SIMON NOTT blog: Big Danny

One of the things I used to do to keep the wolf from the door was well as working for Jack Lynn back in the early to mid-1990’s was book bands into the White Ball Inn in Tiverton, writes SIMON NOTT.

I lived there too for a bit, my church-going mum was very proud, not, her son living in a pub and working for an on-course bookmaker. Of course, I thought it was wonderful.

The White Ball was an old coaching Inn that had been known as a hotel back in the day. The day, not being really known but there are records of press gangs recruiting there, so fairly old. What had been the stables out the back had transformed into a really tidy little venue, it had a small stage and was painted in a ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ theme.

Most visiting musicians were pretty impressed by it, there was a gig on every Friday and some Saturdays. The bands used to be mainly local combos and attracted a regular crowd of between 100 – 150 so a thriving little live music scene.

The music I was into, was ‘psychobilly’ which was a hybrid of rockabilly and punk, with questionable lyrics. The genre had been all the rage in the UK where it originated up until the late 1980’s but had gone out of fashion by the time I got involved with booking at the White Ball. However, psychobilly was still very popular with the underground alternative scenes in Europe, especially Germany. This meant that the UK bands who could attract 100’s maybe even 1000’s of people to gigs over there were still active but found it hard to find places to play in the UK so were bargain prices. I spotted an opportunity and started to book them in between local bands for not a lot more money.

I’d put their CDs in the jukebox and advertised ‘Live Here on such and such a date’ on the track listing. I’d make a point of playing the band’s best/most offensive tunes when it was busy, people would wonder what the hell it was, see they were playing at The White Ball and would hopefully turn up. It often worked.

I got to know plenty of the bands I’d only known on record and remain friends with many of them to this day. One band I got on particularly well with were The Frantic Flintstones who were based in Didcot. So much so that I found myself on backing vocals on one of their albums and drove them on a few tours in Germany, Holland, Belgium etc.

The tours were often a bit chaotic, some were door deals so the band split the money with the venue, others were just very small fillers in little bars whilst the main gigs to fund the tours were the set fees which the viability of the tour was often based around.

The problem the Frantic Flintstones sometimes had, was getting paid. At least they would have had they not had a secret weapon, but more about Big Danny later. The deals were mostly done in advance over the phone where a promoter would promise a fee which the band would agree upon. They’d often have to take the professionalism and solvency of the promoter on trust.

The trouble was, sometimes, fairly often the promoter turned out to be a young, inexperienced and financially embarrassed fan who found saying 1000DM easier than paying it, a bit like punters who used to have credit accounts. This was often compounded by the fact that he’d not really have a clue about promotion and found out the hard way that putting one poster up a week before the gig wasn’t going to attract the punters needed to generate the band’s fee.

Weirdly, they also failed to understand that ‘Sorry, I can’t pay, nobody has turned up’ wasn’t the way things worked. Especially when the gig had been at the end of a cross channel ferry and hours in a transit van. I mentioned Big Danny before, didn’t I? This is where he came in. There would be a conversation between the ‘promoter’ and the band about not being able to pay. The booker would be quite confident at this point, almost to the point of arrogance, that he didn’t have the money so wasn’t paying. Then the door would open, Big Danny was a lovely chap, but believed in fair play. The band had arrived on time, played their gig and now expected paying. The attitude had already simmered down from the defaulter when they spotted Big Danny, and in the case of the guy in Oldenburg totally vanished as he was being held upside down and being shaken for cash. Like I said, Big Danny always tried to ensure fair play and it was amazing how often money was miraculously found by seeing the world from a different angle.

Reading the news recently that some racecourses were planning on cutting the proposed levels of prize money because some meetings had performed less well than expected, reminded me of Big Danny. Doesn’t racing need their own Big Danny?

I recently had the privilege of travelling to the races with Nigel Hawke, we only went to Kempton from Devon. It was a 12 hour day and his day had started well before mine, hard work for all concerned, no me I was just riding shotgun but still a long day. That journey was replicated all over the country hundreds of times on that occasion and is every day.

The horses turn up, the owners pay up, and the jockeys risk their lives, the racing public are entertained, bookies kept busy and levy and taxes raised. Is it acceptable then that just because the promoters have failed to attract enough people to come racing that the owners, trainer and jockey have to take the hit?

What racing needs is a Big Danny of their own.

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Views of authors do not necessarily represent views of Star Sports Bookmakers.

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Simon Nott is author of: Skint Mob! Tales from the Betting Ring
available on Kindle CLICK HERE FOR MORE DETAILS

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