Derby Assembly Rooms Thurs Feb 4th

There's a weird set of cosmic Rules that seem to apply to the business of touring, and no matter how many times you trot around the globe they remain immutable and unfathomable.It's as if the Gods Of Rock sit astride their celestial Harleys in their flowing studded leather robes, look down and nudge each other and say " Hey, Jimi,Janis....that tour's been going far too smoothly. Shall we have some fun.....?"
and down here on this mortal coil your tour bus breaks down or the promoter advertises the gig on the wrong day or the guitarist explodes. It's always the same; home town gigs are never as good as you build them up to be. The place where the crowd went mad for you last time has had an inexplicable shift of loyalties and this time around one man and a dog turn up. On the wrong day. The theatre with the best technical facilities on the tour has an attack of the gremlins and you end up trying to run the show through two grotboxes and a handful of flashlights. That fantastic curry house around the corner from the City Hall that's had you salivating for weeks at the prospect of getting your road-weary gnashers round it's chicken jalfrezi has been turned into an organic juice bar populated by swivel-eyed Gay Whales Against Climate Change loonies. Sometimes, though, the Rules work in your favour, and today, thankfully, was one of those days. Though this show has never been to Derby before, the crew have extensive experience of today's venue, having done several
" Bloodstock " metal festivals there. The load-in's no fun as everything has to go up in a lift, and whereas we normally have hordes of hairy arsed " humpers " to cart the kit in, today there are just the two house crew. It's pissing with very, very cold rain and I've run out of Cadbury's Whole Nut. Things really couldn't get much worse. But then those Rules bend and flex and invisibly wash through the place, and suddenly the gear's all in. Everything goes up with just one tripping fuse to contend with. Our favourite house crew are on duty, and it's brilliant to see and work with them again. One of our old muckers, the very lovely Ben Dorrington, just happens to be in town and pops in to see us, not only brightening up our day even further but also giving us the solution to a problem on another project we've been asked to do
( he WAS a bit disparaging about our shiny glitter backdrop, but you can't have everything...) Best of all, we get the biggest crowd of the tour so far, and they're bang up for having a good time. The show almost runs itself, the band have a blast and they even serve big cones of popcorn in the foyer, which, when empty, make excellent comedy beaks with which to distract monitor man Pug on the other side of the stage. In short, it's a belter, totally unexpected, totally inexplicable and totally welcome. Dude.
( sorry....linguistic law....if you say
" Totally " more than three times you must then use either the suffix " Awesome " or " Dude ". It's an American thing, apparently ). The only frog in the chutney is that the band are doing a gig of their own in Bath tomorrow, booked looooong before this tour was put together, so the lads have to bundle into the minibus with Arthur and Nick and drive down there straight after the show, but at least they're buoyed by the knowledge that they've done a great job and we've now got a good following here. Until the next time, of course, when the Rules will kick in again and that bloke and his dog will be handing their tickets to the doorman.....