Sweating With the Nuns of Brixton

“Over the year, we’d been getting used to wearing the nun habits. The thing about them is that they’re black and polyester – two ingredients for making a guy sweat half his weight throughout a show, especially under the lights at the Bluebird. I’d sweated though our previous gigs, but the Bluebird stage seemed especially hot that night. One important thing I hadn’t done was hydrate before the gig or even bring a bottle of water on stage. There might have been a beer, but that was finished – quickly.”

“About an hour in, severe cotton mouth had set in. Sweat in my eyes and mouth. I wished I wasn’t wearing jeans underneath the gown, but a thong like our lead singer. I needed water. Jesus, anything to drink. Hell, I should have been drinking my sweat. I was dizzy and having a hard time standing up, inches away from possible heat stroke. ‘Just finish these songs, dude’, I thought, ‘and then drink all the water you can.’ After the last song, maybe it was ‘White Riot’, I somehow made it downstairs to the green room without passing out. I sat down for a while and drank a lot of water, which I really should have done before our set. Lesson learned, big time.”

The Nuns of Brixton play the Marquis Theater on Saturday, March 17, with Potato Pirates.

Editor’s Note: The Denver Bootleg is a series chronicling the history of local music venues by longtime Denver cartoonist Karl Christian Krumpholz. Visit Krumpholz’s website to see more of his work.