Harpenden Public Halls Wed Feb 24th

So Jim Morrison turns to Buddy Holly and says " This Bootleg Sixties lot....their tour seems to be going pretty well, doesn't it ? " Sure does " agrees Buddy. John Lennon looks up from the book he's reading and says " Yeah, I heard that too. What do you reckon, Jimi ? " Hendrix puts down his heavenly guitar and scratches his afro. " Well, they seem like good guys.... maybe we should just leave 'em be ". Karen Carpenter shakes her head and twirls her drumsticks. " No way, guys...you know The Rules. " With a sweet smile she plays a drum roll on her floor tom tom and looks down.......
" Sounds like thunder " says Rodders as the car pulls up to Harpenden Public Halls. Arthur, Nick and Steve are standing outside. They don't look happy. In fact they are the living embodiment of not looking happy-ness. As we climb out the car Arthur's almost vibrating with anger. " No point unloading the truck " he says, " Looks like we might not have a gig ". Behind him the two house techs and the hall manager shift nervously from foot to foot. They've got the look of of ferrets in the presence of a particularly miffed Jack Russell, and, being the perceptive sort of chap that I am, I get the vague impression that something's not quite right here. In fact things are about as not quite right as it's possible to be. We are in the very capital city of Not Quite Rightness. Things are SO not quite right that this entire blog could be devoted to a litany of the disasters, cock - ups, technical failings and general crapness we find. I'll spare you the full horror, but you really do need to know what faced us today. In short......Firstly, the venue has no online box office, so it uses the Alban Arena's site in St Albans. The Arena had an initial allocation of forty tickets, which, when they were sold, were not replenished for some reason , so anyone trying to buy tickets was finding they couldn't. Thinking the show was possibly sold out, they just left it. The reality is, of course, that we've sold those forty tickets....and that's it. We know there'll be some people coming tonight to pay on the door, but this is nothing short of disaster. Secondly, no-one has read our technical rider, so we find that the hall doesn't have any of the lights we need. Instead it's got a roof full of huge, dust - covered theatrical floods that wouldn't have looked out of place in Charlie Chaplin's Hollywood. There are a few spotlights on a bar at the front of the stage, but to add insult to injury we are told that these belong to a separate company and can only be touched by their staff.....who aren't here, of course, and can't be reached. The electrical power supply onstage is extremely iffy, they don't have a drum riser, the stage is about ten feet high, the lighting bars are winched up and down by a hand - crank that requires the forearm muscles of Popeye to move them even a fraction of an inch, and basically it's just not happening, in quite a major way. The power's the main thing; we consider trying to make it safe by wiring Pug into the mains somehow and using him as an earth. For some reason the little spoilsport won't go for it, so we just take a leap of faith, plug in and hope for the best. The first good news of the day...this doesn't blow the place up or raze it to the ground, so we move into wheel re-invention mode just as we did at Market Drayton. At times like this you really learn how good your team is, and once again everyone delivers.....it's just like Dunkirk. Except without the screaming German Stuka dive bombers. And the cold waters of the Channel. And the abject terror of getting your cobblers blown to Kingdon Come. You get the idea, though. We get the band to come in later than usual, and by the time they arrive, almost unbelievably, we've got a show and we're all set. It's very much a case of lights on or lights off, but Rodders has managed to get most of the MAC moving heads in, so at least we'll have SOME sort of production. The band's attitude is great, though....they know what a shitfight today has been for us and genuinely seem to to appreciate what we've all gone through to make the show happen, so they do a very brief soundcheck and let us have a much - needed twenty - minute break. The audience starts to come in and thankfully it's less sparse than we'd feared, but it's still woefully short of what we'd need, like and even deserve....the venue really haven't heard the last of this. The Rock Gods have obviously had their fun for the day, though, and opt to leave us alone now, because when the band kick off this small band of people make enough noise for an audience twice the size. They're LOVING it,and it becomes another one of those smashing little intimate shows like Market Drayton and Tamworth where the band and audience really connect. They're up and bopping way before the normal tipping point, and the calls for an encore are long and genuine. Ironically it's been one of the the better shows, and proves that you don't need a huge stage and massive crowd to have a great night. It's SUCH a shame that the venue made a pig's ear of the ticket thing, as this could have been an absolute stonker of a gig, but that's the way the pisspot cracks, as my old Gran used to say. We load out into the pouring rain knowing that we've all done a great job here, and the stress of the day is further eased by the fact that we know we're playing a virtually sold - out show tomorrow night. On the way back home afterwards as we sit in the car and munch on slices of " Tank " ( more of which another time ) we reflect on the day's events. Everyone's totally knackered, physically but also mentally, because of the stress we've had to deal with. It seems like every day we play a nice theatre and we're getting into the groove, we then follow it up with something like this. It'd made a great work study....The Adaptability of The Average British Road Crew....and we always manage to rise to the challenge, but the fact of the matter is that we could do without this kind of thing. It's just caused by lazy buggers at venues not reading their contracts and riders properly, or not passing them on to the relevant technical staff, and then not returning calls or being available to talk to us. Three of us are in our fifties, two of us are carrying injuries already, and this kind of poo-fest simply isn't what we signed up for. Once again I'm swelling with pride in all the lads, though, band and crew alike. We started out almost pulling the show when we got here and yet ended up with a corking night. As Jimmy Greaves used to say, it's a funny old game.....