The Curse of Dutch Courage

By Lazza Ogden

SEX

 

Got your attention? Good, please read on.

 

The year is 1999 and John Leonard day dreams of being a rock star with his indie band Dutch Courage.

 

Can they make it big being stuck on a small record label based in Luxembourg and with a crazed kleptomaniac as a manager?

 

Get in the band's van, strap yourself in with the only working seat belt and prepare for a crazy comedic cosmic musical tour of Europe.

 

It's 10 days of ups and downs that might break the band as they encounter terrorists, extremists, punch ups amongst themselves & with their audience. Throw in a mad mystic, the obligatory booze and drugs and they soon find that life on the road isn't all it's cracked up to be. If it can go wrong, it does, and some might say that Dutch Courage are cursed.

 

Follow the band and their mad entourage as they end up in hot water in Paris and in cold water when their transport gets in trouble in the North Sea on their ferry trip home.

 

With Dutch Courage there is no plain sailing.

 

Who survives... if anyone?

...............................................................................

 

The Curse of Dutch Courage

A Riot of a black/tragi-com of laugh out loud proportions. Grab a huge slice.

Tom Foolery - Daily Spherical News.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mirador Publishing
• Release date: Mar 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201675240

Book preview

The Curse of...

Dutch Courage

––––––––

By

Lazza Ogden

INTRODUCTION

Have you ever woken up one morning simply happy to be alive? I have done every day of my life since mid-September of the year of our Lord 1999.

These days I may rattle when I move as I must take several lots of medication each morning for stress, depression, and high blood pressure but I made it through.

Allow me to explain to you dear reader why I’m a happy man despite my ailments? I will get to it eventually but first I have a little musical tale to tell.

We nearly made it once. To London that is. If you are of a certain age and a certain music persuasion you may have heard of us? We were the very nearly men of late nineties indie rock, we were the band ‘Dutch Courage’ (Discography; One album, one lilac coloured seven-inch single) Though to be fair you more than likely haven’t heard of us? I mean the Popes Dad probably got more lines in the music press than we did. But we had hair, oh so lovely floppy hair, hair that along with some friends you do not realise at the time that you may not have twenty odd years later like I sadly do not. Hair today, gone tomorrow.

So let me first introduce me, myself, I, your humble narrator John, who will chart you through the choppy waters of the Ocean ‘Dutch Courage.’

My full name is John Winston Stephen Leonard, and I am a rock and roll survivor, well more than that, I am a survivor – FACT. I was once a confused skinny little indie kid. I loved all the great indie bands but in general I was just a lover of great music, even heavy rock stuff like the bands ‘Steel Girder’ and ‘Hector the Rector.’ In fact, I had a foot in both the Mod and Rocker camps. Bank Holidays were very trying as I use to drive to the seaside and then bash myself over the nut with a beach deckchair.

These days I still love all music, but it is not the be all and end all that it once was in my life. These day’s priorities have very much changed. At present I am a happily married man to my wife Chloe, I am in my mid-forties (Where does the time go?) and father to a lovely young chap we named Roland. (I had wanted to name him something more rock and roll like ‘Chubby’ or ‘Moonunit’) We even have two cats called Belvedere and Lady Marmaduke. I am living the suburban life dream.

For me to tell my story though we need to rewind twenty odd years to the twelve months that a diminutive American rock star suggested we party like no other ‘1999’ and, me and my mates in our band ‘Dutch Courage’ took him at his word.

I am older now as I stated, but some of the people in my story are not. They are immortalised for ever, frozen in time in what was the best and worst year of our lives.

So, in the words of drunken football fans everywhere Here we go!

DUTCH COURAGE

Don’t Start What You Can’t Finish

All I ever wanted to do when I was young was to be in a band. Call it a group, a combo, outfit, whatever, I was utterly obsessed with music. My first memory of music was hearing my Dad Lennie play an LP called Touched by Royalty by the infamous seventies glam rockers ‘Royalty’ You remember them, right? One of the only glam bands of the era not to be investigated by police years later. They were led by the best frontman who ever lived Rico ‘Spandex’ Quicksilver (RIP), who was ably assisted by April Mayes (A rarity in the seventies, a female on guitar), The mysterious Alan Vicars (Bass and keyboardist, who never showed his face from behind long hair) and Robert Blacksmith on drums. I played that album when I got my grubby mitts on it over and over and I didn’t take the poster of the band off my bedroom wall, it actually fell off of its own accord the day Quicksilver died, April 23, 1993. Spooky! The love of this group and the huge smash hit single they had with Raspberry Symphony was the song that bound my eventual band mates and myself together.

The first record I ever bought though was not as cool. We all have to start somewhere, right? And as a ten-year-old, the first disc I ever bought with my own (pocket) money was by the five sensational Welsh singing sisters (& Indian stepsister) ‘The Price Girls’ They consisted of Meg, Lena, Karen, Sharon & Beena. The press even gave them nicknames; Meg was Fit Price, Fitter (Was Karen, who had worked fitting kitchens prior to fame), then Ugly (Sharon), Knock-down (Lena had a police record for GBH) & Beena the Indian stepsister was known as Half Price. Their album Price Cuts had some great tacky pop and who didn’t fancy Meg? (AKA Fit Price) Sorry, I digress.

To be fair, I still am musically obsessed but to a slightly lesser degree. I did end up being the guitarist in a band, one with potential, but sadly, one who were more obsessed with drinking, causing chaos and drugs than being hip cool (Like ‘Royalty’). Caution: Rock and Roll cliché alert!

So, dear reader, sit back, relax, no grab a drink first, then relax, open the pages, oh you have, ok. Maybe get some popcorn and let’s go and dive straight in the deep end.

Within these pages there are absolutely zero boring tales of our childhoods to contend with like many rock stars autobiographies insist on dragging out when you just want to get to the meat, but I do, however, need to give you a little background on the band and the players in the story.

Ladies and Gentlemen, your runners, and riders for ‘Dutch Courage’ are as follows.

The band: ‘Dutch Courage,’ was previously known as ‘Bent Table Leg’ (Ditched due to impending problems at the time using the word bent) was formed in Hungerton, United Kingdom, in the year 1998. After, we called ourselves ‘Cow Corner’ in response to where we found ourselves living in England (Corner of it in a posh town famous for milk production). The cow to us was simply telling you where we lived which was a dead-end, one-horse town (Hungerton) In time we finally realised this name for a band was no good when we found that Man U had more gigs than we got So ‘Cow’ was out. Eventually, after much brainstorming on Cider and other assorted ales in the local pub ‘The Oxidized Plough’ (Told you our town was posh) we came up with our current moniker ‘Dutch Courage’ The name was voted in favour of using by the four band members three to one. (Singer Bosco wanted to call us ‘Race Rust’ which was a phrase used in the sport speedway which none of the rest of us had any clue about. The failure to win the vote caused Bosco to quit and return to the band three times in the following month after the vote until he sensibly realised, we were the only game in town.)

Now again if you are of a certain age, I know exactly what you are thinking about our bands place of birth when I mentioned Hungerton. Yes, it is that Hungerton.

Since 1987 Hungerton was no longer known as the simple historic market town that is eight miles west of Oldbury and ten miles east of Carlborough as certain search engines will tell you these days, but the Hungerton that was famous for the series of random shootings on the 19th of October of the year 1987. This horrific act of terror occurred when unemployed handy man Ryan Michaelson managed to find the money to buy two semi-automatic rifles, a handgun and ammunition which he used to shoot sixteen people dead before turning the gun on himself. God knows where he got the armaments. You struggled to even find Cheese and Onion Crisps in the town back in 1987. I still remember the incident being shown live on TV as a kid. There it was in glorious colour, a wild, pissed off madman stalking the now empty streets armed to the teeth, his nostrils flaring, mouth snarling, enraged, and blasting anything to death that dare move, when he was approached by an old man sporting a flat cap riding a bicycle. This old man rode up to madman Michaelson and famously informed him to ‘Go home and not to be so bloody silly young man’ Errrr... I know who the silly one was in that episode. Amazingly the old man on the bike escaped unharmed.

Our band styled itself very much as a southern version of ‘Madchester Indie types like Stuart Norrison’s band ‘The Sniffs,’ though we eat meat (They are vegans and drug addicts, the clue is in the name), and we have a bit more vitriolic edge (We thought). At the time we loved anything Manchester musically to be honest, especially with guitars to the fore.

‘Dutch Courage’ quickly gelled into an Indie tour-da-force (If I say so myself) and were ready to release a limited-edition lilac coloured seven-inch vinyl offering called Fruit of the Poisonous Tree / Chalk It Up within the first six months of the band’s existence. Hey Norrisson eat your heart out! (A vegetarian soya-based heart of course! Love you Nozza! Let’s do drinks if you are reading.)

The record came out on the super obscure indie label ‘Heavy Plant Crossing Records’ who were based in Rochdale (Outer Manchester). I still love the label logo that adorned the middle of the disc. It was a cartoon of a ten-foot high, muscle-bound Conifer with a handlebar’s moustache walking across a zebra crossing. I don’t think they ever released another record. Where’s Top Forty chart historian Paolo Gabbiadini when you need him to check?

It was at this juncture following the single release that we got our biggest gig of our career supporting Manchester Indie legends ‘The Fallen Down’ at the Pez Club, Reading in February 1999. It was truly an honour to witness a horrifically drunk but stable vocalist and ‘The Fallen Down’ band leader Marc T Smyth in full flight. Yes, it was true his bands stature was at the time in decline, but they were still a force to be reckoned with on the live circuit. I marvelled at the command Marc had with his own band mates and audience, plus at the end of the show he provided me with one of my rock and roll highlights to date.

I was sat in the small, shared band dressing room supping on a free can of Lager (Not my preferred tipple, but beggars and all that) when the shows promoter came in with the money for the band. He approached Marc who reminded him that the fee was ‘five hundred smackers duck’ in used denominations of tens and twenties. The promoter just nodded, handed Smyth a fist full of cash and shook his hand without exchanging a single word. Smyth then peeled off four ten-pound notes out of the bundle of lucre and handed one each to the present ‘Fallen Down’ band members (That being one bassist, drummer, guitarist, and keyboardist.) and left the dressing room with the immortal line Great gig lads. See you tomorrow in Bolton and of course with the rest of the money. Oh, to have that power! Though, in his rush to get away, I spied that Smyth had left behind our single that I had presented him with earlier in the evening. Surely a drunken oversight I told myself.

That limited edition lilac single of ours quickly sold out (Three hundred pressed up. Still the odd copy can be found for sale on famous online auction site ‘Hid Bid’ if you look), but as I said at the time I am writing about ‘Sold Out’... Well sold out from the few we had given Century Records to sell, a shop that is still situated in the Hungerton Antiques Arcade (They took ten) and sales which propelled the band to Number five in the charts for bands beginning with the letters ‘DUT.’ We were on our way to stardom and infamy!

Back to Mr Ryan ‘bloody’ Michaelson. We in the town were forever reminded of the infamous shooting incident by seeing the errant bullet holes in the ‘Welcome to Hungerton’ sign, a sign which was close to the band’s rehearsal space at Bats-eye Studios. The ‘Eye’ as it was known was situated on a nearby town centre industrial estate. A sign it took bloody years for the council to take down and replace and erase the memory of that psychopath.

Let us move on with our tale. The date was July 4th, 1999, and the group has just concluded practice and are having a band meeting at said Hungerton rehearsal room, so first, let me introduce you to the players at the meeting.

Chris ‘Bosco’ Boscombe: The vocalist. Chris was also handy with a set of spanners, and a total speedway enthusiast. His old Dad rode for the Rye House Sprockets and Leicester Limas speedway teams, well that is what I reckon they were called? He was also a good darts player (Chris, not his Dad), not that any of that info has any bearing on the story I am about to tell. Ahem!

Chris was married to Juliet, sexually charged and I would say out of all of us the one who could be trusted the absolute least. He also had a bastard mean streak in him. For example, his idea of raising money for ‘Comedy Aids’ a charity who helped feed the starving millions in Africa in the early-nineties was to get sponsored to sit in a bath full of baked beans. (His idea) He was also fond of causing a punch up and drinking copious amounts of anything alcoholic he could get his mitts on. The phrase ‘Silver Tongued Cavalier’ was probably invented after a meeting with him but on the downside, he was seedier than a ripe Watermelon.

Martin ‘Mac’ McCarthy: The bassist. Mac was our beer guzzling, drug taking, haphazard bassist. An avid and some might say even rabid Chelsea supporter who had of course like so many Chelsea fans, never once set foot in in West London.

Mac’s family were originally from Lancashire and all die hard United. But Mac changed his allegiance when he was just seven years old after a large picture frame fell off his bedroom wall and landed directly on top of his United model toy team who were situated in a five aside training session position on the bedroom floor below. This accident caused more casualties than the Munich air disaster of ’58 and training sessions now sadly consist of three on two.

Martin McCarthy was also far too clever to stack shelves and work the till at the Low Street, Hungerton Koop supermarket... but did so for ten hour shifts four days a week whilst like all of us band members, daydreamed of one day having some sort of musical success.

At work he was the kind of till operative that if you asked him for a receipt for your shopping, he looked at you like you had asked him to sacrifice his first-born child. (Maybe that is their company policy?) He also co-wrote the songs with me and was very conscious of his slightly big ears that he tried to hide within his long ‘Madchester’ era curtains hairstyle. Mac was as politically incorrect as they come, slightly racist and of course a Blairite / Labour voter.

Chester Rataski: The drummer. Chester was bizarrely a New Yorker of Polish descent who somehow found himself in the UK working as an IT Consultant. This career path in computers brought him to a position at local Hungerton Software Company called ‘Berridge Commercial Systems Limited’ and they were a large employer of the town’s small population.

Big Chest (As he was affectionately known), was also a massive six feet seven inches high but had noticeably short arms and deep pockets if you know what I mean? Ok let’s be blunt here, he was as tight as a duck’s arse. Chester was kind of a ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ character as well in that ‘money’ respect. For example, in the pub he was in he would be as lively as Jekyll when the beers were being handed out for free but when it was his round he would ‘Hyde’

Mr Rataski is a guy who had to know about every single little detail about everything and nothing was ever usually left to chance. This is possibly why he grew to hate the rest of us slackers and our band. ‘The Very, Very Rough Guidebooks to... (Insert any City / Country here)’ were made for him. When we ever went on a weekend tour or played a gig anywhere, he had one of those damn books for every place we were going bar the town of ‘Letcombe Regis’ in Oxfordshire and I seriously doubt one was ever written or produced for there!

All the books purchased by him were second or even more likely fourth hand. Chester would also come to be the man who owned the biggest testicles I have ever seen and unfortunately, I got to see them up close!

Chest also has a great porn collection. He is incredibly open about this but ask him why he came to the UK and the story has changed. He originally told me he came to the UK to try and get to meet renowned music producer and ex-Boggles member Terry Vaughan, but of course should you ask him now, he denies that very much.

That leaves me. John Winston Stephen Leonard: Guitar. Yep, I played guitar, co-wrote the songs, was the heart throb of the band, even if I say so myself. (It’s my story, right?!?!?) I worked at K Dixon Electrical on the Hungerton High Street, and I had done since I quit college at the age of seventeen years old.

This became my trade after I had been previously turned down for a job working at a local record store. (Harry Ian Varnham opened HIV Records in town in 1967 but changed its name promptly to Hit Records in 1985 following local outcry and a newspaper petition over its name. As 1986 approached old man Varnham had given up painting out the ‘S’ that appeared overnight in front of the shops ‘HIT’ signage, which in turn changed the shop name into a swear word.) The reason Mr Varnham Senior had given for not offering me any employment was and I quote ‘You haven’t ever worked in the music industry.’ I had however just left school at seventeen years of age, as the interviewer knew so how could I have? Why even interview me if that was company policy? Work that out!?!? (Their business later hit financial meltdown as their stock was over-priced and staff under educated. Not that I am gloating.)

I also had a childhood sweetheart girlfriend called Ashley who liked to be known as ‘Ash’ and due to this preferred shortened version of her name everyone I worked with thought I was gay for years. This conclusion was usually made when they asked, like work mates do, that, if I had one, what was the name of my partner? I always would innocently answer ‘Ash’ for whom the majority of those asking took to be a boy’s name. Either this or I came across as camp as a row of tents.

As I said, music was my life, and I would have done anything to try and make a career in it. I dreamt of playing in stadiums and sweeping up the ‘best of’ everything trophies at the UK Pop Awards and not sweeping hospital wards as it sadly became for me. You have to have a dream, right?

So, you have met the band. ‘Dutch Courage’ also had a manager and a roadie.

Carlton Gooch (AKA the Gooch): The Manager. Carlton also doubled up as our driver and took ten percent of the nothing we ever made. He also had the best job out of all of us. When Carlton wasn’t setting up dead duck gigs for our band of which most were usually at his dad’s pub ‘Rockets’ in Oldbury, he was a very well paid ‘Quantity Surveyor.’ Coined it in he did, had a decent car and was quite experienced with travelling around Europe or so we thought and so he had said.

Everything about Carlton was odd. For instance, he once told us he had previously been employed as a ‘Banana Ripener’ which I think says it all about him really. He was paid to talk to bananas amongst other duties. Look it up it is a real post! To top it off the job even came with a yellow-coloured company car. This employment for him was quite apt as he has continued to be totally bananas all the time I have known him.

Carlton is also famous locally for his clothing style, which is way out, as is his conversational phrasing which was also from another planet or at least Buckinghamshire. He was a very strange fish who would be diagnosed as Bi-Polar with a bad haircut these days.

The final piece of the jigsaw was our roadie ‘Meaty’

Angus Round: The Roadie. Angus was known to us lads in the band as ‘Meaty.’ What this guy didn’t know about music equipment you could have written on the side of the Empire State building. That said, he was another solid drinker and utterly dependable, so he was in despite that fact that he was uncool, wore crappy unfashionable clothes and still lived with his Mum at the grand old age of thirty-three.

Angus was the oldest of our group and thankfully with age came the maturity and discipline that we desperately needed. Though, that said, he did once boast about his Mum catching him masturbating one morning in his bedroom. He came, she saw, and left behind for him a cup of tea. That story broke the ice at parties or with strangers more than Rock Salt did, though it is not something I would want anyone knowing about if it was me.

It had been decided amongst us in the band that with our debut CD "Big Ordinance Survey Maps’ in the can and ready to be released (All eleven songs by Leonard and McCarthy 1999) we needed to do something more than a gig in town or a trip up the road to Oldbury, we needed a big event to push and promote the product properly. We wanted a full-blown tour.

This ‘event’ was left to the manager (The Gooch) to plot as he was the only one of us who had a fax machine and a mobile phone. The Gooch was also instrumental in getting us a record deal. Not with cool labels like Pub Pop or Fat Tory Records as we had hoped but with Harpoon Records who were based in the European Rock and Roll capital of Luxembourg. I did not know anyone who had ever heard of them? and we were to be their latest album release. I had the feeling that The Gooch’s Dad was initially involved due to his love of deep-sea fishing, but hey our record was coming out on an actual label.

As I said earlier another practice session ended at ‘Bats-eye’

‘The Gooch’ took to the floor to talk to us; Lads! My lads that session was truly funking brilliant like. Loving the tunes! Total dig! I dig more than a construction labourer. Yes, yes, yes! And I have album news peoples, gather ye round. Right, the compact disc version of the album is due out in a month or so and we are taking it to Europe baby. Yes, indeed shiny happy people, I’m working on tour dates with Pascal and Lillian from our label Harpoon Records that should take in at least three or four countries daddio, we just need to finalise the details. So, make sure your passports are in date and you have had your shots for two weeks in mid-September. Hopefully, a gig in Spain will be included as well so maybe top banana up on some suntan lotion for some Espana commotion, oh, and get some flop flip things too

I was slightly shocked at the announcement! Europe, Gooch? But we haven’t even made it as far as Birmingham over here yet!?! Do people even know us out there? I queried as my brow furrowed and eyebrows towered up so far, they could have taken gold at the Olympics high jump.

"John, John, relax dear Buddhist. Does Europe know about ‘Dutch Courage’? Yes of course lads. Pascal at Harpoon Records has been on the case for us. In fact, Europe has even been in contact with me about you. I got a message from some guy from Holland wanting to book you for his festival, a Dolf chappy for the Vanguard Festival or something, or was