I was on a business trip to England last year where I had a chance to see The Raincoats, an all female band from the late 70's/early 80's. Kurt Cobain was a big fan of theirs and wrote the liner notes for the re-release of their first album on CD. They reformed so they could open for Nirvana and did a few dates in London as a warm-up for the tour which never happened because of Cobain's suicide. Ana da Silva, the lead singer, even had some foreshadowing of his suicide only none of us knew it at the time. When learning Gina Burch's fuzz box was broken she said "Oh well, I guess grunge is dead."
Anyway, the show lasted longer than I had expected and I was going to miss the last train to Reading, where I was staying. I took the tube to Victoria Station and started making the rounds of the hotels in the area. After seeing over a dozen 'No Vacancy' signs I finally found a hotel that didn't have one and entered the lobby. Standing by the front desk was an old guy with scraggly hair, scraggly beard, scraggly clothes, missing a lot of teeth and well you get the idea. I didn't think this was the place for me with customers like that but I couldn't afford to be choosy at this point.
The desk clerk told me the only room they had left was one that had been rented out a couple of weeks ago to someone else but they hadn't seen him for 3 days so I could take it for the night. I said OK and was lead down into the basement into this room that hadn't been cleaned in days even before the other guy took off and it still had his possessions in it. The clerk wrapped the used sheets around the pillow and said he didn't have any clean pillow cases so I would have to settle for that.
I just thought to myself I wouldn't be using a pillow tonight. He put some new sheets on the bed and left. I started to take off my boots and thought to myself "What am I doing?!?! I might have to leave in a hurry if this guy comes back". So I left my boots on, propped a chair against the door and went to sleep fully dressed sitting up in bed.
The next morning I turned my key in at the front desk where the clerk said breakfast was included in the price of the room. He gave me directions to the dining room. I guess they are not really into serving breakfast since I had to walk through 2 doors, one marked 'No Admittance' and another marked 'Employees Only' to find the dining room. I was reading the paper and someone walked up and asked what I wanted to eat. I looked up and saw it was the old guy from last night. He wasn't a customer, he worked there! I had a hard boiled egg (I thought that was safe enough) and left.
Where I slept after seeing The Raincoats
I was on a business trip to England last year where I had a chance to see The Raincoats, an all female band from the late 70's/early 80's. Kurt Cobain was a big fan of theirs and wrote the liner notes for the re-release of their first album on CD. They reformed so they could open for Nirvana and did a few dates in London as a warm-up for the tour which never happened because of Cobain's suicide. Ana da Silva, the lead singer, even had some foreshadowing of his suicide only none of us knew it at the time. When learning Gina Burch's fuzz box was broken she said "Oh well, I guess grunge is dead."
Anyway, the show lasted longer than I had expected and I was going to miss the last train to Reading, where I was staying. I took the tube to Victoria Station and started making the rounds of the hotels in the area. After seeing over a dozen 'No Vacancy' signs I finally found a hotel that didn't have one and entered the lobby. Standing by the front desk was an old guy with scraggly hair, scraggly beard, scraggly clothes, missing a lot of teeth and well you get the idea. I didn't think this was the place for me with customers like that but I couldn't afford to be choosy at this point. The desk clerk told me the only room they had left was one that had been rented out a couple of weeks ago to someone else but they hadn't seen him for 3 days so I could take it for the night. I said OK and was lead down into the basement into this room that hadn't been cleaned in days even before the other guy took off and it still had his possessions in it. The clerk wrapped the used sheets around the pillow and said he didn't have any clean pillow cases so I would have to settle for that. I just thought to myself I wouldn't be using a pillow tonight. He put some new sheets on the bed and left. I started to take off my boots and thought to myself "What am I doing?!?! I might have to leave in a hurry if this guy comes back". So I left my boots on, propped a chair against the door and went to sleep fully dressed sitting up in bed.
The next morning I turned my key in at the front desk where the clerk said breakfast was included in the price of the room. He gave me directions to the dining room. I guess they are not really into serving breakfast since I had to walk through 2 doors, one marked 'No Admittance' and another marked 'Employees Only' to find the dining room. I was reading the paper and someone walked up and asked what I wanted to eat. I looked up and saw it was the old guy from last night. He wasn't a customer, he worked there! I had a hard boiled egg (I thought that was safe enough) and left.