Doncaster Civic Wedneday Sept 8th

And so, feeling like it's only just started, our mini - tour is over. Tonight's the last show, and the really annoying thing about it is that we were just starting to properly click into that tour groove again, where everything runs smoothly, the performances are at a constantly high level, and everyone totally knows what they're doing to bring the whole thing together. The last three shows in particular have been a perfect example, with build and soundcheck times getting shorter as we tighten up the production. It's an odd one, though....on the one hand I'm not wanting it to stop as we're seeing The Bootleg's Effect again, and it's quite a heady thing to witness, but on the other hand my business head tells me these short tours aren't really cost effective, and I know I've got a lot of number-crunching to do when I get back to HQ. There's also a lot going on with various members of the tour party; Steve is about to start the stress - inducing process of moving house, Pug really IS going to Australia this time, and I'm trying to deal with some health issues which are causing problems, so in a way we DO need this to be over to concentrate on those things. The fact that we've had so many personnel changes on the crew over such a short space of time, especially with Arthur not being here for the final few shows, would normally be a cause for palm-moistening anxiety, but although the actual logistics of this haven't given us any worries whatsoever, the constant movement of people has lent a sort of temporary feel to proceedings; we haven't had the chance to get that gang mentality going, and that's helped disrupt the continuity just as much as the odd gaps we've had between shows. In short, I'm feeling a bit dischuffed today, and can't REALLY pin down why. Any free pyschoanalysis to this blog site, please..... But enough of this introspective maundering and maunging, on with the show ! Today we're at the Civic Theatre, a truly odd little building right in the middle of Donnie. From the outside it looks a bit like the big brother of those godawful prefab houses that the post-war government built for their returning heroes (" Great....Hitler tries to shoot my knackers off for five years, and as a thankyou from my country I get to live in a cardboard box with windows.....")but from the inside it's all old-school theatrical finishes and flourishes. It's long and narrow, with a decent stage and a somewhat alarmingly low roof, but it's exactly our kind of place. Like Leamington, the theatre has just reopened after a summer break, but we know before we get here that we've already more than doubled last night's paltry audience. The box office are also quite optimistic that there'll be a decent walk-up; Acker Bilk played last night, and much of the business there was walk-up, though to be honest I think that's more a case of audience prudence....I actually thought Mr Bilk was tootling Stranger On The Shore with the celestial choir these days, and was genuinely surprised to hear that not only was he still alive, but that he was still touring. He must be about 95 by now, so I guess the audience were just leaving it to the last minute, ringing the theatre just as the doors opened for the evening..." Hello, has Acker died yet ? No ? Great...I'm on me way over. I'll have two front row tickets, please... ". They're also hopeful that we'll pick up some of the people in town for the start of the St Leger meeting at Doncaster Racecourse, but having seen some of these characters around town earlier in the day I'm not so sure....at first I thought it was just a particularly big office party, as there were loads of men in suits and ties wandering around in large groups talking loudly and comparing mobiles ( it's a sad facet of 21st Century life that manhood is no longer measured by the size of your "wedding tackle" but by the number of apps you've got on your phone... ) I then thought that maybe it was a fancy dress "do", as I spotted three girls wearing clothes that sacrificed every vestige of comfort and practicality on the altar of ludicrousness. However, as I rounded a corner I came across a wine bar teeming with punters, and suddenly it clicked. It was the women who gave it away, actually. They'd obviously seen in OK and Hello magazines what the Beautiful People wear at Ascot Ladie's Day, and had put their own unique South Yorkshire spin on it. These aren't " the uppper class ", though, they're the wives and girlfriends of salesmen, and farmers, and factory owners, and car dealers, and as such are tarred with the indelible brush of their true origins. They may have the Chanel and Dior dresses and the Louboutins and Jimmy Choo's, but as they totter around on their vertiginous heels with their orange sunbed tans and their ridiculous confections of net and bead "hats" perched on their perfectly coiffed heads, you just KNOW they'll always be Sainsbury's, and never St Tropez. Still, if any of these preening hordes want to come and throw some of their winnnings at us, I'm not going to complain. Back at the theatre, it's been a record turnaround; we got here at 1pm, but by 5pm we've set everything up, soundchecked the band, and have loosed Damian upon the unsuspecting streets of Doncaster in search of fodder. Whilst impressive, there's a downside to this unexpected windfall of leisure time. In a nutshell, there's nothing happening to keep the adrenaline levels flowing, and the tiredness of the past few days starts to kick in. I'm sitting at my stage right position, intercom headphones on, all set for the show, I tip my head back to rest it on the wall.....and suddenly I realise that the odd thing which sounds like an asthmatic warthog having a particularly troublesome bowel movement is actually my snoring. I've always been pretty good at that touring / armed forces thing of napping when you can and where you can, but as I'm getting older I no longer leap into wakefulness the moment my eyes are open....it's more of a slow crawl punctuated by occasional whimpers and curses, and I'm less of a coiled spring ready for action, more of a three-toed sloth awaking from a long winter's hibernation. As such when someone asks me a question over the intercom, my reaction is " Mnnnnngnnnngng ", which at least has the effect of stunning my interrogator into puzzled silence, giving me time to drag myself back into some semblance of consciousnesss. Fortunately, before I can tumble back into dreamland again, the doors are open, and in come the audience. Rather brilliantly, right at the front there's a guy in a red satin Sgt Pepper-esque suit and slightly unconvincing wig, though I have to admit that the rest of the crowd are, shall we say, at the more mature end of our audience demographic. Hey ho. I call the house lights out, the intro video rolls, the band move into place in the dark, and then ANOTHER first happens.....the audience are actually applauding the shadowy figures onstage, quite loudly and enthusiastically, as it happens ! We're wondering if it's going to be one of those " little crowd, big reaction " nights, but to be honest the first half's all a bit...polite, I guess. Oh, they like it well enough, they laugh in the right places and sing along when asked, but apart from our red-suited and bewigged gentleman, no-one's going Radio Rental. The second half, though, as often happens,is a different matter. It must be something they put in the wine gums on sale at the foyer kiosk, but by the time we get to the combo-punch of Green Onions / On The Beach / Surfin' Safari / Mony Mony / Daydream Believer, they're not just dancing in the aisles but in front of the stage too. When the lights go up some of them come to the crew at front of the stage, some go to the two boys at the front of house mixing posiition, and some to the duty theatre staff, but they all say the same thing..." That was the best show we've had in here...when are you coming back ? ". This, ladies and gentlemen, is The Bootleg's Effect. We came, we saw, we rocked ( and, it must be said, occasionally rolled, but only when the situation demanded it ). And so on to the loadout, and a final, genuinely sad parting with our man Rupert "Pug" Jones, who will be leaving for Oz tomorrow. Pug's been with Arthur and I for a few years now, and has developed from an enthusiastic but inexperienced youngster into a good, solid engineer, popular with bands and crews alike. He works with us on pretty much everything we do, not just The Booties, and I'm really, really going to miss him. I tentatively suggest that I'll look into the cost of airfares so that we can fly him back for next year's tour, but he just smiles wryly. We may well be at the start of a new adventure with this show, but Pug's a young man and HIS new adventure is of a much more fundamental and life-changing nature. His eyes are on a much more distant horizon and he may yet decide that his entire future lies on the other side of the world. This may, quite literally, be the last time we ever see him, but whatever is ahead for him in Australia, he goes there with our love and best wishes. We also say goodbye to Ben Dorrington, who has stepped in for these past four shows as it he'd been here for ever, and who has been been his usual funny, friendly self throughout....he's off back to the world of corporate mega-shows tomorrow, muttering something about an event involveing duelling bulldozers, but our paths with definitely cross again. It's thus with something of a heavy heart that we start the drive back to Bedford to unload the kit. The end of a tour, even one as short as this, is always slightly dislocating, and it takes a few days to adjust and decompress. As often happens on last nights, we've not really had the chance to talk much to the band...they've all been round and thanked us as we were de-rigging, but they've got an even longer drive than us ahead of them and so they need to get weaving. It's odd....we often don't see Jamie, Phil and Chris at all between Booties' tours, but when we DO, everything just clicks back into place. We've spent very little time with the lads on these dates, largely due to the travelling arrangements, but already there's talk of trying to get a tour bus for at least part of next year's Spring outing, so we'd be together a lot more... now THAT will be something to look forward to! Talking of next year's tour, by the way, it will run from February 24th to April 3rd, and we'll be publishing the dates on the Bootleg Sixties website shortly. For my part I just want to say thanks again, Faithful Blogreader, for making these random musings worth writing. I've decided that I definitely want to do something different for the next tour....I'd toyed with the idea of a " talking book " kind of thing, which can apparently be added to and accessed from our website by some arcane and mystical process known only to the Grand Wizards of Thoon, but I felt it needed to be BIGGER, somehow, so I'm currently sketching our plans for "The Bootleg Sixties Tourblog...On Ice ". I think it could work, don't you ? In closing, I've been asked by a couple of people if I could publish the setlist which the band played this time out. I didn't ask them why, though I would respectfully suggest that they REALLY need to get out more, but here goes anyway. This is the tour setlist, by the way, not the Liverpool setlist...I've already eaten that one. Bye for now, and as the old cliche goes, watch this space.....

SET ONE
From Me To You
Just One Look
When You Walk In The Room
Hippy Hippy Shake
Go Now
We've Gotta Get Out Of This Place
Pretty Woman
Catch Us IF You Can
In My Room
You've Got Your Troubles /Tobacco Road / For Your Love / She's Not There
Hard Day's Night
Mr Tambourine Man
Keeep On Running
Sound Of Silence
Sunshine Superman / The Letter / Pretty Flamingo/ Sorrow / Walk Right Back
You Really Got Me
Wonderful Land
I'm A Boy
I'm A Believer

SET TWO
Blowin' In The Wind
Itchycoo Park
You Were On My Mind
Happy Together / Sunny Afternoon
Hole In My Shoe
Strawberry Fields
Light My Fire
California Dreaming
Handbags And Gladrags
The Star Spangled Banner
Pinball Wizard
He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother
Green Onions
On The Beach
Surfin' USA
Mony Mony
Daydream Believer
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You'll Never Walk Alone ( Blimey...sounds like a bloody good show...must try and catch it sometime..... )

Leamington Spa Royal Spa Centre Tues Sept 7th

Just to complete the full Travelodge Experience, I spent much of the night parking my tiger in the loo, thanks, almost certainly, to a suspect chicken and mushroom pie that I had last night, so it's a somewhat less than refreshed Henderson that drags his lardy arse out to the van. The lads are all up and about and have been sampling the delights of a nearby Sainsbury's cafe, but the very idea of breakfast makes me want to blow chunks, so I pass. Pug very kindly brings me a bottle of flavoured milk to help settle my roiling innards, and despite initial doubts I give it a try. If it works, great, but if it doesn't at least the vom will be colourful.... The drive from Hereford to Leamington takes us into the countryside on our way to the M5, and it's a lovely autumn morning as we wind our way up hill and down dale, and we're thoroughly enjoying the drive...right until we suddenly run into Hi - Visibility Vest Man and his " Road Closed " sign. Bugger. Nick's behind us in his van, so we set off in convoy along the diversion signs, which, in time-honoured fashion, disappear almost immediately, leaving us deeper and deeper into Nowhereland. We decide to place our trust in Doris The Sat-Nag, who is telling us to turn left along what appears to be a donkey track, but it soon broadens out into a single cart-lane, so we know we're going in the right direction. The scenery is quite stunning, and one hilltop vista in particular looks like it's painted on the brilliant blue sky. It's all very Watership Down, but we've got a gig to get to, and the fact that we've just passed a carvan of Bedoiun traders and their camels makes us wonder if we're as close to the main road as we thought. I don't think we're in Herefordshire anymore, Toto....Fortunately we hit the road we need just a couple of miles further on, and from there it's a straight, fast run to Leamington, or Royal Leamington Spa to give it it's full name. It really is a very pretty place, all Regency grandeur and horsey ladies in pearls and twinsets, though the Royal Spa Centre itself is a modern theatre that sits a little uncomfortably in the middle of all this opulence. Having said that, it's got good facilities, a nice big stage and a helpful, friendly crew. It soon becomes clear, however, that one thing it HASN'T got is an audience for tonight's show. We were always a little nervous about this one because the theatre has just re-opened after summer refurbishment, and we are only the second show of the autumn season, so there was a fear that their promo and marketing machine wouldn't be fully geared up to these early shows. Our fears, as it transpires, are justified....they've sold a paltry seventy - two advance tickets for tonight. Now, sometimes, things like this happen and they just don't make sense. I've seen the marketing schedule the theatre has done, and it includes all the posters, flyers, mail shots, e-shots and newspaper ads we could ask for. The ads also cover Coventry, possibly our strongest area outside of home territory, so there's no rhyme nor reason why this hasn't sold, but the fact is that it hasn't. There are two ways you can go in these situations. One is to throw a righteous wobbler, blame everyone in the world and cancel the show, pissing off theatre and ticket-buyers alike, and the other is to bite the bullet, get on with it, and chalk it up to experience. I can see that the theatre's done it's bit to push the show and that they're as baffled as we are, so we go for the latter option.
As I said in a previous blog, the band have got a good attitude to this kind of situation, and they're very philosophical about it all. The show will still be as good as if we had a full house, and there'll be no slacking or shirking, so all I have to do now is tear at my clothing in despair and wonder how the buggery bollocks I can absorb the financial hit we'll take tonight. Luckily nspiration strikes. Drink heavily. I thus head to the pub with the others where I proceed to get steaming drunk and start a fight with a policeman. And his horse. On a serious note, this is a landmark we hoped we'd never reach, namely a new lowest audience attendance figure. The trick is not to let is get you down until afterwards, so though we watch somewhat disconsolately as the sparse audience drifts into the theatre, we click back into " show gear " as soon as the house lights go down. As often happens, it's never the disaster I was afraid of. For a little crowd they make their presence felt, and though some of the jokes might not get the belly-laughs they do elsewhere, this is going well....very well, in fact. Technically, it's a flawless show, and there's nothing forced about the audience's response to the band or their calls for an encore. In many ways the lads have worked even harder tonight; instead of going into their shells they've been smiling and looking like they're enjoying themselves, and Chris in particular has been something of a cheerleader over the past few shows. There's a steady stream of people telling Pug and Damian what a fantastic show it is as they file out afterwards, and as Den says, that's what this building process with the show is all about. They'll tell people who will tell people, and the next time we come here it'll be a totally different story. Next time there'll be no-one here at all......!

Hereford Courtyard Monday Sept 6th

One of the good things about the way this whole project is developing is that everyone's much more realistic about how it's growing. The fact that we had a pretty mental and virtuaqlly sold-out show last night doesn't mean that the next show will be the same, especially if we've never been there before, and so we descend on Hereford with the attitude that no matter how many people turn up tonight, they're not going to forget us and they're going to want us back. Hereford is famous for bulls, cider, popstrel Eliie Goulding and....err...that's about it, so we don't know whether it's a hotbed of classic Seventies rock, banging techno, finger-in-the-ear "Whose pigs are these " folk music or even the last outpost of The Wurzel's fanclub. What we DO know is that this is a really nice theatre with a great crew, and despite the fact that it's pissing down enough to get Noah worried for much of the day, we're enjoying the wide open spaces of the stage. Last night was so small that at times I felt like one of The Borrowers, but here we've got bags of room, and this is the kind of stage where we can really make this look like a big, grown-up rock show again. It's fine to be able to knock people out with the show in little rooms like Market Drayton and ( speak the devil's name quietly ) Boston, but to move everything on we have to be able to fill the big stages and still have the audience saying it's one of the best things they've ever seen. We're still very much breaking new ground, even after all this time....we've never been here before, so we don't know what to expect, so we just have to get in, do our jobs, and bring the message that THEY WILL SURRENDER TO US EVENTUALLY AND LOVE US MORE THAN ANY OTHER AND GIVE US ALL THEIR MONEY AND THEIR ADORATION AND THEIR VIRGINS AND EVERYTHING....Actually, I'd settle for the virgins. Just a couple. One, even....Anyway, back in the real world, the rain continues to hose down, which is not good as it pretty much kills the " walk up ", which is people who decide to come along on the night or on the spur of the moment. Faced with the choice of venturing out into the teeming rain to see a new show or to crank up the heating a notch and snuggle down in front of the old crystal bucket, sadly the Big Brothers and X Factors of this world win almost every time. No matter though...onwards and upwards,as they say. There's actually a decent crowd in tonight, as it happens, and they're clearly in the mood to be entertained, making much more noise than an audience of this size has any right to do. Where a show like this CAN fall down isn't on the songs, strangely enough, it's the bits between them. Den and Steve in particular have got some great lines, and there's nothing worse than dropping in a funny which had them rolling in the aisles last night, only to find that tonight it's greeted by total silence and tumbleweed blowing across the staqe. Den's VERY good at this, though; he's got a way of almost challenging the audience not to join in without them realising that's what he's doing. It works, quite literally, every time, and tonight's no exception. The first number where we get the audience involved is only the fourth one in, Hippy Hippy Shake, but there's no hesitation as they clap along with the lads. There's one lady of somewhat advanced years who does this weird, twisting shimmy dance throughout the whole show, and we're all loving this game old bird as she boogies along. Turns out later she didn't really WANT to keep dancing, she's just got a particularly nasty case of piles, but she's setting the standard anyway. Den has decided to reintroduce On The Beach to the end of the set as we're still getting a lot of " you don't do any Cliff " comments, and it's a great choice as it makes the last five songs a real " Sixties party ". When the band finish and leave the stage it's to genuine and full applause, and then a first happens for us...the crowd break into the " We want more ! " chant, which is as appreciated as it's unexpected. You'll Never Walk Alone leaves them still baying for more, but it's lights up, curtain down and on to the next one....they'll have us back here, no doubt, and we want to leave people talking about this show. It's a fast getout, so we all head to the local Travelodge for some much - needed sleep. Ah, yes, the Travelodge....now, I don't want this blog to turn into some kind of Lonely Planet guide to the hotels of Britain, but it would also be churlish of me to leave the experience unremarked. The first warning sign is that it's slap bang opposite the Cider Museum. This is dangerous because Tomps, normally the mild - mannered Clark Kent of our tour party, has been known to turn into Ciderman, destroying all in his path, after just one pint of Scruttock's Old Dirigible scrumpy. I make a mental note to lock him in his rooom and then spirit him away past it in the morning. The second thing that makes my nadgers curdle is Travelodge's current advertising campaign. Now, a Russian meerkat flogging car insurance I can handle, but a bunch of teddy bears coming on like East End villains urging me to " Sleep tight " just makes me want to hurt people, preferably the numpty from the advertising agency that came up with the idea in the first place. On the ads the rooms all look warm and cosy, but the one I go into boasts a cold austerity that would make a monk's cell look like a suite at The Dorchester. There's not a single picture or anything to break up the monotony of the four white, white walls, and within five minutes I'm feeling like I'm doing a ten stretch for armed robbery ( maybe THAT'S why the little bears in the ads are like thugs....). Still, it's got a bed, and I'm knackered, so I sit down on the edge of it...and am immmediately tipped backwards, where I lie scrabbling on my back with my legs in the air like an upended turtle. There's a SERIOUS dip in the middle of the bed....it must have been used by two hippos for a major shagfest or something, but I'm in it now, and don't have the strength to climb back out again, so it's goodnight from me.....bloody " Sleep tight " indeed.....

Wavendon Stables Sunday Sept 5th

Something of a local gig for many of the crew today. Wavendon is a tiny pimple on the bum of the urban sprawl that makes up Milton Keynes, a city memorably described by comedian Bill Bailey as " Satan's lay-by ", and we've worked at the Stables many times over the years with various productions. The whole shebang was started here ages ago by the late, great jazzer Johnny Dankworth and his wife Cleo Laine, and the original Stables was a stable block attached to their house ( see what they did there ? ) but this purpose - built theatre is spanky and new and smells of carpet, as opposed to horseshit, which somewhat blighted the vibe of the original place. Although the theatre is pretty small, it hosts some excellent and high profile acts, and has a fiercely loyal regular audience, known as Stablemates ( it just keeps getting better, doesn't it ? ). It's a little bit of a weird one for the Booties show as the greater part of the stage space is what's know as a thrust ( oo-er missus ) which sticks way out into the audience. It means there isn't a flat area behind the stage big enough to take all three of our screens, so we've had to fanny around hanging screens from the ceiling. Only problem is, there are no actual bars or fixtures to hang them from. Oh no. What we have instead is a mesh of metal cable which also acts as a floor which the lighting technicians can walk on when they move lights and cables around. From underneath it looks like a giant net, and when you're just walking on it, it's fine. However, when you have to lie or kneel on it when tying off the hanging bars and cables for the projector, it suddenly tskes on the properties of a cheesegrater. Clive is manfully clambering around up there, his efforts punctuated by yelps of pain and the occasional scream of actual agony, and when he finally gets back down to ground level his body has been imprinted with a fascinating tattoo of indendation marks where he's been sliced and diced by the mesh, but there's no actual blood, so that's alright then. Girl. Today is an odd one for another reason, too...Arthur and Clive are only here for the build and soundcheck, then they are jumping on a tour bus to go off on a short series of dates for Yamaha, starting in Dublin tomorrow. As such there's a bit of an " all change " feel about the show, with Pug moving to front of house engineer and our old mucker Ben Dorrington coming in on monitors. Ben has actually been on a transatlantic voyage with the Queen Mary II, so he will arrive back in Heathrow this morning, having flown in overnight from New York. No doubt he'll be as fresh as a daisy and not in the LEAST jetlagged.....Because there isn't enough space behind the stage for the screens we've had to move everything forward, and as such it's quite cramped up there. Steve's access to his drumkit is so tight we seriously consider the option of him abseiling down from the wire mesh above, and there's no way the band can get on from stage right at all, so this is going to be tres cosy, especially when Nick performs Le Danse IKEA, getting the stools on and off for the acoustic section. One REALLY good thing about tonight, though, is that it's sold very well. We know we have a good number of fans coming up from our home areas, but the Stablemates have been buying their tickets too, by the looks of it. We've done a couple of sold-out shows in the past here when we were working with Peter Green Splinter Group, so we know the intimacy of the venue can produce a great atmosphere, and the level of noise we get at the end of opener From Me To You tells us all we want to know...tonight's going to be a belter. Some nights we have some strange things happen, like the audience will respond most strongly to things like the Simon and Garfunkel song, and then they're with us all the way. Other nights it's Light My Fire that really breaks down the barriers, and sometimes we've got them from the first number. That's definitely the case tonight, and the fact that the audience are so close makes their response seem even louder and more powerful. Nick does indeed have to do an obstacle course to get the stools on and off, and we discover that one of the moving lights is actually pointing straight at a lady in the balcony ( we only really noticed when her eyebrows finally burst into flames ) but other than that it's a stonking gig. When the crowd sing back at the band on things like Sunny Afternoon and I'm A Believer it pretty much takes the roof off. In fact, it feels very much like the Marlborough gig last tour where we absolutely ripped the place up and did an unscheduled second encore for the only time on the whole jaunt. Part of me's hoping that Den will call Spirit In The Sky again, but he does the sensible thing and "leaves them wanting more ", as the showbiz maxim goes. There are loads of friends and fans wanting to speak to everyone afterwards, and everyone's totally buzzing. It's definitely going to be one that we'll talk about for a long time to come, and for all the right reasons. There might not have been any weird stuff like dive-bombing bats here tonight ( though Damian DID have a moth fly down his shirtfront ) ...it was all about the music, the band and the audience. Wavendon is now officially the Rock & Roll Capital of The Civilized Western World....

Christchurch Regent, Thursday Sept 2nd

I'm sure someone has actually been down here and moved Dorset a bit further south since last time, or maybe it was the teeth - grinding monotony of the miles and miles of roadworks on the M1 and M25, but it takes bloody AGES to get to Christchurch today, and the carload of crew types arrive a full thirty minutes after Arthur and Nick have pulled up in the two gear vehicles. It's an absolutely glorious South Coast day, but we've no time to appreciate it as we're straight out of the car and into the load-in. The Regent is one of those curious little theatres that you find tucked away in various provincial towns around the UK, fronting onto the main street but with a modest facade that you almost miss as you drive by. Haverhill Arts Centre and Chatham Central Hall are very similar, but inside the Regent it's a totally different ballgame as the place has this lovely, faded art - deco vibe. It's fun, funky and exactly the kind of place we enjoy playing. The load -in is a BIT of a bugger, as they've got this big, grown - up scene dock at a height of about 4' from the ground, all tricked out and ready for the ramps or tail-lifts of the big trucks that will back up to it. However, it's way too lofty for our two Mercedes Sprinter vans, so we're faced with the option of either humping things in from floor level or rolling it up a mental switchback disabled access ramp that wouldn't look out of place as a ride on a local pleasure beach. The local crew lads are very helpful, though, and in the case of stage manager Sean, a laid - back and luxuriantly - ringletted rocker, they're also expert tea makers. Cold drinks are fine in hot weather, but sometimes a good brew will cool you down just as effectively, and boy do we NEED cooling down.....despite the fact that the scene dock shutter door is kept open until the last minute to allow some breeze across the stage, within minutes of our arrival we're sweating bullets, and Pug in particular looks like someone's just upended a bucket of water over him ( mind you, he breaks into a sweat just lighting a cigarette, so that's not really saying anything.....). The stage is also a bit narrow and cramped but we get sorted with the minimum of cursing and flouncing. The band all arrive without mishap or delay, and the soundcheck is dispatched with such elan that we've got nearly an hour and a half before doors, so I make a play for Damian's Food God title and trot out in search of comestibles, returning successfully with...yep, you guessed it...fish and chips
( actually I almost fell over the bloody place as it was virtually next door to the theatre, so I don't think Damian's got anything to fear from me ). It's such a lovely evening that I suggest we dine al fresco " Nah " replies some wag, I'm going to eat mine outside instead ". Foolish boy. We dutifully troop out and have one of those lovely little tour bonding moments as all eleven of us, plus Den's lad-ling William, sit chatting and eating outside the theatre in the gorgeous Dorset sunshine, seagulls wheeling overhead. Despite the idyllic setting I'm keeping a wary eye on the birds; I've seen these winged muggers on You've Been Framed as they filch grub out the very hands of unsuspecting tourists, and despite the fact that it would take a veritable Schwarzenegger of the avian world to part ME from my food, I'm not going to give them the slightest opportunity. Eventually it's time to head back inside, and as the doors open we realise it's not going to be that large a crowd tonight.In the past this has worked both ways for us; early in the last tour we had a couple of quiet shows and it seemed to hobble the band in some way, so that they played very much within themselves. On other nights it made for a more intimate connection, though, and a couple of the best shows we did were to smaller audiences. Pleasingly, tonight is very much the latter. This is a really enthusiastic crowd, vocally boosted and prompted by our perennial front - row stormtroopers Marilyn and Debs, and it's one of those nights when you just KNOW it's going to be good. When this band is put onto a small stage these days, we don't get hissy fits or diva strops about not having room to express themselves or some such cobblers, what we get instead is a kind of raw, undistilled intensity that really does prove irresistible to audiences. Add Arthur's sonic genius and the lights and projections to the mix and you've suddenly got something that seems way too big a fit for it's surroundings. It's not a case of arrogance; we KNOW this is a great show, and when you squeeze it into somewhere like the Regent it's phenomenal. Tonight is a perfect example of The Bootleg's Effect, and the fulsome praise heaped on us by the house staff coupled with the post-show e-mails from audience members just reinforce our resolve that we're on the right track with this, and that it's just a matter of time before we're stepping up to a different level. Tonight is also a FUN show; Steve's enjoying himself so much he corpses just as he's about to start his vocal for " In My Room " and everyone's relaxed and joking. Things are helped along by the sudden appearance onstage of a bat, clearly shaken from his slumber in the upper reaches of the theatre's roof by the sturm und drang of the band's playing. For a few numbers he zooms around the hall, even swooping down to buzz the band a couple of times. Some of the female audience members seem a little discomfited, but Chris deadpans reassurance, " Don't worry, it's just a special effect " he tells them. I know we sometimes say that our show features special guests, but this really IS a first..... Fortunately our little Pipistrelle friend ( later christened Eric The Bat by Marilyn and Debs for reasons known only to themselves ) soon disappears from sight, and we reason that he's either found a way out or much more likely, the sound from the PA has so seriously shagged his inbuilt radar that he's flown headfirst into a wall somewhere. Whatever the reason, the band are left unencumbered to rampage towards the end of another hugely successful show, marred only by my substituting two of the theatrical flashes ( you know, the ones with the " loud report " ) for two dodgy silver jets, and then forgetting to warn the band. It earns me a Paddington Bear Flat Stare from Den and poor Steve has to change his undercrackers AGAIN, but it's just a blip on another belting night for us all. These are the kind of gigs when you know you're getting it all right, and when the venue, the crowd and the local crew are as good as they are here, it's just so, so satisfying. It even takes the edge off a slow and arduous load-out, and will bolster us for the long drive home. We'll DEFINITELY come back here again. As we pull away I bid farewell to the Regent, and just as we drive past the load door I see a small bat swoop down. I can't be sure from this distance, but it looks like he's wearing a little bandage round his head.....

Bromsgrove Artrix Wed Sept 1st

After the sheer blast of splendiferousness that was Liverpool, there was always going to be an element of " after the Lord Mayor's show " about the first gig after it. That show happens to be in sunny Bromsgrove ( actually VERY sunny, and gusset-moisteningly hot, too ) at a new theatre called Artrix ( I always thought he was Obelix's mate in the cartoon strip, but there you go ). Arthur's flown back in from a couple of days break back on Fuertaventura, and having recharged our batteries a bit we're looking forward to rejoining the fray as we motor down the M6 onto the M5, eventually finding ourselves in the sun - drenched car park of the theatre. Tomps is back on the tour from now until the end as Clive is off doing things like being a squire to the Barron Knights, so we're planning to have a bit of a chinwag with Den when he arrives, just to make sure all the visual elements of the show are totally nailed. Our plans are soon to be kicked into touch, however, as we get a call from Nick saying that a truck has overturned on the M42, and as a result he's stuck in stationary traffic...has been for the past half hour, in fact. As all our gear is spread across two vehicles, this is going to be a bit of an arsebiscuit....we've got the PA system with us but Nick's carrying the moving lights, which really should go in early, as well as our white backdrop, which really should go in first. We can build all the stuff we're carrying on OUR van, but then we're going to have to shoehorn all of Nick's gear in around it when he gets here, and that's the kind of palaver that just makes you break out in funbumps. A couple of calls later and it becomes clear that Nick, sitting in a sweltering stew of stationary vehicles, really isn't going to be getting here any time soon, so we bite the bullet and start setting up. We then realise that there's a very good chance the band are also stuck in the very same traffic, and a couple of phone calls proves this to be the case. The portents are not good. It's actually 3.30 by the time Nick finally pulls up, hot, stressed, and with a face like thunder. " Nice trip ?" I venture playfully.
" GRRRRRAAAAHHHNNNGGGRR" he replies, gnawing on my forearm. Not happy, then.....As it transpires, his late arrival isn't anywhere near as much of a nutcracker as we'd feared, and we get sorted relatively quickly, but the delay to the band themselves is giving us a headache now, not only because we're running out of soundcheck time but also because Den's got a revised show disk coming with him, and we need to get it into the computer, checked and readied. I'm expecting a stream of vented frsutration and invective, but when they finally DO arrive, the band are surprisingly chilled, and my forearms remain unsullied. Arthur and Tomps sort out the show visuals with Den and then we belt through a truncated soundcheck, but it doesn't feel hurried or stressful....in fact it has the slickness of a piece of well-oiled machinery, and it's another one of those moments where you think " We're all actually quite good at this, aren't we ? " There's even time to send our chief hunter-gatherer Damian and Pug out into the sun - dappled evening charged with the task of finding sustenance for the crew that doesn't come in a wrapper marked " Cadbury's ". He's a skilled fodder tracker, is our Damian...despite weighing about three and a half stone wringing wet and being so skinny that he virtually disappears when he turns sideways, he clearly has a fearsomely fast metabolism as he he can pack away his tucker with all the speed and panache of a big fat bastard like my good self. He's the kind of bloke who could find a KFC in the middle of the Kalahari desert, so the task of securing several portions of excellent fish and chips on a Wednesday night in Bromsgrove is almost unworthy of his talents. Nonethless, in what seems like no time at all we're chowing down backstage, making so many little involuntary moans of pleasure that it sounds uncomfortably like the set of a soft porn movie. There really IS nothing ike a good infusion of lard to set you up for a gig... The band are back to the " tour show " tonight after the diversifications of Liverpool, and within seconds of the opening " From Me To You " Tomps tells me over the intercom " Ah, this takes me right back to March ! " as he happily flies in the film footage, and I realise once again that yes, we ARE all good at this, band and crew alike. We blew away a few cobwebs in Whitley Bay but from then on in everyone's just dropped right back into the touring groove from five months ago. There aren't many set changes from last time....Happy Together and Sunny Afternoon have become a joyous medley instead of two separate numbers... there's no " On The Beach " and " Surfin' Safari " is back, but the pace and the power are still potent, and tonight we have a good - sized and vocal audience to bounce off. In fact, the whole show is pretty flawless; there are the usual couple of little technical niggles that we'll talk about in the car on the way back tonight, but by and large it's been a lovely, easy show considering all the transport nightmares that went on earlier and which could have seriously derailed things. It's nights like these when I can almost sit back and enjoy the band and the show rather than work on it, and I know that this is the " zone " the band are so good at getting into; it's smooth confidence without complacency, and it's this as much as anything else that's going to stand us in good stead over what will hopefully be many years of touring this show. More like this one, please.....!

Liverpool Philharmonic Friday Augu 27th

Today, Faithful Blogreader, I must once again crave your indulgence. This is going to be a longer than usual blog, as there's raaaaaaaather a lot to relate, so I hope you'll hang on in there. As the song says, we'll start at the very beginning.......So we've driven from Whitley Bay, and arrive in Liverpool at about 3.30am, so as you can imagine, everyone's feeling a little torpid. The band are staying in Satan's B & B ( sorry, I mean the Adelphi ) but the crew, as befits our lowly, hairy-arsed status, have been allocated rooms in that pinnacle of budget accommodation, the Formule 1. For anyone who's never stayed in one of these beknighted hostels, a brief description is required. Imagine, if you will, a room...nay, a cubicle...some eight feet by ten feet ( don't ask me what that is in bloody metres....I'm old). Occupying nine-tenths of the available floorspace is a normal-looking double bed. Where things start to go totally Spanish is the second bed, however. This is a kind of bunk arrangement running horizontally across the top of the double bed, accessed by a dinky little ladder. Acting as the en-suite facilities, there's a miniscule washbasin in one corner of the room. A tiny table is slung across the opposite corner, under which sits a scarred and fag-burned plastic chair...and that's yer lot. The Ritz it isn't, and two problems immediately rear their ugly heads. The first is that neither Arthur or I are lightweights, so the idea of scampering up the somewhat flimsy-looking ladder holds little appeal, even if we could physically manage it, which we seriously doubt...the room appears to have been designed as a playhouse for orang-utans rather than a resting place for fifty-something roadpeople. There's a second bulk-related problem, too, which is that even if we DID manage to get up onto the bunk by some process of levitation, osmosis or whatever, neither of us fancies the idea of having the other's twenty-odd stone hovering just above our bonces with just a thin piece of wood standing between us and potential oblivion. And did I mention that after we'd got our keycard from the sullen youth at reception with the Warsaw/Toxteth hybrid accent and hauled our weary bodies and baggage up to the second floor that the bloody thing didn't even open the door ? Now, I know that the band were also having hotel-related fun and games themselves tonight, what with the five of them having to share two rooms, but let me tell you, by comparison with THIS shitbox they're in the executive suite at Claridges. We were finally let into our "room" by another monosyllabic, bullet-headed Pole, and solved the problem of the second bed by taking the mattress off the bunk and throwing it on the remaining floorspace under the sink.By now we were so shagged out that we just didn't care anymore, so I crashed out on the floor, undaunted by the interesting and varied array of insects which then tried to share my covers. After what seemed like only ten minutes but was, in fact, a massive four hours, we were awoken by a herd of bison galloping down the corridor. It was, in fact, just the room-service lady ( from Katowice, since you ask ) wheeling her little laundry cart from room to room, but thanks to some piece of miraculous construction genius every single footstep in these corridors is amplified a thousand times. What can I say...the place is built and owned by the French, and whilst they are very good at being garlic-munching surrender monkeys, they're shite at building cheap hotels. It wasn't over yet, however.....I decided to have a shower to try and get the accumulated floor-level flora and fauna out of my skin, so I summoned up the courage to brave the little cubicle down the corridor. I looked around for a towel, but could only find two flannels under the washbasin. After a moment or two I realised with sinking heart that this scrap of thin terrycloth was no flannel...this WAS the towel. Now, I'm no rough frontiersman or hardy survivalist, but I thought even I could make this work somehow. Wrong. When you've got as much surface area as I have, most of which is covered by moisture-retaining hair, you need considerable drying-power. The little hankie did it's best, and I managed to mop up some more of the liquid by contorting my body under the warm air hand-dryer, but short of performing a handstand there was no way of using this method this to air the old undercarriage, and thus it was with a somewhat chafing, John Wayne-esque gait that I headed back to the room. But enough of this spleen-venting....time to get on with our story. I merely wanted to give you a feel what what we were experiencing in the less than perfect build-up to this, probably the most important show in the short history of The Bootleg Sixties. Having assembled the troops in the carpark ( the hotel, naturally enough, not runnning to anything quite as extravagant as a reception area ) we head off to the venue in convoy. The Philharmonic is a beautiful hall, vast of ceiling and rich in architectural flourishes. With a capacity of over 2,000 it's by far the biggest and most impressive place we've ever staged this show, and despite some shortcomings for our specific needs ( like Cheltenham Town Hall it has no light directly above the stage and a rake of choir stalls behind it )local tech gurus Ad Lib have installed some free-standing screens for us that easily look as effective as the white backdrop we customarily use. Damian's going to have some fun trying to light the stage with a house rig designed more for providing a staid general colour wash for an orchestra than the flashing bombast of a rock show,but he's brought some toys with him and is also in general awe of the place, taking photos of it from every conceivable angle.I've got some toys of my own for tonight, too, more of which later, but for the moment our main focus is on whether or not Den's plan for getting replacement disks for tonight's show has worked or not. Den is coming in at 11.00am to start rejigging the slide show we already have as a back-up plan, and the disks themselves are being rushed up by car, so we're reasonably optimistic. The day gets another major boost when our enterprising foragers Clive and Damian discover a local Egyptian-owned cafe which has hit on the genius idea of a takeaway full Engllish breakfast. For a blissful ten minutes or so there's total silence as we sit in a line at the front of the stage and trough down gratefully. Like any army, a touring band marches on it's stomach, and though I'm carrying enough subcutaneous body fat to enable me to live, camel-like, for several months without food if pressed, this fresh fuel really hits the spot, so it's with renewed vigour that we push on with our work. First major relief of the day....the disks arrive, get loaded into the computer, and after a " Please God, please...." moment, Arthur annnounces " We have a show ". In reality, from here on in we're coasting; the early get-in has meant that everything else is ready for the band's arrival at 3pm for soundcheck, and after that the rest is just tweaking. The soundcheck itself reveals a few frayed nerves and tempers as lack of sleep and the pressure of the occasion take their toll on some of the band, but a couple of " jams " into the process and everyone's visibly relaxing. Tonight's show will differ significantly from the touring show. Perennial Hollies favourite Just One Look is replaced by their Look Through Any Window, The Small Faces All Or Nothing stands in for Itchycoo Park and The Byrds' Mr Tambourine Man gives way to Turn Turn Turn. The Easybeats' resolutely mental Friday On My Mind in in there, and as this is The Beatles Festival, a smattering of extra Fab Four tunes have been added to the mix. Got To Get You Into My Life makes a welcome return and We Can Work It Out takes over from Walk Right Back as the ultimate song of the acoustic medley. Most exciting development for me, however, is the addition of Helter Skelter as the encore number. Always a powerful song, seeing The Overtunes batter it into submission at soundcheck is almost worth the admission price alone. Having long thought U2's version was the defintive cover of the number, I have a serious change of heart as the boys tee it up and knock it out of sight into Row Z. It's times like this, when the five musicians step outside the slightly polite format of Sixties pop and really cut loose that you realise what a truly great band they are; there's a "rock" presence here that wouldn't look out of place on any of the world's arena stages and you appreciate fully that, geniuses at Sixties music as they are, they'd be equally brilliant at any genre in the rock music format. We get a little glimpse of this every night when they do the wig-out section of Light My Fire, but this here is something so joyous and visceral that the few remaining hairs on the back of my neck are stood at attention throughtout. It's magnificent, and to complement the bombast of this closing song, I also have a few little secret weapons hidden around the stage. In addition to the usual array of fireworks, along the front we have four thunderflashes, all featuring what the label solemnly refers to a " a loud report ". Best of all, though, concealed behind the screen I have device known as a bomb tank, which is essentially a bloody great cast-iron dustbin into which you suspend an explosive device called a maroon. Ships in distress use these at sea, so you're maybe getting the picture of the volume involved. The plan is to trigger this mini-Armageddon at the top of the intro build for Helter Skelter, so I have a quick practise until I'm happy I've got the timing right...this is a one-time option so there's no margin for error. Another thing that's different about tonight is that we've got a support band on with us, a lovely bunch of local Cavern-playing regulars called The Shakers who are going to kick things off with a thirty-minute set. There's a strict 11pm curfew tonight, so the show HAS to run tight, and as such we've ditched a lot of the regular banter between songs. We're going to have to keep a very close eye on the clock as we can't risk having to lose any of the set. Seven thirty finally rolls around, the doors open, and at the appointed hour sharp-suited compere Neil walks on to start proceedings by introducing The Shakers. As the band play I peep out into the auditorium and do a quick double-take....the place is full, upstairs AND down. Oh, yes....this is going to be GOOD ! As the last notes of Twist & Shout die away and The Shakers say their " thankyou and goodnight " we're already onstage, clearing their gear and setting up our own. We've been given fifteen minutes, manage it in ten, and so we're good to go. When the house lights go down we get that big audience roar thing going on, then suddenly the stage lights are up and the band are into From Me To You. On the last tour we saw how little venues can barely contain the power and presence of The Bootleg Sixties show in full effect, but we also saw in places like Coventry and Stockport how well the band can make the step up to the bigger stages, and tonight they're doing it as to the manner born. The sound is immense, they're smiling and clearly enjoying themselves, and despite the lack of house lighting Damian's doing some VERY clever things with his MAC 250s. Not for the first time I look at the stage, then out at the audience and think
" Yes....this show really CAN be as big as this EVERY night ". That's for the future, though...tonight we're concentrating on keeping this perfect. Every song is rapturously received, all the visuals are runnning like clockwork, and before we know it there are two thousand plus people bellowing " Then I saw her face " back at Den as I'm A Believer brings the first half to a close. We've overrun by five minutes but we know we can pull that back, so everything's still calm backstage. By the time the house get everyone out of the bar at the end of the interval and we get clearance to restart the show we've lost another five minutes, so I'm getting a BIT anxious, but we'll just have to see how it goes. Instead of the usual video at the start of the second half, Den's done a very clever George Harrison / Eleanor Rigby mash-up to accompany a visual montage he's put together, and from there it's straight into Blowin' In The Wind. All Or Nothing gets everyone back in the party mood, and to hear all those people singing You Were On My Mind is just fantastic. By the time the band are on the home stretch of Green Onions, Mony Mony and Jumpin' Jack Flash it's "back of the net" time, and the audience don't even need to be asked to dance. The noise they make as they bay for the lads to come back onstage is incredible, and you can actually hear screams of joy as Jamie kicks into Helter Skelter. The appointed moment comes and.....BOOOOM ! off go the pyrotechnics, BANG ! off go the band and AAAAGGH ! go the audience as we break the world record for mass simultaneous bowel-voiding. Oh yes, it was loud....it was VERY loud.....At last it's all over, and as the band head off to the Adelphi to meet and greet, we start to take the show down, proud of what we've achieved here tonight. It's been virtually flawless, and we've seen first-hand what this COULD become. We load up the gear, tired but happy, and some of the lads head home, whilst Arthur, Nick and I follow the band to the Adelphi for a quick celebratory snifter. Steve's there with pal and fellow skinsman Chris Sharrock of Robbie Williams and Oasis fame, but we're just after a quiet drink,so we head into the least busy bar. Just as we've ordered, an odd mobile phone call comes in from young Lids, and Nick, concerned by the tone of his offspring's voice, heads back to the hotel to see what's afoot. Phil wanders in to the bar, a big smile creasing his face, and joins us in a Guinness, then uber-fans Marilyn and Debbie apppear.I surreptitiously check to see if they are sporting fresh jeans, as the originals may have been inadvertently soiled by the effects of my explosions, but these girls are made of stern stuff and there's not even a piddle-mark in sight. Nick returns with Lids in tow, and we hear the latest instalment in the tale of the Formule 1. Our Lids hasn't been feeling too good lately, so he'd headed to bed after the show, only to be awoken by the sight of five drunken Scousers standing in his room, apparently looking for some kind of party. It appears that one of the other clever aspects of the room design at the Formule 1 is that some of the rooms can't be locked from the inside, so this mob of marauding Mickey Mousers were thundering up and down the corridors going into whichever rooms they could open. No wonder the poor lad was nervous on the phone.... We finally bid farewell to everyone and head back to Albert Docks where we wearily climb the stairs of the Shithole Du Jour, as we have renamed this Gallic dump. As we reach our landing two security types are escorting a bunch of noisy, bolshie pissheads off the premises, and as they pass us I realise how annoying it is that you never seem to have an Uzi submachine gun on you when you need one. Hey ho, next time, perhaps. It's been a good, good day today, and though we're totally knackered we fall asleep with the glow of a job very well done. Tonight I don't even mind the beetles and fleas snuggling down with me, though tomorrow I will vow to burn this accursed place to the ground and dance on the ashes.....

Whitley Bay Playhouse Wed Aug 26th

So, Faithful Blogreader, here we are again, large as life and twice as ugly....when you're starting a new tour, there's only one way to set you up for that difficult first show, and that's to go and have a mahoosive cooked breakfast at a Morrison's supermarket cafe. It's not exactly rock and roll but, by Sooty's fur, it doesn't half hit the spot. It's a glorious day up here on the North-East coast,and the Playhouse is all refurbished and spiffy, so there's a nice, relaxed, summery vibe about the place. Of course we know it won't last...it IS the first show after all....but for now we're making the most of it. Back when dinosaurs strode the earth I used to live here, though the place has changed so much I can't even find the street where I stayed. The greatest tragedy is that the fish and chip shop which provided my staple diet back then is no longer here, and to my real sadness neither is the Spanish City amusement park, once the town's main attraction. I'd like to say that I have happy memories of long summer nights spent on the rides there, with a pretty, laughing young girl by my side, but the harsh reality is that for the entire time I lived here it was bloody freezing, and most of the North Sea seemed to seep under my door when the wind blew. Still, it's shame to see the old place gone. Back at the Playhouse, all is going well. Although it's about four months since we last did the show we've all slipped straight back into the old routine, and even new lighting dude Damian is slotting in well. Although the crew came up here last night, the band have opted to drive up today, which is a bit of a haul, but this time there's no speed - governed rattlebucket minibus to contend with; instead they're in a nice new Ford people carrier. There's a bit less space but the trade-off is that now they get to the shows before the next ice age starts, and despite the schlep up from Hertfordshire they're in good spirits. It's actually a bit of a mega-travel day for the band, as after tonight's show we all drive to Liverpool for a 9.00am load-in at the Philharmonic tomorrow morning. Further into a tour this is the kind of thing that causes much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but this early on everyone is still cloaked in a thin veneer of civility, and so this heavy schedule is met with a shrug rather than a knife between the shoulder blades. It's great to see the lads again and they all arrive looking tanned and healthy, courtesy of a brief jaunt to Fuertaventura. I'm more than a little jealous as I really wanted to go too, but a pressing appointment with the surgeon's scalpel prevented me. Still, they're all genuinely concerned and inspect my newly - repaired ( and alarmingly bald ) knee with interest before cracking on with the soundcheck, after which, unfortunately, things start to unravel a bit. First, it becomes clear that the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool have cocked up rather spectacularly, and rather than the five single rooms for two nights that they're MEANT to give the band, there are now just two, and one's a triple. The kicker, though, is that not only will they have to cram in together but they'll have to be out of the rooms early in the morning as they've already been sold ! This, mind you, despite us having all the relevant booking forms and so on. I'd just like to digress here for a moment, if I may. Some years back there was a programme about the Adelphi on TV, one of these " fly on the wall " things. During the course of the programme's run, the Grand National at Aintree was abandoned due to a bomb scare, and everyone was evacuated, having to leave their cars locked in the racecourse. This caused a huge demand for hotel rooms in Liverpool that night as many racegoers were stranded with no means of getting home, and we watched first hand as the Adelphi rose to the occasion to help these poor souls...by putting stratospheric hikes on the room rates and charging huge sums for things like rows of mattress on the dining room floor. What was most sickening was the obvious pleasure they took when they realised that the very last nook and cranny had been sold at some scrotum-tightening cost. I vowed right then that I'd never stay there again, and have been true to my word since. This latest example of incompetence and rampant profiteering just vindicates everything I think about the place.... not that I'm bitter and twisted in any way, you understand. Anyway, hotels aside, things rapidly go from bad to worse when it then becomes clear that the new show slides for tonight and tomorrow that Den's brought with him have caused the show computer to throw a total hissy fit. They won't load at all due to either an iffy disk or some kind of file corruption, and the bottom line is that we've suddenly got about thirty minutes to put a new show together before the doors open...and that's not even taking into account what to do about Liverpool,. which is a totally different show again. Suddenly that thin veneer cracks and everyone's snappy and stressed as we try to resolve this, and I'm taken right back to those heady first days of the LAST tour where shows were being re-jigged on the hoof as Den's voice went awol.This, however,is different, as we're many miles from home with no way of getting to the computer to try and solve the problem. As ever we manage to get SOMETHING together just as doors open, but there's no way of knowing how it'll look or even if it'll work. Nothing like a nice easy start to the tour, then....it's SUCH a lovely feeling, travelling into the unknown in this way, kind of like going into Rat City wearing cheese trousers. For the first half, though, everything's fine. The band sound as great as ever, and it's a real thrill to hear them playing again. It's essentially the same show as we did in February and March, with the Beatles / Hollies / Searchers / Swinging Blue Jeans combination to kick off, and the little acoustic section after " Sound Of Silence ", and once again we see the " Bootlegs Effect " on a whole new audience ! It is, though, a show of two halves, Gary, and though the band raise their game after the break, a few technical problems start to crop up, such as non - detonating pyrotechnics and some truly mental slide programming, plus a few odd sound anomalies. I have, however, been told by some of you that I should try and focus on the big picture a little more this time round, and less on the crew side, so I'll not dwell on those things too much. I'll just let them all return to haunt me in the dark fastnesses of the interminable, lonely night as I toss and turn, tortured by the horror of the imperfect slide show. ...but I'll be fine, don't worry about me ( sniff )....So, the band, then....well, they were brilliant as usual. Anyway, enough of them, back to the and the crew....! Tonight's been a bit of fraught first show, but the crowd response, as ever, has been superb. One of the ushers tells us he even saw a woman crying as the band played " You'll Never Walk Alone ". Personally I thought they played it quite well, actually...crap jokes aside, though, the end result is that another town has fallen beneath the wheels of the Bootleg Sixties bandwagon, or some equally lumpy metaphor. We pack up the truck with a bit of trepidation about tomorrow....it's a big, big show, we've got no visuals for it yet, and a three - hour drive tonight to get there. So THAT'S alright, then...

My Little Office, Geddington, Wed Aug 8th

So, next week, then.....only seven short days until our band of merry pranksters reconvenes for our second assault on the tender sensibilities of the British theatregoing public. I have to say that it's all going quite pleasingly well so far....so much so, in fact, that we've not only been able to lose the band and Arthur out to Fuertaventura for a week to celebrate a landmark birthday for Arthur's partner Anthea, but also to let me go in to hospital for a quick op on the cartilage I tore on the LAST tour. Sadly the two events co-incided, so while they were out there doing the old sun,sea and sangria fandango, Billy No-Mates here was enjoying sitting at Edith Cavell hospital in Peterborough for ten hours waiting to go down to theatre whilst wearing nothing but a backless theatre robe and a deeply attractive pair of disposable underpants.The only comfort to be drawn from the whole experience is that by me NOT going out there, everyone avoided the sight of my capacious backside stretching a pair of Speedos to the very limit of their endurance. Just think of all the trauma the inhabitants of the island have been spared as s result....Any road, despite these distractions we've pretty much got it all in the bag. Hotels are booked, minibus is ready to collect, pyrotechnics are all set to go, extra lighting's just waiting in the warehouse ready to be put on the vans, and all the crew are locked and loaded. In terms of the dramatis personae, it's pretty much the usual suspects, though Rodders is still on tour with Scottish chooglers Runrig, his place being taken by Damian Goddard. Going some considerable way towards making up for Rodders' absence, however,is the surprise presence of Pug, who has deferred his Great Orstrilian Adventure just long enough to take in these shows. This is a much happier Pug than the one we saw on the last show at Radlett. You may have read between the lines on those last posts and realised that the trouble he had on the last tour was all to do with a GURL, so he'd opted to do the honourable thing and either go to Australia or join the Foreign Legion. As he's allergic to both sand AND camels, Oz got the nod, only for the aforementioned Sheila to then recant her original decision and reappear on the scene. Amid much wailing and gnashing of teeth ( not to mention close perusal of the small print on his air ticket to see how much he'd lose if he cancelled it ) a happy compromise was reached...he's still going out there and she's....err....not. But he says it's alright, really it is. Whatever the story, though, we're just made up to have him back with us. He may smell a bit, but he's got a heart of gold. We still don't actually know exactly what form the show will take as we haven't yet sat down with Den and Steve, but for those of you who may be coming along, the basic structure will be the same as the spring dates, with the notable exception of Liverpool, where we'll lob in a few more Beatles numbers in deference to the fact that it IS the Beatles festival, after all. In short what I'm saying is that isn't a new show....THAT will happen on the next tour, where we're looking to change things round quite a bit. It should be great....Den's got loads of ideas for different songs, there'll be new lighting, and the auditions for the trapeze-artist dwarves are coming along very nicely, thankyou....

Is it that time already ???

You know how people say those annoying things like " My, hasn't he grown ? " when meeting a child they've not seen for, like, twenty years ? Or how about " I don't know where the year has gone " The obvious answer, of course, is " Into the, dark, voracious maw of The Past, thus taking you another inexorable year closer to your eternal oblivion " but as the question is normally asked by an elderly friend or relative it's probably not too diplomatic to use this particular riposte. Any road, it's only four weeks until the start of the next tour now, and it really DOES seem like just last week that I chasing theatres trying to get payment from the last tour...oh, hang on...it WAS just last week... Since the last tour we've got a new government ( not that I've noticed any difference ), had a World Cup ( we were in it, apparently...must have missed that bit ) seen Katie Price get married again ( I give it a year, tops ) and groaned as Andy Murray failed to reach the final of Wimbledon ( again ), so what could possibly cheer the country up more than a new Bootleg Sixties tour ?? OK, OK, you don't have to answer that...Things have been pretty good for The Overtures since the last tour, as it happens.....you may recall from the last blogs that the band were asked to do a big German TV show, and it went brilliantly. As a result of that success they got invited to do another German TV show, this time in Majorca, where amongst other things they backed Lionel Richie ( he says Hello, by the way ). We're now talking about a German theatre tour next year, as well as following up interest from Australia and America, so it's all going in the right direction. This little tour is a bit of an odd one for us, actually. The Overtures have played the Beatles Festival in Liverpool every August Bank Holiday weekend for about a grillion years now, and have done pretty much every slot on every stage at some point. This year, though, the Festival Grand Fromage, Billy Heckle, has invited the lads to bring the Bootleg Sixties show to Liverpool Philharmonic and headline the opening night ( that's Friday August 27th for those of you who still haven't bought their tickets ). This is a big honour for us, and we're really looking forward to it. We thought it'd be a good plan to do a warm-up show or two on the way up there, so we mentioned this to our gigmeisters Alan and Nick, and next thing we know we're got a whole little tour built around the date...result ! Apart from Liverpool it'll be the first time we'll have played all the other places, so although there isn't quite the same " waking up sweating in the middle of the night going Ohmygodohmygodohmygod " level of pressure that we had on the LAST tour, we've still got to deliver if we want the project to keep building. Because the budgets are smaller we won't be taking out some of the toys we used on the last dates, plus some of the familiar crew faces will be missing or flitting in and out of the tour, and although the show will essentially be the same there are a LOT of other variations. We've been very calm about all this, and have just reassured ourselves that " It'll be fine ", with the inevitable result that the tour has now earned itself that particular soubriquet. The
" It'll Be Fine Tour 2010 " it is, then....As we're going to be touring again I thought it'd be nice to dust off the laptop, crank up the brain, and do another, smaller blog for this tour; a "blogette", if you will. I also need to tell you about something else that happened with the last blogs which fair made me squeak with joy. At the end of the tour I went off on a wee holiday, and when I cam back our megadrummer Steve and his lovely wife Jill had got all the blogs together, along with some of Jill's photos, and had them published in a Real, Actual, Book, with pages and a cover and everything. You know...like a book. A real one. As in not a pamphlet or leaflet. As in not a load of sheets of A4 stapled together. As in a Real Book. Like the things you buy in shops and read. Now, had they done just the one as a kind of keepsake, my little tail feathers would still have quivered with love and gratitude, but it gets even better.....THERE IS MORE THAN ONE COPY OF THE BOOK !!!! Oh yes, thanks to Jill and Steve and the nice people at Blurb.com your humble scribe can now call himself a Published Author ! Now, I appreciate that Dan Brown, John Grisham and Stephen King are unlikely to be looking nervously over their shoulders at this point, nor have WH Smith's or Waterstone's been inundating me with pleading phone calls, but should you wish to have all of the cyber-ramblings from the last tour encapsulated in Real Actual Book form for ALL ETERNITY so you can then pass it on to your grandchildren as an invaluable family heirloom etc etc etc, then you can actually buy one of these bad boys by using the following link : http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/invited/860732/13ad3acdb65fcea9947a27b94f85fc44
Snappy, huh ? And who knows...by the time we finish NEXT year's tour we might have moved on from Real Actual Books to " Tourblogs - The Musical " or at the very least a " Talking Book " CD. Hang on....that's actually not a bad idea....Where's my agent's phone number.....??

Radlett Centre Sun April 18th

What an odd one THIS has turned out to be…..several months ago our gigmeister, Alan Field, had asked us if we’d be up for doing a one-off show in aid of Habad, a Jewish children’s charity which he’s involved with. As we were clear that weekend and it fell quite soon after the end of the tour we said yes, and then put it on a back-burner while the tour prep all took place. Well, the grunt and grind of the tour has been well documented elsewhere in this blog, so I’ll say no more about that, but couple that with the band scooting straight off to Germany and Sweden afterwards, and suddenly the charity show was right upon us. It was always going to be a BIT different as we’d been specifically asked to incorporate songstrel Ellie Leah back into the show, which was fine, but then became a LOT different when some delinquent cloud of Icelandic ash brought the airways of the Northern hemisphere to a sudden halt, grounding our guitarist Phil in Gothenburg…which was NOT fine, not fine at all. We’ve had to work without him once before, a year or two back, when Ryanair did one of their random flight cancellation things and he couldn’t make a show in Kings Lynn, but this is different. We haven’t worked with Ellie in over a year, so we were planning on using the touring show as a template and then just adding Ellie’s numbers. With no Phil we suddenly realise how much of the set we now can’t do, so Den gets to work on coming up with a Plan B. To be honest it’s still better than most people’s Plan A, but it’s nonetheless all a bit seat of the pants. He’s had to change a lot of the visuals, too, so I’ll have to go through all of those with Tomps
( who fortunately is being his usual cool, unflappable self ), and to really cap it off Rodders isn’t doing this show, so we’re back to the Stone Age with us doing the best we can with what lights we find, and me trying to cue a house lighting guy who has never seen the show before. We’ve been more comfortable before curtain up, I must admit….! The venue’s a nice, new little theatre, though, just perfect for this show, and it’s great to see Pug, Tomps, Nick and Lids again. I’ve kind of hoped we’ll just drop back into the touring groove, but everything’s so different, from the way we have to lay the stage out to the fact that there’s no Rodders bustling about with his MACs, and to make things even more fun we’re on a later get-in; this would have been fine when Phil was still involved, but now there’s a lot of work to do and a lot of rehearsal to get through, and losing that extra hour doesn’t seem such a clever idea all of a sudden. Chris and Paul, the house lighting guys, are helpful and quick, but we gradually become aware that there’s really not much in the way of lighting in here, and without the MACs we could struggle to make a visual impact. I also realise when I come to test them that only one of the two remaining flame pyrotechnics kept back from the tour is working, so that’s going to look a bit pants too. Things are stacking up….It’s odd seeing the “ four – piece “ Overtures line-up again after so long on the tour; Den should be centre stage as usual but he’s not, he’s on stage left and Jamie’s swapped over completely ! Weird that such small things can throw you, but when you’ve had two months of doing things a certain way, they do. There’s no Black Box Of Bafflement tonight either due to Phil’s absence, so Nu Nu the smoke machine is redundant, and sits looking forlorn at the front of the stage, until I take pity on him and plug him in under the drum riser. Poor little fella. The weirdness continues as the charity’s main man gets onstage to describe what the organisation does, how they’re looking to raise money and so on, then he introduces a DVD showing some of the kids the charity helps. It’s desperately sad, showing these poor kids who have been maimed by warfare or serious medical problems, and everything’s very sombre….then suddenly it’s over and the band are due on….not exactly the ideal warm-up to get people in a party mood, to be honest, but the charity is what tonight’s all about, so we just get on with it. Everything sounds different, too, but the biggest miss is Rodders and his lights; Chris and Paul are manfully doing what I ask them to but there’s no drama, no snappiness, and it’s all a bit lame, despite the guys’ best intentions. Ellie’s entrance sparks things up a bit; she absolutely wallops “ You’re My World “ right between the eyes, then goes for the knockout punch with “ River Deep, Mountain High ! She’s got a set of lungs on her, this girl, and no mistake…..The first half seems to take ages, but it eventually comes to a close and we can regroup. We do a bit of light-tweaking and I set out my sad, lonely little pyro, then we’re off and running again. As Den walks onstage in darkness to start “ Blowing In The Wind “ I tell Paul on the follow-spot “ When you hear the guitar start, pick up the centre – stage vocal and hold him “….except that there IS no centre –stage vocal of course…he’s over on the bloody left tonight, isn’t he ? Arsebiscuits ! It’s like searchlights during the Blitz for a few seconds as the spot sweeps the stage trying to lock on to Den, but finally Paul gets him and everything settles down again. It actually goes remarkably smoothly, even the two “ playback “ songs where Phil’s guitar really does come to the fore. The lone pyro in “ Light My Fire “ IS naff, but the look on the faces of the people in the centre front row as it bursts into flame and they feel the burn from it is worth the admission price alone ! Ellie’s back onstage for
“ Shout “ and from then on in it’s game, set and match, with the old show – closers of “ Surfin’ USA”, “ Mony Mony “ and “ Daydream Believer “ before the ubiquitous
“ You’ll Never Walk Alone “. This isn’t the noisiest audience we’ve ever played to, and the band have to be nippy getting back onstage for the encore, but they’re appreciative enough, and the main thing is that money gets raised for the charity. After the show we try to remember which cases everything goes back into, and it’s all taking a bit too long, but we’re not that far a drive from base tonight so it doesn’t matter so much. It’s been great to see the band, Jill and Sherry again, and it wouldn’t be a Bootleg’s gig without seeing Marilyn bopping around in her tour t-shirt ! We also hear that the band have been confirmed onto the festival in Majorca that the German TV bods wanted them to do after the triumph in Munich ( though it turns out it’s with Joss Stone , not The Rolling Stones …something lost in translation there, perhaps!) Ellie’s also landed herself an eight-month contract in the stage show “ Sister Act”, which is fantastic news, so there are plenty of positives….but it just somehow hasn’t felt right, and it’s not just because of Phil’s absence…they always say you can never totally recreate a tour “ vibe” ( and yes, I DO still hate that word ), even if you’ve got all the same people involved, and I think that’s what’s happened here….instead of going on to the next gig, we’re going our separate ways, and there’s a bit of an “ after the Lord Mayor’s show “ feeling about tonight. There’s also the very real underlying sadness that this could be Pug’s last ever show with us; the personal issue that dogged his last days on the tour hasn’t turned out well, and he feels the best thing to do is to get completely away, so he’s all set to head off to Australia on a one-way ticket. He’s been so much a part of the team for the past few years that I can’t imagine him not being there, so we vow that we’re definitely going to take the show out to Oz, and he can be our monitor guy when we finally get to that land of convicts, crap daytime soaps and piss-weak beer. So as we shut the van doors and say our goodbyes to each other, that’s about it for The Booties…..we’re back out on August 26th for sixteen days, all being well, but for now the Black Box Of Bafflement, Nu Nu and the pyros are all going into hibernation for a bit. I’ll still keep on posting the odd message from the frontline, though….who knows WHAT might happen between now and August….?!!!

They Think It's All Over.....It Is Now !

Time is a funny bugger, isn’t it ? On the one hand the tour feels like it just finished a couple of days since, but then I try and think back to Dartford Orchard on February 2nd and it seems that long ago I’m sure I remember the women in the audience wearing crinolines and bustles. I think that part of this weird timestretch feeling is that we really haven’t stopped work on the band OR the tour since it finished; two days after the final curtain at Croydon the lads flew out to Germany to take part in a huge TV show, and no sooner was that over than they were scooting off to Sweden to do some shows there, and all the while they’ve been trotting around Europe I’ve been a modern – day Bob Cratchitt, slaving over a hot ledger book trying to sort out all the finances from the tour. At the time of writing I still don’t know if the drinks are on me, we’ve broken even, or the workhouse beckons, largely because NINETEEN of the theatres we played still haven’t even given us the percentage split figures I need to invoice them for, let alone part with any actual wonga. In addition to this administrative tardiness, we’re also having to deal with what are known as “ The Contras “. Far from being some arcane South American revolutionary army, these are the ( often ludicrous ) re-charges that theatres try to levy on visiting companies. There are some that you accept without question…for example, the visiting company always pays for the house crew on the load –out, and it’s also normal to accept some kind of deduction for marketing expenses, like putting your gig ad in their “ what’s on “ brochures. Some, however, are, quite frankly, taking the piss, and these are the ones that take the longest to pay. There’s one group of theatres which shall remain nameless for fear of reprisals ( yes, I’m talking about YOU, HQ Theatres….(oops) who stretch credulity to eye-watering lengths. Huge marketing recharges with no evidence given to back up what they’ve spent it on, a charge for the bloody electricity that the show uses, for Sooty’s sake, and in one theatre the absolute piece de resistance, a charge of £ 12.77 for a “ fruit bowl in the artiste’s dressing room “. Never mind that said fruit bowl wasn’t even seen, let alone eaten, by the artistes, unless it contained the world’s rarest kumquat or ugli then someone’s having a right laugh……I can buy a chuffin' SACK of fruit for twelve and a half quid ! But I digress.
The German TV show was a big deal for the band, and although it was hard work for them and involved a LOT of rehearsal, it’s made them many friends and opened a lot of doors in Europe. Thomas Gottschalk, the show’s host, is something of a Grande Fromage in German TV presenting circles, and despite sporting shoulder – length blonde hair and leather trousers that very few sixty – year old men ( including, sadly, Thomas Gottschalk ) can get away with, he was genuinely blown away by the band, and has put them up for another TV extravaganza later in the summer. The main thing the show did was raise their profile in Germany, and judging by the amount of e-mails I got from new fans in Der Fatherland after the show, it certainly did THAT. Another small digression ( you’ll get used to these…..) Have you ever used the Babelfish free translation software ? It’s genius. Most of the mails we got were in excellent English, which made me ashamed of my fifth – form schoolboy German ( his name’s Hans and he’s very beautiful…I shouldn’t be ashamed of him at all ). Like many Brits who make a cursory attempt to learn another language, I can read and understand more than I can speak, so most of the time I’ve got along OK with these missives from Deutschland, but occasionally I’d be stumped by something, usually one of their fantastic, twenty – odd - letter compound words like “ lebensmittelgeschaft “ and so I’d run it by good old Babelfish, with interesting results. The programme translates literally, with no time for tiresome things like grammar, so often I’d be left with a jumble of apparently random words from which to make a well – know phrase or saying. My favourite was when it translated one correspondent’s surname as
“ Atrocity “. Clearly a member of the Hitler family…..( before we leave the subject, can I just say that “ lebensmittelgeschaft “ is an actual word, meaning
“ greengrocers”. However, it translates literally as “ living middle shop “. Go figure…..) . To see what the band look like in genuine German HDTV widescreen 3-D technicolour feelie-sound, go to You Tube and look for the Thomas Gottschalk Swinging Sixties stuff…there’s loads. You’ll see them backing Robin Gibb and Peter Noone among others, as well as simply being the world’s best house band. Just don’t use Babelfish to translate what Thomas is saying, otherwise you’ll find yourself wondering why he refers to the band as “ a pair of lightly grilled earmuffs “.
Anyhoo, enough of this badinage…..back to the heady world of post – tour accounts.
By the time I post my next ramblings we WILL know whether we won, lost or drew, and that’ll definitely inform the length of the next post; if it’s long and rambling then we’ve made money and I’m shitfaced drunk, but if it’s short and clipped then you’d best check all your friendly neighbourhood suicide spots for a fat bald bloke in a Bootleg Sixties t-shirt. Only time will tell, so without further ado I shall sharpen my quill, fill up my inkpot and throw another peasant on the fire. It’s going to be a long night…….

Croydon Ashcroft Theatre Sun March 28th

Here we are, then. Two months, forty shows and about six thousand miles after we set off all bright – eyed and bushy – tailed for Dartford Orchard, we pull up at Croydon Ashcroft Theatre for the very last night of The Organic “ It Is What It Is “ Tour. I’ve got very, very mixed feelings about today. The great audience responses we’ve been getting are pretty addictive, and I’d like a bit more of that, please, but, as with everyone else on the tour, I’m knackered and need to rest. The knee I damaged early in the tour has become really painful and needs a serious looking at, and, of course, there are all the accounts to do, including a VAT quarterly return which is due in two days, but despite that joyous prospect awaiting me, I’m actually ready to go home now. It’s unlikely we’ll ever do a tour of this size again, although you can never say never in this lark. It’s been a real baptism of fire for the band and some of the crew, and they’ve come through it with flying colours, though there have been some pretty hairy moments and some bloody hard graft along the way. Everyone’s done brilliantly; Pug’s been ever-present throughout and apart from a brief wobble near the end when he had some unhappy personal business to contend with, he’s come on in leaps and bounds. Tomps and Clive have alternated really well on AV, and Tomps has also come up with some great new ideas for the visuals which we’ve been using for the past few shows. Rodders has done his usual great job with the minimum of fuss, and there’s no doubt at all that it’s the lights which have taken this production to a new level. The real surprise package, though, has been Lids, who hasn’t got any touring experience as such but who has worked his nuts off to become a valuable member of our team. It helps that he’s a funny bugger as well, because laughter is a very useful commodity on the road. He and Pug have really hit it off, and I’m awaiting the announcement of their impending engagement with bated breath…..The Unsung Hero Award, however, just has to go to Liddard Senior, our very own Nick. Despite being even older than me he’s displayed the energy of a man half his age
( that’ll be a 39 year – old man, then ) and just hasn’t stopped. He drives the band to and from shows, helps us set up if we need it, keeps a proprietorial eye on drummer Steve throughout the set, does the food run most nights and also does the merchandise before Arthur arrives, all for a measly five bushels of wheat a week ! What a diamond ! The only problem with our hero is that he has no inner monologue, and thus treats everyone around him to his every thought as it passes through his brain. Of course, if you challenge him about this habit of talking to himself he’ll contend that it’s the only way he gets any sensible conversation ! Nicholas Jeremiah Lemuel Liddard, we salute you, O Brother In Rock ! Back to the Ashcroft Theatre ( named after Dame Peggy, and not Richard, I gather ) and it’s a jaded bunch of Booties who set about building this last show. All of the banter of last night about wizard japes to catch the band out during the show has dissipated in a blur of sleep deprivation, and as we sloooooowly put things together it’s all we can do just to focus on getting the stage set up. When the band arrive we realise we aren’t the only ones; Steve looks totally cream crackered and everyone’s pretty subdued. This is partly to do with it being the end of the tour, and partly because the finishing line’s in sight and our bodies have all just gone “ OK…that’s enough now “. There’s a funny thing about “ last nights “…there’s this big expectation of them being some sort of amazing occasion, and you talk for weeks beforehand about what you’ll get up to and how such and such is going to be, but quite often the reality is that they’re anticlimactic. Tonight’s definitely showing signs of going down that route; not only is everyone tired, but we also learn that due to a local council ruling the audience aren’t allowed to stand up or dance, so we’re not even going to get one last look at a crowd going mental to Mony Mony. It’s a late –starting show as well, and I have to say that it’s all I can do keep my eyes open during the first half, though the band seem to liven up as soon as they get onstage. As we move into the second half there’s no real sense of things coming to an end, though Den very kindly brings the crew onstage to take a bow, which is much appreciated, and at THAT point you realise that it nearly IS all over. As they go into You’ll Never Walk Alone I can feel myself choking up a bit; Den, Steve, Arthur and myself have been working towards doing a full tour with this project for nearly three years, and we’ve finally done it. We’ve had some clunkers during the past two months ( Hello Boston !!! ) but the overall tour has been a great success, and we can safely say that we’re firmly on the map now. In a way it’s like watching one of your kids grow up and leave home….we’ve been so close to this project for so long, and now it’s over. And yes, I know it’s going back out in the Autumn but nothing is ever the same as your first tour ( unless it’s your first sell-out tour !! ) and we’re all going to be a bit bereft for a couple of weeks. Being on tour is a bit like being in the army; you’ve got a small group of people travelling and living together to do this quite tough job, and you all have to look out for and support each other. You develop a kind of “ us against the world “ siege mentality, and when the circle is broken and the tour’s over it can leave you with a very odd emptiness. A real “ road pig “ friend of mine who has toured since God was a lad described it as being almost like a kind of grieving, in that something’s gone that you can’t get back. On the other hand, you can have a situation like I did back in 1991 when I was touring for nine weeks with an American band and I couldn’t WAIT for the last day. I would cheerfully have murdered them in their beds, and the only grief I felt at the end of THAT tour was that I hadn’t cut off their testicles with a rusty knife and fed them to my dog, but perhaps that’s just me being uncharitable; I’m sure they were kind to their Mums and small animals. At the end of the show there’s a quick “ well done “ among the crew, but we’ve still got to get this gear out and the set knocked down; Pug, Tomps and I are taking the truck back to Bedford tonight and have to unload everything when we get there, then I have to drive the lights over to Ipswich tomorrow. Kevin “ The Silver Fox “ Lee has come down from Hoddesdon in the band’s van to pick up THEIR gear, so there’s no time for sentimentality OR hanging about. I manage a quick chat with Jamie to check he enjoyed the tour ( he loved it ) got a brief hug from Den ( loved the tour , hated me ) and one from Phil ( hated the tour, loved me ) and then suddenly they were gone; I didn’t even get the chance to say goodbye to Steve, Jill, Chris and Michelle, and it’s just because there’s so much to do and pack and remember to sort out; the band are off to Germany in two days and so we also have to make sure that all the gear that’s going out there is kept in yet another separate pile. The source of much attention is the flightcase that rejoices in the self – explanatory moniker “ The Jizz Case “. This wheeled box has become like Mary Poppins’s carpet bag….everything that doesn’t have a home anywhere else goes in it, and you never know WHAT you’re going to pull out when you put your hand in. There are three people bent over it and all you can hear is “Yours….yours….mine…ours…his….ours….yours…”as the contents are divvied up. Finally we’re ready, and we take a sad leave of Nick and Lids. Rodders is also leaving tonight and I find this particularly hard as he’s been lodging with me for the whole tour, and going home without him is going to be very odd ( OK so that sounds a bit gay, but you know what I mean…). Pausing only to get hopelessly lost in Croydon we head north, and I’m here to tell you that the cab of that truck is suddenly a very lonely place. We get back to Bedford at about 3.00am and the whole “ loading the kit back in to the unit “ thing seems totally alien and wrong….it should be in the truck and going to the next show !!! It’s going to take a while to decompress from all this. I get home at about 5.00am and tumble into bed, but I’m suddenly wide awake again, replaying days from the tour in my mind. I’ve done so many tours over the years you’d have thought that this would have been just one more, but it wasn’t….it was different….it was OURS. I’m going to miss the band, the crew, the familiar faces like Marilyn and Debbie in the front row, the band’s wives, the tiredness, the banter, the smell of napalm in the morning (?!) the voice of Doris the satnav, the standing ovations, the soles of my shoes being covered in “ rock & roll dogshit “( discarded gaffa and electrical tape strips ) the feeling when you first walk onstage at a new theatre, look around and go “ Oh f**k…..”, the sense of achievement when you’ve pulled a rescue mission out of the bag, the taste of Ginsters pies, even the smell of Clive’s gaseous emissions ( actually, scrub that one out….). I’m also going to miss writing THIS, Faithful Blogreader, and thus, mindful of the fact that I never DID tell you about the joy of soundchecks, I’m going to carry on posting up odd musings and thoughts about all things Bootleggy and tour – related. Thanks to all of you for your comments and kind words, and I hope you’ll keep an eye on this for future missives. For now, though, it’s time to sleep, so I’d just like to leave you with something that been said to me many, many times throughout my career in the music business, which is
“ What are you doing in my shed, and where are your trousers ? “

Thankyou and goodnight….

Eastbourne Congress Theatre Sat March 26th

Having cleaned myself up from last night I head down for a “ Lite Bite “ breakfast of two eggs, four sausages, eight rashers of bacon, a mound of beans and mushrooms and two slices of toast. Well, I’m a growing lad…..Despite all the cross – country shenanigans last night we’re very happy we made part of the journey when we did as we crawl with infinite slowness round a car – jammed Brighton, and then run into Eastbourne’s own traffic. As a result of the hold – ups the truck arrives fifteen minutes late for load – in, prompting the wags on the crew to ask me and Rodders if we’d gone via Dunstable again. Hilarious. The Congress Theatre is another big, wide bugger…stage left is so far away it has it’s own postcode but it’s a nice, flat push onto the stage, and everything rockets up. The projector images are HUUUUUUGE tonight as we can get them exactly where we want them, and it really looks impressive….yet another taste of what the future could hold. We’re ready for the band in good time today, which means they can grab some more much – needed rehearsal time for their German trip. They’re actually sounding a lot better already, and the medleys don’t have the same train – smash impact on your ears anymore as the band have cleverly managed to come up with transitions that smooth them out. Only the oddball waltz schmaltz of What’s New Pussycat sets the teeth on edge still, and Jamie, who has to sing it, still laughs at it almost every time he steps up to the microphone. Thankfully it’s only about ten seconds long. Don’t get me wrong….it’s nothing to do with the band, they play it fine….it’s just WEIRD, and trying to fit it into a convincing bass / drums / guitar format makes your brain hurt. We have this vision of some random German TV producer sitting in a little room with his Book of 1960’s Hits, picking out the maddest and going “ Ja, ZIS von vill REALLY screw up zose Englander schnitzels “. Back to the Congress Theatre and the lads are ready to wrap up the soundcheck, which means that as we’re at the seaside, it can only be time for fish and chips again…YAY ! Rather than getting something caught fresh today off the coast, though, the only place open nearby is the homogenised, franchised, sanitised Harry Ramsden’s. Now I can’t knock old Harry ( he’s dead anyway ) but I once went to his original place ( HA ! Place ! Fish shop ! Plaice !! Geddit ?? Sigh……) with an old girlfriend ( I mean it was a long time ago, not that she was old ) and the most wonderful cod, chips and mushy peas. The fact that I can remember the meal but not the name of the girlfriend says a lot about the quality of the food ( it also says a lot about me, I think, so let’s move on… ). Anyway, Harry Ramsden’s circa 2010 is absolutely fine if you’re A) Dying of starvation or B) Have run out of cardboard. The pre-packed meals are actually made in somewhere like Korea these days using Croatian cod and Czech chips, so that “ Genuine taste of Yorkshire “ is probably something they sprinkle on it from a can as it speeds down the assembly line. However, it fills a gap, and I’ve ALWAYS got a gap. But enough of this fishy tale…..back to the show. Once again it’s a decent house….nearly four hundred and fifty…..and you can forget all that bobbins about Eastbourne being God’s waiting room. This is a lively lot, and they’re anything but superannuated. Although we’re only one show from the end of this marathon, there’s no reflection of that in the band’s performance, and if anything they’ve been energised by last night’s show in Marlborough. We can’t really get away with reprising Spirit In The Sky here, though, so it’s the normal set, the only hiccup being the light failing in the Black Box Of Bafflement when Phil does the “ Hank “ gag, but that kind of stuff doesn’t scare us anymore….Rodders just picks him up with another light and off we go. We get the now almost mandatory standing ovation, and it’s back to the Big Sleep hotel for our Nearly – End – Of – Tour drink. Steve, Jamie and Chris’s wives are here too, so it’s a nice family vibe as we take over the lounge. We can’t really cane it tonight as we’ve got a show tomorrow, of course, but it’s just good to all be in the same room together for once and to share a beer and chew the fat. The main topic of conversation seems to be what traditional end-of-tour pranks we’re going to pull on the band on the last show tomorrow night, and one by one the lads slope ( a little nervously ! ) off to bed , leaving only Steve “ King Cognac “ Phypers to hold the fort. It would be VERY easy to just say “ Ah, sod it….there’s only one more show “ and REALLY tie one on tonight, because we’ve totally earned it., but there are too many pro’s about for that to happen. Mrs Phypers, the lovely Jill, shepherds her spouse up the apples and pears before things can get too messy, leaving just the crew to think of increasingly mental ideas for tomorrow night, including such flights of fancy as gorilla masks, Batman and Robin suits, and human heads in the Black Box, and we’re having, as the Irish would say, a mighty craic, until someone points out that it’s nearly three o’clock, and we really SHOULD be hitting the hay. It’s only at this point that these six intelligent men realise that they’ll all forgotten the clocks went forward at midnight….so it’s actually nearly FOUR o’clock. AAAGGHH !!!! Cue much scraping of furniture and toppling of chairs as we bail out with the speed of many antelope and head upstairs to grab some ( now foreshortened ) shuteye…..
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