A humorous look at The Dean Casement Trio
“With great power comes great responsibility” or so said Spiderman’s grandpa just before he croaks (the grandpa that is, not Spiderman otherwise how shit would that movie franchise have been?).
So, newly entrusted with the keys to the Dean Casement Trio myspace empire for the express purposes of uploading videos, one of my first acts of abuse is to put myself up as top friend. I tell you! How many times does a person have to hint?
I blame myself. “Put me in your top 12 friends or else” is surely too subtle for the man who rams 5 minute guitar solos down your throat in every song. I’m sure even “Kum Bye Ah” (am I the only thirtysomething who stills find the title Kum Bye Ah hilarious in a really puerile kind of way…..) round the campfire with him on guitar would inspire murderous thoughts of death by skewer with marshmallows on top after the third solo and seventeenth segue into some theme by some dead bloke who used to noodle a bit on guitar.
Anyway. I’m pleased to say I am now THE top friend of the Dean Casement Trio, DC3, Two pricks and a dick, the Norman Sidebotham Endurance Experience, the weeble the flump and the tit on the kit. Whatever you want to call them.
I would have settled for being in the top 12 but when you have to resort to doing it yourself then you absolutely positively have to bump every other mother fucker down a place to put yourself up as Numero Uno and if that means losing some dead bloke out of the top 12 then so be it. Sorry Jimi. But as I far as I could gather you were the only dead bloke there so it’s hardly likely to cause you so much offence that you’d…like….choke on your vomit over the ignominy of it all or anything.
So after an arduous editing procedure (which sees 90% of tracks fail to make the cut on account of excessive widdling, enforced off tempo drum solo playing or Mike “fingers of flumps” Collinge spinning funkily off out of frame fourteen too many times) the videos are now almost all uploaded.
Anyhow……I digress……
The weekend saw the band return to the Bath out of Hell biker bar in Morecambe.
The evening started out with an acoustic performance by Chop n Dean and, rarely for me, I smiled for the whole duration. Chop has so much energy he comes off like a Duracell Bunny on heat. I imagine it’s pent up from having to endure so many musical interludes (which is a euphemism for guitar wanking in case I’m being too subtle). These guys harmonise up a storm and clearly Chop is something of a good influence on Dean since he has to learn the words in order to be able to harmonise.
Someone really ought to buy him a new pair of Jeans though.
The Duo ended with an inspired performance of Tenacious D’s Tribute in which the desks’ reverb unit was truly used to its best potential and after a few laps of the venue with his radio mic Chop calms down enough to persuade his carers not to put him back in soft restraints.
The Trio take over and open with a couple of tried and tested favourites. Unlike on previous visits this time they decided to occupy the whole upper section of the pub. This was likely a plot on Mike’s part to ensure he had sufficient room to execute his funky dives, back plunges and dervish whirling. Whilst Mike was having a wild old time defying gravity and doing his own private Riverdance re-enactment, Norm’s attempts to entice dancers up on to the stage with him fell on deaf ears…or might it be that you just can’t dance to 20 minute guitar wankathons.
Now Norm likes to live dangerously and routinely throws open the gig to requests from the audience. Obviously it spares him the massive inconvenience of writing a few song titles on a piece of paper and serves as a fantastic excuse to never ever learning any lyrics.
The concept of asking the audience for requests is certainly a dangerous one and (since no one ever sets any parameters to this request malarkey) whilst the temptation burns inside me to ask for a demonstration of twelfth century secular basket weaving, an interpretation of the Peer Gynt Suite through the medium of interpretative dance or making papier mache masks of each others’ buttocks I resist.
Norman’s primary considerations for whose requests he chooses seem to be based wholly on one or more of the following factors:-
1. Whether the requestor looks capable of beating him up (that would be 99.9% of the population then, including my grandma).
2. Whether the requestor looks like a potential shag (very little in the way of quality control seems to go into this decision….clearly Norman has little or no experience of Venn diagrams)
3. Whether he can cram at least 5 minutes worth of solos into it. (Edited….he can).
4. Whether he planned to play that song next anyway.
Someone requests “Sweet Home Alabama” and on the basis that he is “a big fucker” (and that they planned to play it anyway) they accede to the request. Norm brings Chop back out of his padded cell to join in and he promptly begins pogoing around on stage like he’s reliving some Tudor red hot poker up the jacksy torture scene. Though I’m fairly sure they would have held them down for that rather than let them bop around in the dungeons.
Later, Martin calls upon all his bodies lard reserves to keep going in a 20+ minute Jimi Hendrix tribute and the night continues with much high octane widdling, rubberdicking and finger funking. Norm dedicates each song to a different potential shag in the audience…and wonders why people want to thump him…
Only two things were missing from the evening’s entertainment. My promised chips and gravy supper and a drum solo.
As to the former, clearly I need a better line in blackmail since this was the price BigMart paid for my not posting his drum solo from the previous gig on myspace. Little does he know that Dean incited me to “eat my scran and then post it anyway” and since I didn’t get my chips and gravy this is clearly still a possibility but would surely result in Big Mart having to edit his list of most hated things in the world thusly:-
1. Cucumber
2. Jellyfish
3. Dean Casement
You see, when not being entertained by having a go at songs he clearly has no intention of attempting any lyrics to (who needs lyrics when you can create musical wallpaper reminiscent of the paisley stuff everyone finds when they start redecorating a house built before the 1940’s, with six strings and a little bit of soul) he likes to entrap the twit on the kit into playing drum solos he has no wish to play.
Now in this enterprise Norman and I are of one mind (oops that wouldn’t be good, it would surely end in some cataclysmic attempt to rule the world through both words AND music). It is plainly wrong to take so much satisfaction from watching the big fella squirm as Norm stands back for well in excess of the usual 12 or 16 bar solo which the titch on the kit didn’t want to play in the first place. Yet I do. Twit is far better at it than he thinks he is and whilst it true to say I am heartily proud to see him apply all he has learnt from me, I just really enjoy watching him suffer. Retribution for his lack of spontaneous displays of proud faces lately.
No evening with Dean would be complete without a completely ill advised attempt at something and never one to disappoint we were treated (and not for the first time) to 500 miles by the Proclaimers. I swear if I have to endure that again I will be tempted to try and drop kick him any part of that distance.
That’s all until next time. When I imagine my report will be much the same!
Don’t forget my name (since it’s right there at the top of the list)……whoooo hooooo
Whooooo hoooooo