Stevenage Gordon Craig Theatre Thurs March 17th

As you may recall if you read the blogs from last time, on every tour there’s one show where the Gods Of Rock rise, gather up their spandex robes, adjust their rhinestone halos and say “ Have some of THAT, O lesser mortal “. Today is that show. Even though it’s now over I’m still shaking. I apologise in advance if the usual narrative style ends up being more of a catalogue of disasters, but believe me, that’s how it went. I’m not even sure I can remember them all, but here goes…..Well, to start with, all was fine….we had a bit of brekkie at Tescos and then back to the venue for a nice shower, and all seemed deep and crisp and even. The gear got loaded in, the projectors went up in the air….and then we noticed one of them had a big purple spot at the bottom of the screen. This can be down to many things, from burned – out lamps to suicidal raspberries throwing themselves in front of the bulb, but the one thing it ISN’T is good….especially when a lot of the material on the screen is white or light - coloured. It looks like someone’s lobbed a bottle of Ribena at it.Arthur and Tomps have a look but there’s nothing apparent and nothing they can do….and then it starts to flicker, quite badly. Again, there’s little we can do, so we apply some gentle impact therapy and hoist the projectors back into the air…at which point one of the others starts to flicker and break up too. Now, as the visuals are such an important part of the show, you can appreciate why this heralds an attack of what Manchester United’s manager calls “ squeaky bum time “. The problem is, there really ISN’T anything we can do…we have no spares, no specialist knowledge, and, this late in the day ( and your ) no recourse to a repairman….we just have to get on with it. By soundcheck we’ve got the projectors switched off to save lamp life in case that’s the issue, but this is soon forgotten as the soundcheck starts to degenerate into a frustrating maelstrom of whistles, pops and feedback squeals onstage. Then one of the DI boxes
( through which the acoustic guitars go) breaks down, almost unbelievably followed shortly after by the bass guitar DI. There’s very little that can go wrong with these things, though we’ve got a spare…but now two have died. The house come to the rescue and loan us one but it’s a short-term solution, and we’ve got no chance of getting back to the unit where our others are stored. Bugger. Just after that another channel goes down on one of the stage boxes, and we’re wondering if there’s a ghost or gremlin in here tonight. We finally get through the soundcheck with no bloodletting and cross our fingers that the projectors will make it through the show….this is another local gig and so there are many friends and family in, which means we want things to be perfect. What we DON’T want is for Den to walk to the microphone on the opening number, get his foot caught in his jack lead and rip it out of his bass guitar before he’s even sung a note…but that’s what happens. He recovers well but it’s an inauspicious start….and as I fire in the first of the animated slides, they freeze, for the first time in a long time, and definitely for the first time on this tour. I can only step through to the next one, which looks horrible and jerky. Several slides in, and it freezes again. This is a nightmare, as the whole Kennedy / Dylan solo that Den does is backed by animated slides. Tomps tells me to look away as he always does, sticks up a holding slide onto the screens and mid-show closes everything down and reboots it, which is pretty drastic and basic at the same time, but seems to do the trick. The purple spot on the projector seems to be getting bigger ( it isn’t ) and the flickering seems to be getting worse ( it is ) but somehow we get through until the end of the show without further mishap, although the lads made some changes to the running order which caught us out a bit. Was it a good show ? I honestly have no idea, as I was so on edge waiting for something else to go tits up. They could have played “ My Old Man’s A Dustman “ tonight and I probably wouldn’t have noticed. We know there’s nothing we can do with the projectors…..we just have to limp them through to the end of the tour…and I must be totally honest and say I just want today to be over so that we can get to Bridlington and come at it all again fresh tomorrow. The load – out is the fastest we’ve done on the tour, thanks to Kate the stage manager and her electric cattle prod ( not very PC or union-friendly but BLOODY effective ) and this is a good thing….Nick and I are driving the vans up to Grantham tonight and then doing the rest of the trek to Brid tomorrow morning, so we’re anxious to get away….but the Rock Gods have not finished with us yet. Oh no. Nick jumps into his shiny new van to drive it into the loading bay and….nothing happens. At all. It’s completely dead, but this is no simple flat battery jobbie…when he puts the keys in the ignition the headlights come on before he’s even turned the ignition switch on..,,,and when he DOES turn it on, they go off. There’s some kind of short, and only one thing to do…call the AA. We figure that if they can at least get him going we’ll drive straight to Bridlington tonight and sleep in the vans, a prospect that fills me with a warm fuzzy glow. Or not. He rings the AA and they predictably tell him they’ll try and have a patrolman out some time before the next Ice Age, but to our amazement and joy he turns up within half an hour. With very little teeth – sucking, head – shaking and “ that’s need to go the garage mate” – ing, he waves his hands over Nick’s engine, intones an incantation under his breath, sticks a jump lead onto the engine casing and with a roar it starts. At this point he starts to try and explain to Nick and Big John that there’s a problem with the overhead underhang or the knurled grunion rod or something, but frankly I don’t care…we’re moving again, so let’s just GET THERE and we can talk about it afterwards ! It’s gone 1.30am by the time we finally roll out, but we’re moving. PLEASE don’t let anything else happen…….