Market Drayton Festival Centre Sat 26th Feb

OK, let’s get this out of the way here and now. I’m a fat bastard. I love my food. In fact I love anyone’s food. Last time we were here, Sheila, the lovely lady who cooks all the grub in the venue’s café made us some fantastic cakes, and I may just have had a teeny tiny sample of each one. As a result, everyone in the tour party is convinced that we’re only back here doing this show tonight because of Sheila’s cakes. This is not true. We’re only doing this show because of Sheila’s cakes AND her toasted sandwiches. We love this venue, and we love the people who work here. Today we love them even more because since our last visit they’ve built a whole new backstage area with nice loos and a lovely, hot shower. They’ve even supplied us with a load of fluffy towels and some shower gel, and nothing ever seems to be too much trouble for Geoff and Glyn who run the venue. A nicer, more helpful bunch of people you truly couldn’t wish to meet. We know the show’s going to be a stonker before we even start, too….they love their Sixties music here, and fortunately they love us playing it for them. Although it’s always cosy onstage and there’s a slight element of Tetris about the placement of instruments, cases and so on, the atmosphere’s great and as the audience are virtually on top of you there’s a great communication between the stage and the auditorium. We’ve encountered one problem, though….what’s become known as The Chris Issue. We’ve never had two people in the party with the same name before, and it’s a bugger. We started trying to differentiate by calling them Chris Monitors and Chris Keyboards but that was too unwieldy. We then tried Big Chris and Little Chris but that didn’t work either, so we thought the easiest thing was to find a tour name for Chris Monitors. First out of the bag was “ New Pug “ followed by “ Pug 2 “ and even “ Not Pug “, but we need to help the poor chap make his own mark on the tour, so until anyone else can come up with a better moniker he’s know as “ Oy ! You !”. Suggestions to tony@thebootlegsixties.com, please…..Right. Let’s get this next bit out of the way quickly too. The venue fed us. Sheila may have made some cakes. I may have had a piece. Of all four of them. And then taken another cake on the bus after the show. See ? Simple. No problem, And CERTAINLY not deserving of the public humiliation dished out from the stage as Den regaled the audience with tales of wanton gluttony from yours truly. I mean, how unfair…after all, I was just helping the poor woman decide which one tasted best (the amswer was all of them, in case you’re interested ). But enough of this, and on to the show….we’re adding a new bit to “Suspicious Minds” tonight, as we’ve finally got the techy bit sorted out to do it in full, so we’re gradually getting towards the finished version of the show.. As soon as Jamie’s back up to full strength we’ll put the missing songs back in, and that’ll be that. He’s definitely starting to sound better already, and although he’s judiciously pulling back from going full throttle still, it only feels like a matter of time now. The show tonight is pretty flawless from top to bottom, and it’s genuine pleasure to watch the band’s faces as they play and see how much they’re enjoying this. The Market Drayton crowd are as vociferous and enthusiastic as ever, even cheering the film of Geoff Hurst’s last goal for England as if it had been scored tonight and not forty-five years ago, and the new “ Elvis moment “ works an absolute treat. There’s one lady of somewhat advanced years in the front row who sits throughout the evening with a sort of “ stunned mullet “ expression on her jib, and the initial feeling is that she must be finding it all a bit loud, but when the “party” section starts she’s up and dancing too. They’d seriously let us play all night if they could, and for all the constraints of size and finance it’s one of those places that we’ll try and come back to every time. After the show we get a really nice e-mail from a lady who was there tonight. The last time we played here she’d just tracked down her Dad who she hadn’t seen for 48 years, and the two of them came to see the show and were in tears as the band played “Walk Right Back” as it had become “ their song”. Unfortunately he was too ill to attend this time, but she told us her story and how much the show and that song had meant to them. Now, I may be a great big cynical old Hector at times, but when you hear things like that it makes you realise that what we’re doing here can seriously touch people’s lives. In the context of what’s happened with Clive it’s all too easy to trivialise this as just so much musical fluff, but it IS worthwhile and it can make a real difference. Altogether now….We are thr world, we are the children…..