Greetings comrades...Just back from our trip to The Seychelles, we had a wonderful time made lots of new friends and got booked for 2 gigs next June one at the football stadium and a more intimate private event...So all in all a great trip BUT thats not the real point of this post...On our return , exhausted , completely shattered in fact after almost 24 hrs non stop travel I received a really nasty message from a 24 yr old female telling me what an awful nasty person I am and that we are NOT the real UB40 because I didnt reply to her request of a week ago that arrived as we started travelling to The Seychelles..Her message asked me to say something about her deceased father to be read out at his funeral , this is a man I didnt know, had never met , a complete stranger. I was a little stuck for words on the basis that Ive always thought a funeral is a time for truth & honesty, a private time for family and friends to grieve, a time to remember the person and celebrate their life with the people that loved them and not a time for show bizz sound bites ! To be brutally honest I thought it was incredibly insensitive and superficial to ask a complete stranger (me) albeit the man apparently liked our music, never the less the idea of a stranger ( me) being asked to talk about another stranger in glowing terms I found incredibly superficial and to be quite honest a little disturbing, what was I to say? It goes without saying that I feel for anyone that suffers the loss of a loved one, I know from experience its devastating ( nothing can make you feel better especially the obligatory words of a stranger, that in my world is just lip service devoid of any honesty or gravitas) BUT what could I have possibly said? I honestly struggled with the request to write or record something for the service, it made me feel like a show bizz phoney that would do anything for publicity, so what if Im in UB40 ( its only a job playing an instrument) I cant tell you how upset this womans nasty reply has made me feel...maybe you can tell by how long this post is..anyway the point of all this is what would you do? Just because we make records & play gigs does that mean we are duty bound to be at the beck and call of anyone that decides that they want us to write a requiem about the passing of a family member we never knew, no matter how superficial and misguided that request might be..? I would really appreciate some opinion in this.. Im dumbfounded at the audacity of this woman, who has told me what a nasty man I am and hopes I never go through this..Well of course I will go through this many more times before I myself shuffle off this mortal coil...Im just a bit confused right now and to be brutally honest for one last time a bit angry too...
Posted on: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 17:30:46 +0000
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