Andover The Lights Fri March 4th

Our first visit to this quiet little Hampshire town, and early impressions are good…the theatre is a little lovely room, the dressing rooms are comfortable, there’s a shower, and the crew are very friendly. What could possibly go wrong ? Well, one of the vans, for a start. It’s been running hot for a while but last night it suddenly started to bubble and boil like a demented dragon, and it just about made it to the appointed overnight stopover point. This morning Arthur calls me ( I’m driving the other van ) to tell me that the recalcitrant Mercedes has thrown another temperature-centric wobbly, and is currently steaming in a lay-by somewhere near Uxbridge. This is a Very Bad Thing. All of the PA is on this van, so unless we get this sorted out, tonight is going to be the very definition of and “ Unplugged” show. Luckily Arthur manages to slake the beast’s thirst just enough to let him make it to the gig, but this one is going to run and run, as they say….Another very weird ( and more than a little worrying ) thing happens today. As I was driving from Loughborough last night I was aware of being quite tired, but I must have been worse than I thought. I was listening to Janice Long on Radio 2 and I’m utterly convinced she said she’d had a text from someone who’d been at the Loughboroiu8gh show, and that it was brilliant, after which she played the Stones’ Satisfaction . So chuffed was I that I told Arthur and then texted Den, who was also pretty pleased. Imagine how I felt, then, when I arrived in Andover only to be told by Den that they’d listened to Janice’s show again on the Radio 2 podcast, had heard Satisfaction, but nothing about the Bootlegs before it. Clearly everyone thought I’d lost my mind, and worst of all, so did I…..I was TOTALLY convinced of what I thought I’d heard. Here’s a word of advice, kids….don’t ever get old or tired….it sucks !! Anyway, temporary insanity apart, the rest of the day goes smoothly, even our trip to the bank. The four partners of the company have to sign some documents and as we’re on the road our branch have kindly sent them on to Andover so we can go in, sort them out, then get them sent back through the internal mail. There’s a slight hiccup when one of the local staff tries to tell us we can’t see the person we need to see unless we’ve made an appointment with him, but fortunately she sees the logic when we point out that we couldn’t possibly have done so as we were unaware of his very existence until the moment she uttered his name. Foolish girl. Back at the show everything’s going well, and we hear we’re pretty much on a sellout for tonight. Considering it’s our first time here, this is a great result, and the tiredness and van troubles are consigned to one of the little attic rooms of our minds for a while because tonight, Matthew, we are going to be The Gods Of Sixties Rock ! One slightly disconcerting thing becomes clear as the audience come in, and it’s something that we do notice from time to time. The front rows seem to be made up of, shall we say, more senior members of society, so that when you look out it appears at first as though you’re about to address the Annual General Meeting of Age Concern. We’re not totally sure why this is; perhaps their memories of the Sixties are rooted in the chummy cabaret of the Barron Knights or the twinkling Celtic charm of The Bachelors rather than the sonic assault of The Who, but it’s bit odd for Den when he gets his first glimpse of them. Fortunately the rest of the room is made up of younger and much noisier souls, so that when the lights go down a proper cheer goes up and from the opening chords of Please Please Me we’ve got them. In these little theatres this is a powerful, powerful show….the band is a fearsome proposition at any time, but coupled with the lights and all the visuals the whole thing just blows you away.. It works fine in the big theatres too, but this is where it really smacks you between the eyes. There’s a special sting in the tail tonight too; the lads have decided that there’s no way they can cone to Andover without paying tribute to the town’s most famous sons, The Troggs, so there’s a new one – night – only encore of Wild Thing. Considering that they only played the song for the first time at soundcheck, it takes the roof off the place, and the members of the crew like my good self who are old rockers at heart unanimously decide it has to stay in the set every night. A rousing rendition of Walk Alone neatly wraps things up, and then it’s into the town for a beer for the band and onto the bus with a Chinese for the crew., proving that the class system is still alive and well in the music business !