DEARLY DEPORTED

So check this out.

3:00 am Saturday 17th I’ve just finished up the last line of my er….‘frantic memoirs’ when this happened…Saturday morning. 3:00 am. I got a knock at the door. Pause. Then it gets booted in. Some baloney-eating copper is standing there, with his squashed piggy nose telling me to get up and get dressed. Him and his stupid chubby sidekick.

You what? “I’m already dressed, mate” I said, “Nappy, boots and cape. That’s how I roll. D’you get me?”

Obviously not.

Even in my sleep I dress for success…So anyway, they yank me out of bed, and they’re barking about I can’t stay in the country. I’ve gotta get my peachy ass out of the U.S. and back to Plastic Beach. Now! No work visa. NO WORK VISA? Are you SERIOUS? I’m playing the biggest gig of my life tomorrow!

But no. They escorted me, well ‘frogmarched’ me with my spindly green arm rammed right up to the back of me neck all the way to the coastal border, and shoved me back in my sub. Bit unnecessary. But, yeah, for me the Coachella concert was cancelled immediately.

I was made to tootle of my way from the shores of America in my own little submarine back to my little garbage dump idyll in the middle of nowhere. Swine! SWEINHUNTZ! The Gorillaz backing band had to do the gig for me….Cnuts!

I missed out of the greatest gig of my life! Handed it on a platter to a sliver-gilded hired pick-up backing band. The very band I’ve been training for months, now get all the glory of headlining the Coachella festival on the Sunday night, bringing down the house to rapturous applause….

I watched it all from a video link up I’d arranged last minute….just heartbreaking. I almost wept. Watching these trained imposters steal my thunder! (big slurp of rum n’ ginger…all better now…)

So my rundown of the concert…Well, from the video cam footage I saw, it did look like an all-spectacular….

The Technicolor visuals of “The Orchestral Intro” with a 360 panoramic tour of my Plastic Beach straight into a 2000-foot Snoop Dogg lurching across the helm of the boat, telescope in hand right, then hit after hit washing like a Tsunami across the shores of the Coachella festival; a giant wave in all rights I should have been riding. White Flag, Clint Eastwood, FeelGood Inc, Empire Ants, Kids with Guns…Gliterfreeze…STYLO! I’d planned it all with meticulous detail!

I don’t want to spoil it all because it’s something that needs to be witnessed first hand, with your own eyes n’ ears, but what a fantastic concert. Something Coachella had never seen before. The best closing set the festival had ever seen by all accounts… And they’re all my songs! So imagine just how grand and awe-inspiring it’ll look when I’m in there. The real Gorillaz! Right in the middle of it all! Plus the artists who couldn’t make over Stateside. Makes my heart go all butterflies just thinking about it….

Still, such a bummer I couldn’t make it. Heartbreak aside I still managed to interrupt the performance with a message to my mate George, from Iowa, Des Moines just to let him know I got the stuff he wanted…I guess I’ll have to pass it on to him in Londonia. I sort you out at The Roundhouse if you’re coming George.

And where am I now? Kicking my heels back on Plastic Beach, that’s where!

Oh…The winds round here roar black operas into my ears. Tales of dust and ash and traumas, singing songs of desolation and hopes unfulfilled. All eternity wrapped into a single melancholic crappy midnight gale…I cannot seem to leave this rock.

It seems like my Plastic Beach is growing now too. Take a look at this. This beach in Hawaii is turning out the same as my place. Their beach is evolving into plastic too, all washed up by the sea…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/8639769.stm

The horror is spreading…! Just without the cases of rum!

NEW YORK, AOL, STEVE COLBERT REPORT!

So, where were we? Oh yeah right, back in that world, while I just got escorted back to the island, the Gorillaz band continued without me. They had to. Straight on to New York, to do more promotion. A session at the legendary Electric Ladyland studios where Mr J. Hendrix laid down his seminal album. Historic! I think they’ve still got the original headphones he used in there. By all accounts they we’re well crackly…

Then what next hmmm…An AOL performance, and then some iTunes bizness. I’m glad these were just karaoke sessions otherwise I would have busted my nut over not being in on it. Still I just couldn’t hold my lip when it came to The Steve Colbert Report. That’s this TV show that’s big in America apparently. So I got wind that the boys and girls of the Gorillaz backing band were going to spring up on this programme, to play Stylo, again without your truly.

I thought it was only fair to let Steve Colbert know just exactly what he was getting for his bucks…I left him a little answerphone message to tell him that it wasn’t the real Gorillaz band, just a cod interpretation of it. I love them but I did think it’d be good to rain on their parade…

Steve Colbert quite rightly flipped his lid when he found out he’d been hustled. The interview with Jamie and Damon well and truly nose-dived into the surreal as soon as Steve got my message, so I’m glad to have helped out there….Or ruined it, if you like. Whatever.

Still none of that matters now. The past is a foreign country, as they say. Next Up!!!!

THE CAMDEN ROUNDHOUSE!!!

All of this is now loading the bases for The Camden Roundhouse in a magnificent style. Which I most certainly WILL be appearing at. My glorious return! And all the ‘work visa’ issues have just gone away. I just need to turn up. I’m a UK passport holder so there’s no worry of me not making this one. D’you get me…? I’m legit.

Boy, am I’m looking forward to this one. I’m applying the rosin to the shaft end of my bass….making it extra twangy for the Camden kids worldwide….POW!!!!!!!!!

This concert’s being streamed you know? LIVE to MTV worldwide. MTV will be steaming The Roundhouse concerts on the Friday and Saturday. So you can check it out all online, live streaming, for 48 hours after the concert…They’re going capture me in all my billowing glory! I’ve had my nappy silver –plated for this one…. http://gorillaz.mtv.com

And this time we’ll have the full set. We’ve got The Mos Def, The Hypnotic Brass, Shaun Ryder, Mark. E Smith….the works… Bobby Womack, Bashy & Kano, Little Dragon, The Syrian Orchestra….Gruff from the Super Furry Animals, Bootie Brown…De La Soul…

This will be the one! This will be the concert to end them all! Coachella got ruined because of the glaring gaping cavernous absence of me, Murdoc Niccals. That was like an Indiana Jones film without say…Harrison Ford. And I guess it would’ve helped too if, say, the Gorillaz guitarist Noodle was there too. Or Russel on drums. And having 2D singing instead of Damon Albarn probably would’ve made some kind of difference.

But the Camden Roundhouse concerts will have it all in spades! The full set. All the band, all the guests and all the back up we need to make this a gig to end them all.

It’s funny to think that Gorillaz started out here in this very spot all those years ago. Our very first gig was at the infamous Camden Brownhouse, just down the road from the Roundhouse. November 5th 1998. That’s the first one we did with out current line-up, me 2D and the other two. The first Gorillaz concert known to man.

A&R man Whiffy Smiffy from EMI signed us up there and then on the spot. One gig. One song. We we’re that good! And now look; 20 million record sales later, world tours, awards falling out of our collective arses, global stomping videos…. We couldn’t have taken it any further. We’ve pushed our boats to all four corners of the globe. The World is now Gorillaz-shaped!

And now we’ve come back to our old stomping ground. Camden, London, UK.

So here’s to Thursday, and here’s to me getting off this miserable island once more. It’s sending shivers up my spine now, this place. The island has started to rumble. Just before I left for LA it started playing spooky old jazz hits from the 50’s, eerie melodies wafting around its weeping shores. "Midnight, The Stars and You” I think the tune was...like something from the Overlook Hotel…I think something, some dark spirit, is trapped in this Plastic Beach. And it’s beginning to emerge….I’m actually hoping Russel gets here sooner rather than later now, which I never thought I’d hear myself say…

We shall see then…

Anyway, this is me Captain Murdoc of the Gorillaz Plastic Beach enterprise, signing off and hoping to see all of your pretty, pretty faces over in London at the Camden Roundhouse!

It promises to be an incredi….Hey! Wait a sec.! Just had a flick through the TV Times and what’s this? Apparently Gorillaz are playing the Jools Holland Show this Tuesday. In London. Tomorrow! Really? No-one informed me. Right, best get my harris over to England sharpish. Can’t miss that one too…Christ. It’s impossible to get decent update round these parts…Who’s tour-managing this thing? Houdini?!

Plastic Beach? It’s a concrete nightmare….

Right. I’m off

Love kisses and a sloppy dirty nicotine-stained smooch to you all.

I love you all from the bottom of my crooked little heart!

Ciao!

Murdoc N.

http://web.archive.org/web/20100924185751/http://gorillaz.com/profile/Murdoc

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