Edmonton Millfield Theatre Tuesday Feb 9th

There's a very, very weird vibe about today. Den saw the throat specialist this morning and the verdict is that although there's no permanent damage or serious underlying problem, the only way he's going to be able to continue with the tour is by resting his voice, and that means cancelling some shows. St Helens, Morecambe, Middlesbrough and a TV appearance in Manchester are thus reluctantly taken out of the schedule. Cancelling shows is always the very last resort, and you never know which ripples of effect are going to wash up on which distant shore. Sometimes you can escape with very little negative impact, but sometimes you can completely blow a laboriously - constructed beachhead to pieces. Getting a new band or show established is a costly and difficult process, built on an arcane and invisible framework of goodwill, trust, and the grapevine of public opinion. If you consistently present a reliable, high - quality product which people like, then your stock will grow as theatres, the audience and the media spread the word. This can either remain at underground or cult level, or it can move into the mainstream and become such a fixture on the theatrical scene that it virtually takes on a life of it's own. The Rocky Horror Show, for example, has grown into a touring phenomenon. Even inferior versions of the production now pack houses around the country with diehard audiences sporting basques, stockings, suspenders and garish make-up.....and that's just the men. The crowd know all the dialogue and song lyrics word for word, have their own litany of response phrases and gestures and have, in a way, almost BECOME the show. It's bulletproof, one of those " no-brainer " bookings that are manna to theatre programmers. And then right at the other end of the scale you have us. Although we've been putting on isolated shows for three years or so now, they'e all been part of a honing process rather than a concerted assault on the public consciousness. We've come out of the nursery and are finally going to Big School, where we are very much the new kid in the playground. If the other kids like us, they'll tell their friends, who in turn will tell THEIR friends, and gradually we'll become accepted. If they don't, though, or even worse, are apathetic towards us, then we'll end up in a corner of the playground with just the other kids that don't really fit in for company. My ( laboriously made ) point is that at this embryonic stage of our development, we are in a very vulnerable position, and cancelling shows can turn both theatre bookers and our prospective audience against us. We know the theatres all talk to each other, and we don't want to get a reputation for unreliability. We also know there's a hell of a lot of competition out there, and when people have paid good money to see us and made social arrangements to fit around our shows, we don't want to piss them off to the point that they'll just go and see something else instead. In short, cancelling shows is not a decision you EVER take lightly, but especially not at the stage we're currently at. We turn up at Edmonton's Millfield Theatre, then, knowing that we've virtually sold out in advance but also that this is going to be the last show for a while, as Steve Gray's work commitments mean he can't cover for Den after tonight. As I said at the start, there's a weird vibe. Everyone is going to be glad of a rest, not least Jamie, whose own voice is feeling the strain, and Phil, who will use the enforced break as a chance to fly back to Gothenburg and see his family. There's a real sense of frustration as well, though, as we were building up a head of steam. With any tour it takes a week or so to really bed everything in, and by now we should be at the point where we're locked in to the groove. We should be looking at tweaking and adding little things to make it perfect, or as Arthur calls it " sprinkling some fairy dust " but instead we're about to do our third totally different show in three days, and it's taking it's toll on the crew as well as the band. There's one big plus about tonight, though, and that is that Den has somehow found the time to compile all the show slides into the right order for the revised set, and even to add some new ones. This means that, visually at least, we'll be starting to look more like the real show again, and there won't be any panic at " Missile Command ", as the AV control position is known, when the band launch into a number that doesn't appear on our hastily scribbled set-lists. There's a bit more time to run things through with Steve Gray, too, which means Phil has been reprieved from having to play " Classical Gas " again, and you his stress palpably drains away. When you see him in his Union Jack coat, arm windmilling through the smoke and bombast of
" Pinball Wizard " he looks like a regular guitar hero, but he's actually a very shy bloke, and being ( literally ) in the spotlight like that and out of the comfort zone of playing with the band has been excruciating for him. Sevn - thirty rolls around, the doors eventually open and the theatre fills up. We're almost on home territory here, so there are some familiar faces in the audience. They know what's happened and are willing us on. It could still go either way, though...despite the great audience reaction we know that last night was, frankly, ropey, and no-one wants to go through that again. In the end, tonight we needn't have worried. In an intimate setting like the Millfield the band are a force of nature, and they completely blow the audience away. Steve Gray's Buddy section is even better than last night, and his presence onstage in the rest of the set looks much more natural and a lot less like we've just shoe-horned him in. The visuals work perfectly and, in keeping with the Rules of Rock, this hastily assembled collation is one of the best and slickest shows we've done so far. More to the point, it's much closer to the show that we're MEANT to be doing, so the disappointment of our enforced hiatus is slightly tempered by the fact that we can actually see ourselves getting back on track and away from the chaos of the past week. It'll be a huge relief to play the same show each night again...the crew were joking tonight about keeping their set lists from the last three gigs as each one is a unique collector's item.... Den and Jamie are packed off home with bags of lozenges, sprays, creams and unguents, so all we can do now is cross our fingers and hope the eye-wateringly expensive advice Den got from the specialist does the trick. One good omen on the way back is that the road was actually open; Rodders and I have been travelling together and have encountered no less than four road closures in five of the last trips home, which must be some kind of record. Tonight we get home after three o'clock and after a quick wash and brush-up, he heads to bed. Despite being exhausted, my head's full of stuff to do, check, book or cancel as usual, so it's about thirty minutes later that I make my own trip to the bathroom, where the karmic balance of the universe is restored as the door - lock breaks and I'm stuck in there for nearly an hour...... Joyous.