Anorak & Chips, Please.....

I’ve already noted in previous blogs that I get a bit of stick for not having talked about the actual show enough, and as I said before I’m trying to describe the weird, boring, exciting, funny, sad, exhilarating, tiring, invigorating daftness that is life on the road….I’m NOT reviewing the gigs. However, I HAVE been asked to list the songs which were played, so I’ll just don my best anorak and we’ll get started….

Set 1
Please Please Me
Don’t Throw Your Love Away / I’ll Keep You Satisfied
Hippy Hippy Shake
Go Now ( once ! )
Little Deuce Coupe
Not Fade Away
Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood
Pretty Woman
Catch Us If You Can
You’ve Got Your Troubles / Tobacco Road / For Your Love / She’s Not There
The Times They Are A-Changin’
Mr Tambourine Man
Look Through Any Window
Keep On Running
Don’t Ever Change / Walk Right Back / Rhythm Of The Rain / Breaking Up Is Hard To Do / Do You Wanna Dance
You Really Got Me
You Were On My Mind
Apache / FBI
Out Of Time

Set 2
Feelin’ Groovy
What A Day For A Daydream / Happy Together / Mellow Yellow / Lazing On A Sunny Afternoon
Itchycoo Park
Hole In My Shoe
Strawberry Fields
Whiter Shade Of Pale
Light My Fire
California Dreaming
Handbags & Gladrags ( once ! )
Proud Mary / Mighty Quinn / Got To Get A Message To You / Suspicious Minds
Star Spangled Banner
Pinball Wizard
He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother
Green Onions
I Wanna Hold Your Hand / All Day & All Of The Night / When You Walk In The
Room / Gimme Some Lovin’ / Satisfaction / Mony Mony
Daydream Believer
Spirit In The Sky ( twice ! )
You’ll Never Walk Alone.

As the tour progressed, another very important list was made up, too….this was the Bootleg Sixties Crew Top Tour Grub Chart, and competition to make it onto this was fierce indeed, as we know that restaurants, pubs, fast food outlets and blokes with dodgy whelk stalls all over the country avidly await the results each year to see where they’ve come. We HAD considered a sub-chart for fish and chip shops as we had these no less than seven times, but in the end we just incorporated everything into one big smorgasbord of wonderfulness. As a result, we have a tie for the top slot this year, so take a bow Busy Bees ( Bridlington ) and The Gourmet ( Scunthorpe )

Busy Bees is without doubt the best fish & chip shop we’ve ever been in. The fish is all cooked fresh and by weight, the batter is light and crispy and the chips are firm and chunky. The portions are huge ( fnaar fnaar ) and eating there really is an experience not to be missed.

The Gourmet is a very fine Indian restaurant in Scunthorpe. Although billed as the best in the area, prices were very reasonable, and the chicken tikka was especially good, tasting as it did of proper tandoor oven cooking as opposed to being just meat smothered in red tikka sauce to disguise possible feline or canine origins. Even the spices, relishes and raithas were excellent, and the staff were exceptionally polite and helpful given that they were invaded by twelve hairy – arsed pissheads on a quiet Monday night.

Also worthy of mention were :

Dominos in Worthing who delivered our pizzas direct to the bus after all, even though they originally said they wouldn’t

The Golden Ringpiece in Andover who not only supplied us with a mouth-watering array of Chinese dishes, but also plied Arthur with booze as he waited for it to be cooked

The Marlborough fish and chip shop in Weymouth which NEARLY made the top slot had it not been for the fact that I’d almost died of exhaustion by the time I eventually found it

Wetherspoons in Weymouth for their superb, and incredibly good value “ train smash on a plate “ full English breakfasts.

Beales fish and chip shop in Porthcawl, whose delicious fish and copious chips were marred only by a slight excess of grease., most of which I ended up wearing

We must also, unfortunately, give a Golden Raspberry to McDonalds in Scunthorpe High Street for not having realised that it’s supposed to be “ fast food “ ( the clue’s in the name, you morons…) and for employing a cloth-eared bat who managed to get BOTH of my very simple orders totally arse-upwards. May she drown in a vat of ketchup.

A final word of thanks must go to Kay Howell for a seemingly endless supply of carrot cake and the fearsome chocolate confection which goes by the name of “ Tank”, both of which helped the bus travellers ( well, mainly me, to be honest ) to stave off hunger in the middle of the night.

To all of the above, our heartfelt gratitude and appreciation ( except Scunthorpe McDonalds, of course, which needs to be razed to the ground, especially if the soap-dodging, benefit –scrounging , chavvy oxygen-thieves who congregate there are still inside )

As ever, Faithful Blogreader, thankyou for your continued indulgence. We’ll be back in August for tales of Whitley Bay, Skegness and Liverpool……

Geddington, Mon April 4th

As predicted, I didn’t see the band this morning, apart from Phil, who has opted to travel in the van with Nick and Rodders as he’s going to Stansted to catch a plane home to Sweden. ( a decision he will come to regret ! ) Big John, Rodders, Tomps and Junior have already been up and into town for breakfast, making my creeping about the bus so as not to wake anyone seem a little redundant. Nick, rather unusually, has not surfaced yet, so I’m despatched with the pokey stick to wake him up. As I approach the bus the door opens and a vile monster steps out….oh, hang on…no, it’s just Nick, but he looks like he’s been dragged through a hedge backwards AND forwards, and then gone to sleep in it. Sensibly, Rodders takes the first stint at the wheel and Nick is poured into a passenger’s seat until he can finally emerge from his cocoon like a beautiful butterfly. Or something. It really IS parting time now, and so it’s handshakes and hugs all round. As Tomps and I attempt the latter we realise we’re not actually getting much nearer to each other; he looks down at our comfortably capacious stomachs and comments ruefully “ I think we both need longer arms ….” . A last wave and the vans are off, the adventure over and just the last bit of grunt work to do. We’re dropping our kit at our storage facility in Northamptonshire, and due to a peculiarity of the geography on the site even half a centimetre of rain can make the approach to it turn into something from The Somme, but our luck holds today and it stays dry, so everything goes back where it came from with the minimum of fuss and effort. Arthur drops me off at home, and as I walk up the hill towards the house and the recommencement of “normal” life I think back on everything that’s happened, not just over the five weeks of the tour but also of the many months leading up to it. We still don’t know how the tour has done financially, so there’s all that to work out, but whatever happens, one thing DOES shine through, which is that Clive continues to recover from his stroke, and that helps keep things very much in perspective. If HE can keep smiling through all that, then so can we. I think of the stress, the late nights, the logistical nightmares, the budgetary fun and games and all the little foibles and farragoes that accompany the preparation of a tour like this, and as I begin to try and put things in some sort of mental order, one thought burns into my mind……” I wonder if the pub’s still open ?”………..

Tony Henderson
Geddington, Northamptonshire
Tuesday April 5th

Buxton Opera House Sun April 3rd

Although Buxton is a lovely little town nestling in the Derbyshire Dales, it’s a bit of a bastard to get to, especially in a heavily laden van with coolant problems, but we manage to arrive safely, and even thirty minutes early. To our surprise no-one’s about, but then Tomps makes an appearance. He’s looked fresher, truth be told, and the reason for his somewhat less than chipper demeanour today is down to a combination of a VERY rough drive up in the bus and the hourly pealing of the bells from a church about four and half feet away from where the bus is parked. It would have been uncomfortable enough travelling up these little roads with their twists, turns, dips and hills in a double decker bus under any circumstances, but when you’re trying to sleep on the pitching, rolling upper floor it must have been horrible. When they finally arrived our weary travellers thought a few hours of stationary rest awaited them, but at seven am the bells of the adjacent church suddenly started pealing…..and pealing….and pealing. They weren’t just sounding the hour, of course, it’s Sunday morning, so they’re calling people to services…AND it’s Mother’s Day, so there are special services too. Nightmare. This is potentially bad news…the last thing we want on the final show is for the band and crew to be tired and below par. One by one they get up ( yes, even Jamie….) and either shower or head into town, and to our relief it seems to do the trick….by soundcheck everyone looks almost human and firing on all cylinders. There’s none of the “ end of tour “ blues about today, either, which is VERY odd….normally at the end of a jaunt like this you’re already starting to look to life beyond the twelve people you’ve spent the last few weeks with and wondering how you’ll cope without Nick to take the piss out of., or Rodders to buy crisps and chocolate for you, or Tomps and Junior to have a laugh with during the show each night, but everyone seems very philosophical and matter of fact about things, to the extent that I wonder if it’s only me who feels like this ! There are certainly no weird end – of – tour high jinks to distract the band from their playing….though the Shadows moment tonight is perhaps our best yet, with Junior, Tomps, Nick and myself hurtling across the stage behind the backdrop to take up station at the opposite side to where we normally stand, and where the band normally see us, each night., so that as they do the choreographed turn there’s a confused moment of “ hang on….they should be over THERE…have I turned the wrong way ? “ Possibly the very best part of tonight is the presence of forty – odd eleven year old kids from a local school. No, hang on, I haven’t gone all Gary Glitter on you….we learn that they are studying The Sixties as part of a history project, and as they knew we played all the music and showed all the images from the decade, their teachers thought this would be a good show for them to see. Big hand for the forward thinking of those staff ( mind you, they clearly had a ball themselves, so it wasn’t COMPLETELY altruistic !) but the kids seemed to love it…they dutifully screamed at the end of each song, giving it a nice “ Beatlemania “ feel, and it was just great to see them bopping about. We had a good crowd in tonight too, as Buxton is one of the venues where we road – tested this show a few years back, and they know how to promote us here. In fact, it’s a perfect choice for the last show…great theatre, great crowd, great crew, great place altogether. I’m totally fine for almost the whole set, then for some reason Whiter Shade Of Pale takes on an almost unbearable poignancy and I feel the tears prick my eyes…it suddenly crashes in on me that this really IS the last show, and the adventure’s over until next time. I’ve got a huge amount of personal unpleasantness to deal with when I get back, and the tour has cushioned me from the real world, but now it’s knocking on the door again and I’ve got to deal with it. I have to shake this melancholy, though, because it’s not fair on everyone else, and anyway, we’ve got an end of tour party scheduled for later on, with cakes and jelly and pop and everything. We’ve still got a show to finish, though, so I swallow my unhappiness and the three of us at stage right bellow along with the last two numbers. Again, we’d toyed with the idea of doing Spirit In The Sky but we’re really just reserving that for flat-out mental nights; this has been a huge success but there aren’t people hanging from the rafters or anything, so it’s curtain down, gear off, and into the de-rig. Before we start tearing down the kit I have a brief chat with a couple of regular fans who tell me, in one of the most touching testimonials that I’ll ever hear, that the show “ puts them on a high for days afterwards “. If we can reach people in that way then that’s good enough for me. I see Marilyn and Debbie even more briefly ( Marilyn tonight having ditched her normal jeans and Bootleg’s tour t-shirt combo for a nifty little 60’s number with kinky boots ! ) but then I really DO have to get to work. The crew here are brutally efficient, and whilst they’re standing outside with all our gear going “ What’s next to go in the van ? “ we’re still onstage trying to coil cables into the right piles, as the kit’s all going to different places tomorrow. We manage to catch up with them and avoid any dramas like leaving a key flight case behind, and then it’s a handshake goodbye and we pile on to the bus. Arthur’s done us proud….there’s champers, beer, wine, nibbles and even party bags, and the twelve of us squeeze into the back lounge of the bus and just have a couple of hours of what our Irish brethren call “ the craic “. I’m suddenly aware that this is exactly why we opted for the bus in the first place….there are no outsiders, no relatives, no family, no guests….it’s just the twelve of us, the people who did all this. Living on the bus has made us closer as a unit, and stronger too, and I’m more convinced than ever tonight that with the nucleus of this group there’s no limit to where we can take this show. Even Sunderland. I finally creep off to bed at about half past two, knowing that I’ll probably not see anyone in the morning before I leave with Arthur to take the kit back to Northamptonshire, but unlike last year at Croydon where everyone just melted off into the night after a forty – date tour, we’ve drawn a proper line under this one tonight. Now all we have to do is get back, add the figures up and see if it’s good news, bad news, or a hosepipe up the exhaust in the garage …………….

Porthcawl Grand Pavilion Sat April 2nd

The plan was to head back to Wetherspoons at 8.00am for breakfast today, but a terrible night’s sleep means that I’m glued to my bunk, and that’s the case pretty much all the way to Porthcawl. I feel as if I’ve been drugged, and just cannot seem to stir myself, at least until I get in the shower. As I slough off the carapace of crud that has enveloped me for the past thirty-odd hours, I feel invigorated and finally ready to face the day. Yet another seaside town, and today it’s blessed with bright sunshine and even a soupcon of warmth from the old currant bun, though there’s a wind which finds it’s way into your every cranny ( I said cranny ) if you’re standing in the wrong place. Despite my dulcet gorblimeyguvnor tomes, I actually hail from the north – east, and it’s thus that I fully appreciate the kindred spirits we see on the Esplanade today. In Newcastle we used to say that you could always tell when winter was on it’s way as the girls started to leave their coats at home when they went out for a night on the lash, and it’s exactly the same here….I’m leaning on the seawall talking to Arthur and Steve with the sleeves of my fleece pulled over my poor little paws to stop them from freezing, when some young thing in a vest tip and shorts enthusiastically suggests to her mates that they “ buy some cans of Coke and go and drink them on the beach “. Not only is the very sight of her in this scanty clothing enough to give me hypothermia, but I’m sure I saw a polar bear on the beach earlier on…..Porthcawl is actually quite a cool little place, at least at this end of town…the “ real “ beach is back around the headland with the funfair, Kiss Me Quick hats and daytripping families from Cardiff and Newport, all shaven heads, straining rugby shirts and casual domestic violence. The only time the pleasant Spring ambience is broken comes when a load of wannabe Hells Angels on Harleys thunder along the front, their intimidating exterior somewhat mollified by the realisation that, on closer inspection, more than a few of them are of pensionable age. ( Slight linguistic diversion….what would be the collective noun for a group of bikers ? A leather ? A shitload ? An unwashed ? A wheelie ? ). Inside the venue everything is calm efficiency, except that acoustically it has all the warmth and sonic beauty of a municipal swimming baths. It’s an odd, domed, hexagonal room, and when you clap your hands under the dome it sounds as if it’s right above your head….but move a few feet back and it’s shifted way to the right. It’s thus a longer soundcheck than normal as Arthur summons all his skill and experience to make this work. We’ve used the venue’s own PA system which, whilst adequate, isn’t really helping maters much, and for a very brief while we toy with the idea of putting our own PA in, but as there’s only an hour to doors we realise this just isn’t going to be feasible. Arthur wears the expression of a man who knows he’s going to be on turd-polishing duty tonight, but if anyone can get this place to sound good, he can. The longer soundcheck means that we have to eat almost on the hoof tonight; Nick and I manage to get into recommended local chippy Beale’s seconds before it’s inundated with the aforementioned daytrippers, whose children all seem to bear such farcical names as Turrock, Cheyenne, and Cody. We get back and the crew convene at stage left to wolf down our dinner. It’s the penultimate show of the tour tonight, but there’s another reason for celebration too, as it’s Junior’s 31st birthday. None of us could believe this as he looks about 15, but it’s true. He’s growing a Tour Beard which at least adds a couple of years to his boyish visage, but which, coupled with his flowing locks, also makes him look disconcertingly like Jesus. VERY useful on those road crew prayer meeting sessions we have each morning, mind…….We’ve marked the occasion with one of those jolly little helium balloons which we’ve moored to his monitor desk, and during the course of the show I look across the stage several times to wonder who the strange moon-faced individual standing next to Junior is, until I finally make out “ Happy Birthday “ plastered across it’s mush. D’OH ! The show tonight is, to be totally honest, a bit below par…..nothing you could put your finger on and say “ THAT was wrong “ or “ HE cocked up “ but somehow it just doesn’t gel like previous nights. There’d been a bit of a discussion at soundcheck about harmony vocal lines and so some of them had changed, and maybe THAT’S what it was, but as ever, the only people who ever notice these things are the band and crew….as far as Joe and Josephine Punter are concerned they’re seeing a fantastic show, and they react accordingly. As with Blackwood, the singing on the last two songs is stunning, and the domed roof actually seems to amplify it, so it all gets a bit Cardiff Arms Park ( and yes, I KNOW it’s not there anymore, but
“ Millennium Stadium” is just SO naff ). South Wales has been great for us, and we make a mental note to ensure we come back next time around. After the show it’s our first long overnight drive for a few days….John will leave at 2.00am – ish and aim to get to the final show of the tour at Buxton around 7.00am, but for Arthur, Nick, Rodders and myself it’s into the vans and up the road to Bromsgrove. It’s not too far but feels much further as the long climb out of Wales involves more water – replenishing stops than we’d normally make, so it’s not until about 2.40am that we finally pull into a brand new Travelodge which is cunningly concealed behind a pub and a nondescript housing estate in one of the more nondescript parts of the nondescript little town that is Bromsgrove. In fact, it’s so new that Doris the SatNav doesn’t even acknowledge it’s existence, and would blithely have guided us hither and yon had not Eagle –Eyed Nick spotted the sign as we roared past. I gratefully slump into bed, and as I close my eyes I start to think about tomorrow being the last show, how quickly the tour seems to have gone and so on. I sleepily make a mental note that I must also remember to….zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Blackwood Miner's Institute Fri April 1st

It’s only our second ever visit to South Wales, the first being a cracking little show at Newport Riverfront on the last tour. Tonight ( and it IS April Fool’s Day, so we were a tad dubious about this when our agent sent the date through ) we’re at a venue which glories in the name of Blackwood Miner’s Institute. It may well once have echoed to the bombast and rhetoric of the pitmen’s union, but these days it’s a cool little theatre, and it’s even hosted such biggies as Stereophonics quite recently. We may not quite have reached their dizzy heights sales-wise yet, but we’ve done pretty close to sell-out business tonight, and if last time’s experience was anything to go by we’re in for a good night. There’s a great deal of clichéd garbage talked about “ The Valleys “ and Wales being the Land Of Song and all that malarkey, but Blackwood really IS in “The Valleys “, although these valleys are so far up the mountains that you half expect to see a species of dinosaur hitherto thought extinct striding up the main street. The venue is also on a hill more suited to goats than ageing, overweight road monkeys such as myself, so by the time we’ve got the gear in I’m already cream – crackered. It’s all a bit tight inside and there’s a fair amount of flightcase Tetris going on just so we can get everything onstage, but as ever we get it nailed , if a little later than usual. The main topic of conversation regarding the venue is that for some inexplicable reason known only to the architect who built the place, it has no backstage toilet, and by extension, no backstage shower. No doubt he was a hardy miner who felt that washing was some kind of girly fussiness, and that getting rid of the coaldust weakened your back or something, but for our sorry band of bus-encrusted travellers this is bad news with a capital Smelly. There IS a washbasin which allows us to lower our undercarriages into a bowl of icy mountain stream water, but the bloodcurdling screams which emanate from the little room where the sink sits are enough to chill even the bravest heart, so for most of us discretion is the better part of valour, and we decide to wait until tomorrow. Rather typically, the fact that there’s no shower coincides with this being the hottest, stickiest venue on the whole tour, but them’s the breaks, as they say...You always know when you’re in for a good evening when the audience clap and cheer as they see the shadowy figures of the band making their way onstage during the intro footage, and tonight is one of those nights. Although they don’t cavort as early or as freely as the Dumfries crowd, this lot are loud loud LOUD and make their appreciation crystal clear. Tonight’s megacheer number is Suspicious Minds, and it’s a REAL megacheer….they clearly LOVE The King here, and when the photo of him comes up on the screens you’d have thought he WAS in the building , as opposed to still being dead. From here on in it all goes a bit banzai, and the place turns into a sea of waving hands, bellowing voices and sweat, adding yet another layer of funk to our already grimy bods. It COULD be shaping up as another Spirit In The Sky night, but the band want to keep their powder dry ( it’s the only thing that is, mind ) and so they close with the normal one-two combination of Daydream Believer and Walk Alone. The singing we hear back from the crowd is totally brilliant, and all that Welsh choir cliché nonsense suddenly doesn’t seem so daft after all. A fabulous night, then, and it isn’t over yet….a fairly elderly lady and her young female companion are still in the front row after everyone has left. She’s remained behind to politely ask if the band would play at her birthday party. She can pay them the princely sum of £ 400 but, and here’s the clincher,
“ she’ll also do a spread of sandwiches “. Sadly the date coincides with a hair-washing night for the band, so they have to regretfully decline. The response of the people here tonight has been fabulous, though….after the show we all repair to the local Wetherspoons for a restorative libation, and there’s a constant stream of folks coming by saying how much they loved the gig, when are we coming back, it’s the best thing they’ve ever had there and so on. Lovely, lovely compliments, and it just reinforces what we all believe here….that we’ve got a show which can go all the way. For now we’ve just got our sights on knocking That’ll Be The day off it’s perch, but after that, who knows ? I head back to the bus and resolve to dig out my jackboots and that map of the Sudentenland, Poland, and the Low Countries……………

Exmouth Pavilion Thurs March 31st

And so we come to Exmouth. A little background is called for here before we go any further. This show had been selling very slowly, but as they’d had three months run at it we were confident that they’d turn it around and that the show would do OK. Wrong. Three days before the show it had sold a mighty fifty-two tickets, by far the lowest sales we’ve ever had. Apropos of nothing else, On every level it makes sense NOT to do the gig….firstly, we’ll lose a shedload of cash, secondly the VENUE will lose a shedload of cash, and thirdly it’ll be pretty horrible for the band. However, when we suggest this to the management of the venue they not only said they wanted to keep the date in, they also threatened to invoke a cancellation penalty if we didn’t play. This makes it financially impossible for us to cancel or postpone the date, so here we are. The bright young thing at the box office breathlessly tells me that sales have now gone up to a whopping fifty – four, and I have to go and have lie down to deal with the excitement. At east the view’s pretty….we’re right on the beach at the quiet end of town, and it’s all very picturesque and Devonian. Big John tells me that a German submarine once came up the mouth of the River Exe right here, and I wait patiently for the punchline, as John’s ALWAYS got a punchline, but no, that’s it….it’s just a micro-history lesson. .Seeing as I’m the master of largely useless trivia, I file this away for future reference... I’m sure I’ll be able to make someone’s eyes glaze over somewhere. Back inside, Dom and Ali, the two venue staff, couldn’t be friendlier, either, but even they are a tad embarrassed by the “ cabaret style “ seating and how sparse it looks in this fairly big hall. One saving grace is that Chris’s brother Anton is coming tonight, AND it’s his birthday, so he’s bringing twelve guests which will swell the numbers somewhat. We’d actually asked him if he could invite the entire population of the town where he lives, but failing that, twelve extra bodies will help nicely. The other thing that drives us mental about these shows that don’t do well is that invariably when you speak to some of the locals they say things like “ Oh, I’d have bought tickets if I’d known it was on…I didn’t see any adverts ! “. We also hear that the theatre’s foyer and little café has been closed for a while for refurbishment, and this was a popular rendezvous point, so we’ve missed out on people seeing the ads in there too. As we’ve already said, if folks just didn’t want to see this show we’d understand, because we’d be playing to no-one every night, so it HAS to come down to the local promoters. Anyway, I won’t go down that particular ranting route again, as that way lies madness…..The band’s attitude to tonight has been really good…once they realised we were stuck with it they just get ready to deliver the best show they can, and there’s no petulant snits or anyone locking themselves in dressing rooms in floods of artistic angsty tears. This, of course, is just as it should be….when folks have paid good money to buy a ticket to see you, they expect to get the best show possible whether there’s eight or eight thousand out there, but I must admit I have worked with bands who pulled the most amazing strops over things like the toilet paper in the dressing room loo being the wrong colour or the alignment of the stage messing with their feng shui . In such situations one is tempted to find a large, ungreased pole and shove it where it’ll REALLY mess up their feng shui, but fortunately we have no such issues with our chaps, and so, despite the fact that by the time the house lights go down there are open wastes between the isolated knots of audience members, they still lay into Please Please me as if they were at Wembley. There’s that initial wincing moment at the end of the song where you can actually hear individual voices and hands clapping, but Den just goes into his “welcome” link as normal, and from then on it’s all good. In fact, the open spaces work to our advantage, prompting people to get up and dance long before the band normally ask them to. This unscheduled bopfest also yields possibly one of he strangest sights I’ve ever seen. There’s a chap down at the front in an electric wheelchair, and next to him is his wife or partner. She’s holding what appears to be a kind of remote control for the chair, and as she grooves along she’s making this fellow’s chair “ dance “ too. A lot of fun for her I’m sure, but the poor chap’s gripping the arms of his chariot with in white-knuckled terror and hanging on for dear life. Eventually she hears his screams above the racket of the band and wheels him out of the firing line. Weird. There might not be many people here tonight but they’re making a proper row by the end of Daydream Believer, and it’s a genuine encore call that the band respond to. In the end it’s worked out OK ( apart from the nut-scrunching financial loss, of course ) and we’ve scored hundreds of Brownie points with the folks down here, but we could do without many more like this, to be honest. At the end of a night like this there is, of course, only one thing for professional musicians and road crew to do…..PUB FRENZY !!!!