Does it what?

Does it what? 

I have only once had to spread my butt cheeks for military men to peer into and quite frankly it's not something I want to repeat.

When people asked me what I did for a living, I never really knew how to answer. Even though dioyy toured solidly for years, the band were only ever at the cult level and the band certainly never pinged on the radar of immigration officials in foreign countries. So the answer "I'm a rock star" could never work. Besides, only an utter twat would say that. The equally excruciating "Im in a band" response, it seems, to a highly trained but barely English-speaking man with a moustache, sounds almost exactly the same as "I have cocaine inside my anus". 

All of the possible permutations of the statement 'I am a person in a music group' lead to the utterly dreaded follow up question - 'What's the name of your band?'. The answer "Does It Offend You, Yeah?" begets so much confusion and hands tightening on pistol grips, that it has to be avoided at all costs.

Does it what? No it doesn't. Do I offend you yet? Yes? Yeah? Why are you called that? Are you on drugs?

For a while I attempted the old "I work in the music industry". That too was abandoned because it seemingly also translated as "I have a kilo of Bolivian marching powder wedged high up in my colon".

So I settled on the answer on the visa forms - ENTERTAINER. Reassuringly vague.

Of course, in bars or hotels, if I answered "entertainer" I would again look like a twat. So it would have to be "I make music" or "I am a music producer". Which was a deliberately drab answer crafted to put people off the trail to the same conversational downward spiral. Sometimes though, it was just inevitable.

What's the Name of Your band? Does it what? No it doesn't. Do I offend you yet? Yes? Yeah? No it doesn't...

With the dioyy stuff now on indefinite hiatus, I have more of a problem answering exactly what it is I do. I'm producing a few projects, deejaying, managing a band and working every week with Zed Events. 

Zed Events are the people who put on the Zombie Mall Experience. Essentially people pay to go into an abandoned and very dark shopping mall to take part in a full-immersion experience that is half theatrical play, half themed airsoft skirmish against the undead. It's all moaning, shambling, smoke, loud bangs and screaming, (so not all that different from touring really). 

The zombie mall has been on several international news networks and consequently is fully booked for nearly a year in advance. My actual job role changes from week to week. Acting as armed police officer or zombie or a dead clown, sometimes running around "backstage" with a smoke machine and doing bits of sound effects, often firing blank firing weapons, wearing prosthetic make up and creeping around... and there's lots of pretending to die.

So now if people ask me what it is I do, the genuine answer - "music producer and band manager and DJ and multi-rolled person at a thing that's a kind of themed play event thing with zombies and member of the now sleeping does it offend you yeah" - is the most excruciating yet. And still leads to that conversation again. Does it what?... 

Anything for a weird life.

at the Call of Duty Black Ops II UK launch as a zombie clown.  

bobby x