Fear and Loathing in Shug O'Neills head.

Shug and Charlie

Currently Shug O'Neill, of The Snipes, and previously of Cocksparrer and the Guttersnipes, has been dredging his memory and writing bits and pieces that will hopefully see the light of day as a book at some point in the future.

Without a doubt it will be a debauched affair of excess and punk shenanigans.

So I am very proud to have a bit of it here, and hopefully every once in a while there will be more updates, but if you want it all you are going to have to wait for the book.

Here is a snippet from his Norwegian adventures with The Guttersnipes.

I used to love touring Norway with The Guttersnipes, it was always wild.

One year (sometime in that blurred decade the 90s) the promoter, Kjell E. Moberg, wanted to put a Belgian band called The Bad Preachers on with us, the other support bands would be local Norwegian bands from whatever City or Town we were playing, we said "cool" so he put us in touch with the Bad Preachers who sent us a CD, band info & a letter describing themselves as Hard Drinking Party Animals who were looking forward to meeting us for some parties & a drinking competition, hahahahaha, they obviously had no idea what they were up against!

The 1st gig was in Kristiansand, we arrived in the afternoon, unloaded the van, set up & sound checked, the Bad Preachers arrived shortly after.

We were then met by 2 Norwegian hippies who I can only describe as the Norwegian Cheech & Chong (thats exactly what they looked like), that were charged with looking after us. One of them took a shine to me instantly & said "you look like a man who likes a good smoke", I said "too right I do" & he said "you're in the right place, you're gonna love this".

They took us down the road to a record shop (their shop), in the basement was their living quarters, big living room, kitchen bedroom, all mod cons, but what we noticed was the crates of beer all stacked up in a corner. They said that's your beer, help yourself, so we did!

We settled down with Cheech & Chong & started smoking spliff & drinking beer & having a laugh, the Bad Preachers sat by themselves looking a bit shy strangely.

Then our hosts decided to start cooking, after a while one of them came back to show me his collection of pipes, he had loads of them & insisted I try some, I was stoned out my fucking head!

Then he brought out his piece de resistance. Hhe went into the freezer and brought out a pipe made out of blue glass, there was steam coming off of it, it looked awesome!

He said "This'll be the coolest smoke you've ever had", it was fucking brilliant, I felt myself levitating.

At this point a worried looking Bad Preacher came up to me & said "what are you doing ? It's the afternoon, we have a gig to play tonight !" I said yeah, its o.k, we'll be fine.

After we'd eaten, we chilled out listening to Rock music with a bit more Spliff & Beer, Andy, our bassist said "it's great here innit, it's like a Heavy Metal Health Farm”.

hahahaha, brilliant quote!

Anyway, eventually, even reluctantly, we went to do the gig, which we did fine, maybe a wee bit slower than usual but good nonetheless.

At the gig a blonde called Karen was really into it & took a real shine to me, she told me she was puttin the Bad Preachers up whilst we were staying with Cheech & Chong but she wanted me to come home with her.

So me, The Bad Preachers, an old Icelandic Hippy guy & a young Norwegian Punk all went back to Karen's. We sat round her kitchen table smoking spliff & drinking beer & telling stories.

The Icelandic Hippy was really entertaining, the young Norwegian Punk was...well, just a daft young punk, the Bad Preachers were strangely normal!

The young punk had had his tongue pierced e few months earlier and kept sticking his tongue out looking for a reaction, eventually we asked him about it.

I said I understand outside piercings but why pierce something on the inside unless you walk about with your tongue out all the time?

His response, "the chicks love it" and started wiggling his tongue !

I said "fair enough now put it away".

Later however, the conversation got onto relationships and past girlfriends, the stupid cunt then said "I haven't had a woman for 2 years".

I was onto him straight away, I said in that case how do you know the chicks love your piercing?

Cue lots of laughter & one very embarrassed young Punk.

Anyway it was well into the small hours now and I was getting tired & just wanted to be left
alone with Karen.

Then a Bad Preacher spoke up and said "we have to travel to another gig tomorrow so we'd like to go to sleep if that's o.k", so Karen showed them to their room, the young Punk lived nearby so he went home, Karen made up a bed for the Icelandic Hippy on the sofa, & said "Shug, you're sleeping with me".

At last!!

The only reason I gave up a mental night at Cheech and Chong's!!

What I didn't know was that she had a kitten, a very jealous kitten!!

As soon as I got into bed with her it jumped on the bed, scrambled up the duvet and sat on my head!

Of course Karen thought this was hilarious, so I'm trying to get all amorous with her with a kitten on my head whilst she's howling laughing!!!

I lost my ardour, you know what it's like guys!

So I gave up and put my head on the pillow, only then did the kitten leave me but positioned itself on the pillow between our two faces.

I couldn't believe it, me, the wild Scottish, Punk Rock Party Animal thwarted by a bloody Norwegian kitten!

I'll never live it down.

Anyway that was just the 1st night of the tour, much more mayhem & merriment followed!

As for the Bad Preachers, they were just totally in awe of us, they'd never seen anyone put so much alcohol & drugs into themselves and still stay standing!

Needless to say the drinking competition never happened, they conceded defeat on the 1st day.

Great guys though, we got on well and became good friends, happy daze!

(To be continued.)


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